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Wherefore art thou?

Supporting art in schools, museums and galleries

First blog on the new website

Having spent several weeks designing a new website I am nearly there, I think! It's so hard to encapsulate what you want to say in a smart way that actually means something to the visitors to the site.

There is the small matter of having recently relocated to beautiful Shropshire from Birmingham and leaving a teaching post which has consumed four years of my life. However, the reasons for leaving and moving remain quite compelling. Getting back to freelance teaching opens up and frees me to return to what I love most and that is teaching art, craft and design beyond the one hour that is usually allocated each week. Having spoken with my replacement as Art Co-ordinator at my last school I was reminded of what happens when a 'non-specialist' primary teacher is given responsibility for art. Having spent four years building the profile of art within the school, instigating Arts Days, focused art projects, Arts Awards, Artsmark application, ensuring good quality equipment was made available and CPD provided for teachers to use it effectively, selecting work for art competitions and generally blowing the trumpet for the subject across social media used by the school made me realise that the new incumbent had quite a lot to do. Her first reaction was 'but I can't draw' and that reinforced my decision to leave class teaching and start providing support to other teachers and the children in school. This way I get to do what I love all day and teachers who 'can't draw' could develop ideas and skills that works around their perceived lack of both. In fact most teachers are amazingly resourceful, creative and skilful, they are just too tired, harassed or time poor to find out.

I already have fifteen years experience developing workshops and learning resources in museums and galleries across the country but having spent some time back in mainstream school the bespoke art workshop in school has risen in my priorities. If you are reading this, and would like to share some of your views and thoughts, I would love to hear from you so please contact me though the website's contact page. I'm always up for a coffee and a conversation!