My grandparents brought me to this country aged 7 as a social migrant and to protect my mother from a terrorizing father. Adopted with my brother aged 10 into a strict yet loving family of 8 that I struggled to accept, I left home for the final time aged 15 to make my own way in the world. The focus of my primary education was learning the English language, yet my lasting memory was the day I had my drawing of a Roman catapult displayed on the wall of our classroom – proud don’t even come close… my first exhibition! Art had become my second language…
My secondary education started in the remedial classes as they were called in those days, but again the lasting memory of those early days was a visit to Hamleys toy store in London with my parents. I came away with my first beautiful set of watercolours that kept me endlessly entertained in the evenings, painting the birds in our garden and surrounding neighbourhood. Art had become my escape… By Year 9 I had worked my way into the majority of all the top sets and with nothing further to prove, I essentially gave up on education, choosing instead to disrupt or skip lessons. Nothing held me. I lived in a fantasy world that I’d etch out onto the back covers of my exercise books. Critical to this was my forced decision to drop art at that time. I remember my art teacher well. He wrote a report prior to us taking our options praising us and commending us on our achievements. Once the reports had gone home he informed us that all the scores and comments were wrong and that we weren’t capable of taking the subject further! I can only guess at his motives, but for me my art education was over. I opted for other technical subjects… preferring to continue with Art in my own time. I never stopped making. I returned to art education aged 27.
These formative experiences have served me well as an educator. The empathy I can show to troubled teens gives access to guiding them on new paths. My troubles only subsided when I reengaged with art on a fulltime basis and the catalyst of me enlisting into teaching came about from working with a group of youths shortly after completing my BA. I’m not claiming I’m better or worse than you. Teaching has to have soul.
My education has never taught me how to make money from my work. I guess hard graft and relentless persistence are options, but it is a break down in art education that I fail to understand? Shouldn’t education prepare for life after itself? If career options, business and money are now the key promotional tools to sell Art to the government, shouldn’t we as educators be building a client base for our pupils to be working with? Giving them real life experiences? Finding commissions for them to produce for real consumers in offices, hospitals etc. The best work I have seen produced is when a group of my Year 9’s developed a set of work for a nursing home looking after Alzheimer sufferers. The work that was presented was used in therapy sessions to aid memory recall. (I may exemplar blog this at some stage). Pupils met with the client prior to making and worked with a specific brief. They made the work for others and benefitted enormously from the experience – they worked as professional artists…
