This publication is an overview of the book 'Art for Arts’s Sake? The Impact of Arts Education' (Winner, Goldstein and Vincent-Lancrin, 2013), published by OECD. The authors summarise the book’s methodology and main findings, propose an agenda for future research and explore some policy implications of their findings. In the first pages it is set the policy context and provided a brief overview of the skills needed in innovation-driven societies. Then are summarised the main findings of the review of the impact of arts education and proposed an agenda for future research on arts education, followed by a policy agenda. A key argument used is that the main contribution of arts education to innovation societies lies in its development of broad and important habits of mind. In conclusions the authors argued that the value of the arts for human experience is a sufficient reason to justify its presence in school curricula whether or not transfer results from arts education.

This overview is a slightly modified version of the conclusive chapter of Art for Art’s Sake? The Impact of Arts Education. The complete version of the report can be consulted on line at http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264180789-en.