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Neil Rathmell explores the professional development of artists working with the education sector.

Artist in school

More and more freelance artists earn at least a part of their income from work in schools. For most, it is just one of the things they do to earn a living. For some, it represents a significant part of their earnings. For a few, it’s what they do. This begs a number of questions. What’s in it (apart from the money) for the artists? What’s in it (that makes it worth the money) for the schools? What’s in it (apart from being a change from the usual lessons) for the pupils?

Artists have been working in schools for a long time, but recent initiatives have led to a significant increase in demand, not just from Creative Partnerships and Cultural Hubs, but also as a result of the popularity of the arts in the government’s specialist schools programme. Over 400 schools, more than 1 in 10 of all secondary schools, now have an arts specialism.

So if working in schools (and participatory arts in general) is one way for artists to apply their creative skills, one element in a creative career, why do most universities pay so little attention to it? With few exceptions, students on arts degree courses are given little or no opportunity to explore their own creative practice in wider social and cultural contexts or to challenge themselves by opening their practice up to wider participation.

It’s not just that demand outstrips supply, but that the arts profession itself is not equipped to meet the demand or even aware of the opportunities. What’s in it for artists is not just the money but a way of applying their skills and developing their practice. “I have been particularly surprised at how working in this participatory way has informed my own artistic practice through experimenting with new mediums, and in ways I had not considered,” commented one of the young artists taking part in the ‘Creative Apprentices’ training programme which is run by aliss in the West Midlands. This programme is funded by Creative Partnerships and supported by the Specialist Schools & Academies Trust. It began in the Black Country, where Creative Partnerships struggled at first to meet the demand for artists to work in their schools, but is now running as a regional pilot across the whole of the West Midlands.

The programme combines four days of training with another four days of school placements. An induction day sets the scene for the 16 artists selected for each intake in the two-year pilot. Each artist is then placed in a school under the guidance of an experienced member of staff for a series of half-day visits. Two further days of training give the artists a chance to reflect on their observations and prepare for the second phase of their placements, when they work on a project of their own devising with a group of pupils. On the last day, each artist gives a presentation to the other ‘apprentices’ highlighting what they have learned during the course of the programme.

What’s in it for schools is what drives Creative Apprentices. Or, to put it another way, this is employer-led training. Sixteen schools in the West Midlands agreed to take part in the pilot, some of them schools with specialist arts status, some working with Creative Partnerships. There are primary schools, secondary schools, special schools, a nursery and a pupil referral unit.

As well as taking responsibility for their apprentices, teachers from these schools helped to devise a framework which identifies the skills and qualities they look for in the artists they employ. This framework helps the apprentices set their own learning objectives and provides a common basis for assessment.

The demand for artists able to apply their creative skills to the business of teaching and learning will grow again from September 2008 when schools and colleges begin to teach the new Creative & Media Diploma. This too is employer-led, the employer in this case being the arts sector. The Sector Skills Councils, with Skillset taking the lead, have played a key role in designing a course which is all about applying creative skills in real situations. Artists from the first Creative Apprentices intake have already been offered work by schools involved in this and other initiatives.

That leaves the pupils. What’s in it for them will depend on the readiness of arts professionals to meet the demand from schools and that, in turn, will depend on the willingness of all those involved – higher education, schools and arts professionals – to turn what is too often seen as casual employment into an area of work with its own professional standards, where everyone knows what’s in it for them and what it’s worth.

Neil Rathmell is Co-Director of aliss, the Artists & Learning Information & Support Service for the West Midlands. The Creative Apprentices regional pilot is co-ordinated by Nicky Boden.
w: http://www.aliss.org.uk

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