Threads

This afternoon’s pithering about.

In response to my last post, David Minton’s comment about not getting “in the way of delight” has really stuck with me. I think, if it’s ok with David, I might use this phrase somehow. It has melded in my brain with the ethos “if you can’t do good, at least do no harm”.

As a motto for teachers, it initially feels a bit negative, a bit lowest-common-denominator. But actually, as a teacher of art in a primary school, after some thought, it starts to sound pretty damn good. I have, on average, the responsibility of teaching art to 120 children between the ages of 7 and 11, every school year. I’ve been there 7 years now… actually, nearly 8. That’s…. Hang on….. That’s 330 children! (that bit of maths hurt my head, and I had to get help, because I originally thought it was 960 – shocking!) If I have sent most of them out feeling good about my subject, or at least, better than they did when I started, that’s got to be a good thing right? If I add in all the after school clubs and workshops, and subtract my own 2 children who seem to have learned nothing from me, that’s about 500 children.

If I also take into consideration that I have taught 5 groups of training teachers – 25-30 in each group – who will eventually have charge of teaching art to their own classes, it starts to get into silly numbers… even if you factor in the high percentage that may not have been hanging on my every utterance!

I think I may have my angle.

I might even write a song.

I might get the children to write a song!

(I’m still not convinced about the maths actually, but there you go!)

It’s MA Art Practice and Education. That’s the tricky bit. For the end of the course I am supposed to link my art practice to education in some way. Using 2500 words. Not too many. I’m sure I’ll cope. The problem is that because most of the education I do is in a primary school, it is mostly inappropriate to link my work to what the children are doing. As the course has progressed I have found it harder and harder to link the two. And I have become more reluctant to find a link. This art practice is MINE. It has only just occurred to me (and my tutor) that I could think of a way of ditching the primary and look at education in a more holistic, universal (that word again) kind of way. I’m looking at my work and what it might say to its audience. I suppose the fact that it has lots to do with children and parents and how society views parenting might be an angle to pursue. Also the fact I have a chance to effect the opinions of training teachers might be too (although what I say when perched on my soapbox may not have any effect at all). But can I just look at my work, in solitude, and presume it has the capacity to educate, just by being regarded at all? Can I use the participatory/ performance angle of what goes on in my shed? Or when I make recordings? Does Art as a whole, with a capital A, have the capacity to educate? If we say yes, then do we run the risk of limiting other capacities? If we say no, then are we doing it a disservice?

Shall we just leave the answer a grey but knowledgeable “It depends” then?

Just wanted to add one more photo…

In post no 74… or thereabouts… I was talking about sketchbooks and how mine had been left open at random pages after an assessment, and how I had never considered looking at them in this way, just opened and placed next to each other, to see what associations might arise. In doing this, and taking pictures, I am also questioning who this blog is for. Obviously people are reading it. I’m reading it. And looking at the pictures. It is as much for me as anyone I suppose, a record, hopefully of growth and development rather than stagnation and repetition. It’s a way of reconsidering my thoughts.

And so is this…

I’ve taken my last 6 sketchbooks (I always work in these Muji A5 ones, spiral bound with a ribbon, because they fit in my bag, tied up so the pages don’t get runkled up, and so you can safely tuck things into them… bits of knitting, fabric, leaflets, photos). I opened them at random, then if it was just a page of twaddle, turned to the next page. I put them all together and took a few photos that I post here. So… is it a waste of a blog post? A bit navel-contemplating? Self-absorbed and selfish? For you, esteemed reader, maybe. For me, MOST interesting… shadows, sheds and secret exits? Freud and shirt collars and confessions? Oh yes. I’ll be doing this again, but next time, I may just do it for myself.