Where are we now?

A personal viewpoint from the chalk face.

The climate and context for art and design is changing rapidly. Not just in the UK, but on the world stage as well. In this paper, I will set out what I believe are the forces and perceptions driving this change and what Impact this is having on art and design education.

If we start from the perception society has towards the subject, we may recognise a number of key beliefs. Namely, that the arts are important, but not essential. We know that we are successful in the arts and our artists and designers are world class. We know that because they are successful and defined as celebrities. They are celebrated in the media and through exhibitions in our galleries and on TV. But despite this, the visual arts are increasingly seen as more important to establishing a rich leisure experience for later life, than as a future career.

We know that the UK has produced many of the greatest visual artists, craftspeople and designers over the last 120 Years. Much of this built on successful outcomes of the industrial revolution, Victorian innovation and outcomes of technological development and 1960s creativity. UK designers have been at the forefront of engineering and design innovation, although in retrospect we may judge much of this historical legacy to be at the expense of other nations and members of the Commonwealth or former Empire. Similarly the output from UK creative designers has shaped the current form of graphical design, broadcast media and advertising throughout the world. The same is also true of web and games design. All of which are products of our incredible (although rather undefinable) art college system. Or is it incredible?

Presently, the political climate has subtly changed again and in a recession, people stick to what they know will bring prosperity and success. There is less stomach for the creative economy and the kind of risky development this might require. When parents are thinking about a career for their children, they are not thinking of a career in the creative and media industries other than perhaps the performing arts, fuelled as it is at the moment by the 'X factor' culture of success without a qualification or years of hard work. There is no belief in the 10,000 hour rule for hard work and success, such as we find in sports and classical art forms. The visual arts remain largely misunderstood and continue to be perceived as a career route into the fine arts, with all the associations that come with starving in an artist's garret.

The visual arts are not well understood by society in general and this perception is driven by two fundamental misconceptions. The first misconception comes from the secondary school context, where careers in the creative and design industries are mistakenly seen as a progression from DT rather than art and design. Some of this undoubtedly comes from the subject referring to itself as Art. This may seem pedantic, but the meaning is all in the name. Unfortunately, as a subject, DT has done little to correct this misconception and even promotes subjects such as Graphical Products as 'Graphics' misleading students into thinking this provides a direct route into graphic design, which is not really true. We all know, entry to graphic ensign is overwhelmingly via A level art and design, through a college of art and design. The same is also true for Textiles Technology. Please don't get me wrong. I like these subjects, they are good courses but are being misrepresented and at times, not taught fully in keeping with the true spirit and principle underpinning Design Technology. Hence many students lose their career pathway.

I am going to be slightly contentious here. But would suggest the some of this misconception is a product of the art and design college system itself, which looks forward and rarely back towards the schools where their future students learnt their basic skills. The Foundation course hurdle may itself also be a further part of this problem, separating art and design colleges in the minds of the public, from the schools that feed them students, in ways that progression from other A levels directly into University courses does not. I am not suggesting we should remove the Foundation course. As a consequence of what is happening in schools, it has become even more necessary. However, much more could be done to make the link explicit between art and design in schools and the pathways through into Design in further and higher education. We need to reinstate this link in the minds of educationalists and of society.

The other misconception comes from society and the media, who always seem to portray the visual arts through the fine arts, focusing on the latest 'wacky' exhibition or waste of money purchase by an art gallery. This is not helped in the minds of the public when portrayed as an elitist subject out of touch with society, spoken by a news presenter, clearly out of their depth with such a topic. But then, is this really news?

The situation in schools also shares some of these characteristics, propagated by a belief that we are so deficient in our teaching of the basics, that we must stop everything else and just focus on this, until we can hold our head up high in world league tables. This perception is widely acknowledged as our number one educational priority. It ignores the cultural context of other countries. It ignores the differences on subject emphasis and educational values placed on different education systems around the world. It ignores the very strength that has made our education system one of the exemplars of the world; not always in all of our schools, but certainly our education vision, the quality of educational thinking and teacher guidance. Teachers from around the world want to work in UK schools, to learn the pedagogy and then return to their own country, taking back these principles of outstanding practice they have gained while working here.

The problem with this situation, is that we have lost sight of what we have. We are so busy focusing on actions around our perceived deficiencies, we are doing too little to retain our strengths. We are throwing the baby out with the proverbial bathwater.

In art and design at the moment, we have primary teachers with less training in the visual arts than any time in the last 60 years. The average training time in teaching art and design is currently about 3.5 hours in total as part of a 3 year degree or 1 year Graduate programme. This just isn't enough to prepare anyone to teach a subject in which they have too little skills, experience or confidence.

In secondary schools, we are seeing a reduction in numbers opting for art and design for two reasons. Firstly, schools have reduced the options and offer, to limit the numbers who can take art and design and increase the number who take EBacc subjects. This may enhance their Ofsted report, but shows contempt for the interests and career aspirations of our society and young people themselves. Secondly, numbers are reducing because society is sending out messages telling young people that the arts don't matter, they are not a route to success or a prosperous career.

None of this is helped by the consequences of these actions and misconceptions. These actions not only reduce the offer or availability of such courses to students, but the reduction in teacher numbers is reducing the breadth of skills and specialist experience within the schools themselves.

 

What is often not understood, is that art and design is a very diverse subject made up from hundreds of specialised courses in higher education that cover all the crafts, all areas of design, digital and media industry courses, as well as fine arts, film, TV, advertising, architecture and many more. Teachers of art and design are therefore bound to be specialists and the fewer teachers there are in a school, the more limited the specialist experience amongst the teaching team. As art and design departments are made smaller, the breadth of the team also narrows. When you add this situation to the reduction by 50% of course places in Universities offering post graduate education training in art and design, we can see a dangerous pattern emerging. Then add in a new draft curriculum that fails to set out the true breadth of the subject, or fails to address the contemporary curriculum, associated specialist areas of study and progression pathways, or fails to celebrate the wealth of creative and cultural diversity we have enjoyed for 20 years; then you have a toxic mix that will rapidly erode the quality of this subject and employment pathways.

And how will this impact on our art and design colleges? The UK has proudly boasted that it has many of the best colleges of art and design in the world for most of the last 50 years. This was achieved largely at a time when the rest of the world did not themselves offer such courses. In the last decade, countries like China, India and emerging nations, all cultures without a strong recent visual design heritage have recognised the value of a creative economy and invested in the development of higher education programmes. Just at a time when our present Government seems oblivious to the value of the creative, media and design industries, or to the creative, cultural and economic health of the nation. But just maybe, they are not unaware. Maybe their priorities have just changed. If our creative, media and design industry companies are happy to recruit from abroad, this will not impact on the prosperity of these industries one jot. But it will slowly reduce the demand for places and the number of art and design colleges across the country. They may think that there may be some merit in losing the weaker performing colleges, particularly as this coincides with what is happening in schools through the reduction of students able to access an art and design option, or two arts options as a consequence of the EBacc and a society that devalues the arts.

Is this all happening because of a belief that the visual arts are not a way into a prosperous career? Do we still think our artists, craftspeople and designers are starving in garrets? The truth is, that for many creative and media industry graduates, their salaries may not compete with the financial industries or business. But these creative people are happy, fulfilled and productive, working within world class industries. The Government may think that they are not successful in gaining employment compared to other graduates. But Higher Education records show this is not true. In 2012, Arts and Design graduates were more successful than medicine, or technology and engineering graduates. In fact, in sheer numbers of graduates moving into work in the relevant industries, they outperformed nearly every other group. The problem is, they mostly move into small companies or are self-employed until they establish themselves within their industry.

 

All of this is immensely worrying.

It worries me that society doesn't care where its designers come from and the cultural characteristics of our society are being changed.

It worries me that our creative, media and design industries feel no commitment to our own education system and the health of our once world class art and design college system.

It worries me that society no longer recognises that art and design has long been one of the jewels in the crown of the UK education system, but is now misunderstood and devalued by society.

It worries me that school senior leaders don't have the expectations for our subject they once had. They want examination results, they want the value added scores and targets to be met, but they don't seem to care about the real cost to our society of closing down the breadth of curriculum and the richness of learning opportunities we have historically provided for our brightest, most creative, sometimes more difficult and risk-taking young people. We celebrate their achievements in the papers and on our screens when they are successful, but we are increasingly blind to the dwindling numbers of young people from our schools at the heart of the creative, media and design industries. These are exactly those individuals, who need the opportunity through our education system to become the next generation of creative individuals who will light up our world and continue to make this country a creative world leader. If we ask, "who will be the next generation of young creatives who will shape our world"?  We now increasingly will have to say that they will probably come from overseas.

 

 

Ged Gast. 2013