It’s MA Art Practice and Education. That’s the tricky bit. For the end of the course I am supposed to link my art practice to education in some way. Using 2500 words. Not too many. I’m sure I’ll cope. The problem is that because most of the education I do is in a primary school, it is mostly inappropriate to link my work to what the children are doing. As the course has progressed I have found it harder and harder to link the two. And I have become more reluctant to find a link. This art practice is MINE. It has only just occurred to me (and my tutor) that I could think of a way of ditching the primary and look at education in a more holistic, universal (that word again) kind of way. I’m looking at my work and what it might say to its audience. I suppose the fact that it has lots to do with children and parents and how society views parenting might be an angle to pursue. Also the fact I have a chance to effect the opinions of training teachers might be too (although what I say when perched on my soapbox may not have any effect at all). But can I just look at my work, in solitude, and presume it has the capacity to educate, just by being regarded at all? Can I use the participatory/ performance angle of what goes on in my shed? Or when I make recordings? Does Art as a whole, with a capital A, have the capacity to educate? If we say yes, then do we run the risk of limiting other capacities? If we say no, then are we doing it a disservice?
Shall we just leave the answer a grey but knowledgeable “It depends” then?