No abstract

In 2015 the (UK) National Society for Education in Art and Design (NSEAD) conducted their biggest and most comprehensive survey to date with art and design educators. Some 1,191 teachers and lecturers employed in early years to further education settings across England and Wales responded to the survey, which aimed to capture how government policy since 2010 has affected art and design education. Four key areas were examined: curriculum provision; value given to the subject within the school community; professional development opportunities; and well‐being and workload. The results are troubling, indicating a systemic marginalisation of art and design across all sectors, evident in a reduction in choice, provision and curriculum time, and evidence of falling standards in student attainment at primary to secondary transfer. We supported the NSEAD with constructing the survey and writing the report and in this article we utilise the Survey Report to fuel a broader discussion about our concerns regarding the demise of art and design education. Value is identified as an essential theme and we posit that our subject, largely due to neoliberalist policy, is currently perceived as a ‘bimbo’: attractive, but unintelligent and frivolous. In this article we pay particular attention to the value of art and design education from a political perspective, challenging narrow government agendas.

Since 2017 I have examined the impact of shifting professional practices demonstrated by students of an Artist Teacher MA programme at an English university. Students repeatedly discuss the transformative nature of the course, and through an impact case study I have interrogated the conditions which enable profound changes to occur. Emerging findings indicate that pedagogies of uncertainty enacted within an inclusive community foster students' experiences of visibility, being heard and valued professionally. This resulting pedagogic context encourages students to take risks in a safe environment and supports them to build sustainable practices applicable to educational and artistic communities alike. In this article I argue that pedagogic conditions which enable these ways of being are just as crucial now, as we live through an extraordinary global crisis. I engaged in an autoethnographic analysis of how findings from the artist teacher impact case study can inform my current working conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through reflexive journaling and art practice I documented my experiences of transferring face-to-face content to remote learning platforms. In the process I consider what can be learnt from established artist teacher practices, communities and the values that underpin them whilst I support an online teaching and learning community. Crucially I am concerned with how the opportunities and challenges afforded through remote learning shape my professional practices, and the extent to which pedagogies of uncertainty evident in the artist teacher impact case study are borne out through remote working.

Marginalisation of the visual arts resulting from the marketisation of education impacts young people's access to and interaction with culture on a global stage. In England this educational disruption is characterised by inconsistent access to arts‐based curricula and democratic pedagogies, where those from lower socio‐economic backgrounds are at risk of neglect. Influenced by this political malaise, I conducted microethnographic research examining how artist workshops shape the cultural interactions of children aged 11 and 12. The research aimed to provide new opportunities for participants living and studying in an area of deprivation in a South of England city with uneven access to broad cultural experiences. Situated in a contemporary art gallery over a two‐week period, the study interrogates how environmental factors affect children's development from a sociocultural perspective. By analysing conversations and art production, children's meaning‐making formations are revealed. Findings indicate that values underpinning the research partnership and performed by the artist are paramount in shaping development. In turn participants perceive themselves as becoming artists where the reproduction of social practices generates new knowledge and identities. Environmental factors disrupt participants’ experiences of pedagogy exposing power and control at the heart of the English education system. However, with new‐found agency emerges a redistribution of power performed through dialogue between participants and the cultural environment, findings which indicate values and practices salient beyond Britain.

This article outlines an exploration into the development of visual perception through analysing the process of taking photographs of the mundane as small‐scale research. A preoccupation with social construction of the visual lies at the heart of the investigation by correlating the perceptive process to Mitchell's (2002) counter thesis for visual study and Sontag's (1979) analysis of the function of photography in society. Why visual perception is a fundamental human activity is considered and so positioned as a vital component of art education. Pedagogical implications for teaching visual perception and expertise to others are subsequently revealed, including the appropriate selection of media to construct and communicate meaning through an exploration of subject‐matter, and the need to consider symbiotic processes which enable the construction and refinement of perception and meaning for maker and audience. How this contributes to a debate about the purpose of an art education is tentatively examined in the light of current educational policy and ideology.