Tuesday 3 January 2012

What I learnt in 2011: When life gives you lemons, collaborate and make rigourous and innovative arts education provision

Things are tough and getting tougher. This will be of absolutely no surprise to anyone - cuts are being imposed in all areas of arts-based education (thanks to The Guardian you can now follow @Culture_Cuts on Twitter, just to keep up with all this slashing) There is also a massive cloud of uncertainty and pessimism around the formal education sector; from the increase in tuition fees to reform of the National Curriculum many teachers and practitioners seem to be feeling hesitant, brow-beaten and uncertain.

But I say, to everyone in arts education (myself included) feeling the pinch - suck it up, redouble your rigour and see the opportunities inherent in this economic downturn.

Use the opportunity of fiercer funding competition to generate quality research/evaluation around your work. Prove it is vital (if you can't? Look to improving it then) We should be reevaluating our own aims and indeed constantly questioning the value and role of arts education itself. The positive results of quality arts ed. are often extremely qualitative, frequently open-ended and long-term and nearly always hard to easily record.
Arts education research has never been theoretical but now more than ever there's a need for practitioners and researchers to be sharing skills, ideas and building a basis for advocacy. With the paradigm of higher education and academic research changing, initiatives like Dougald Hine's University Project suggest new ways research, intellectual rigour and knowledge-sharing can be approached.

No one can afford to be an island any more. We should be asking where our aims cross over with other organisations, schools, charities and local authorities. If we are truely committed to providing the best, the most accessible and the most sustainable arts education to our communities, and to doing this effectively with limited resources, then increased partnerships and skill-sharing is surely the way forward. STEP and it's annual festival based in the vibrant Borough of Southwark is a prime example of this happening within an arts education community, having just completed it's largest and longest festival to date. Alternatively a recent article in TESpro highlighted how new and money-saving approaches to CPD at Poole Grammar School, Dorset facilitated skills-sharing and innovation between teachers. Elsewhere RSC's Learning and Performance Network provides an exciting model for practice-sharing between schools and arts organisations while the theatre's links with The University of Warwick CAPITAL Centre is another great example of cross-organisational research and practice-sharing.

I am entering 2012 with renewed commitment and excitement about the opportunities for sustaining and developing quality arts education provision, I hope you are too :D