Sophie Ashdown

DRAFT – this will be refined

I attended (online) the first Monday lecture of the term. It was an informal discussion between Anna Cutler and Jess Thom.

Here are the rough notes I took from the session. *I will put these into a better format shortly*

Anna Cutler – inaugural director of learning at Tate Galleries.  Launching a book called “Held by a Thread” – role of art in education.

Anna and Jess met at the Tate when they got stuck in a life together.  Anna understood what it means to be in a wheelchair.

Anna reads an excerpt from the book. She wrote the book after experiencing teachers not being able to find enough time to do artistic activities and lessons at the school.  Either because of lack of money, experience, time, opportunity.

Social, emotional, intellectual, physical aspects of making art.

Art is valuable.  Art in a school environment is crucial to

Example of a class of 12 year olds who didn’t know how to use scissors.

Teachers are exhausted trying to do everything that is expected

Art requires you to be emotional

The role of education is to nurture and help someone to know what they enjoy, what they’re good at, what stretches their minds and wellbeing.  Understanding their strengths, not where they fit in the hierarchy.  Children need to understand what failure is to learn.

We don’t need to wait until children become adults before we see them as valuable

Most powerful thing that teachers can do in a classroom is say “we” instead of “I” and “you”

What she would like to see changed:

• Government to give permission to schools to be creative
• Less fear in schools and education
• Less assessment
• Teachers to be re-professionalised, to understand them better
• Cross-generational learning

Jess Thom – successful artist responding to living with Tourette’s syndrome

Focus looks different for different people

Here to celebrate Anna’s new book

Jess did not realise until she was older that being an artist could be an actual job.

When younger, Jess felt that the more unexpected and unusual her movements and sounds were, the less she was welcomed into artistic spaces.  She organised others to “take over” the Tate to make lots of noise.

At school, Jess was sidelined and “kept quiet” by giving her art activities to do instead of the lessons that other children were doing.  They didn’t realise that she could do so much more.

School was the place where she learned that she was different, that she did things in an unexpected way.

Art is always engaging in multiple ways.

There are things that all of us can do to help change:

Artists can share and communicate with others

Support people to discover things about themselves.  It’s not that they don’t fit in, it’s that they should be allowed to imagine and have the courage to do new things

Often we think that our environment is the reason for our limitations