Further education is known as the Cinderella of the education world, the invisible sector (Anderton 2023). Funding has been consistently eroded for the past 20 plus years and yet committed teachers work with a belief in the transformative effects of education for some of the most disadvantaged and marginalised young people in the UK.
Teaching art within a system, which seemingly places emphasis on financial and numerical targets over and above the care and attention of staff and students, feels jarring. Where does this leave art and design education; an already marginalised subject, which is much needed as a creative outlet for young people?
Through art practice I choose to bring attention to ‘gap spaces, and the “in-between” as sites of resistance and transgression’ (Strauss 2021: 142). The work explores overlooked spaces of imagination, wilderness and open bodies of water as a counter point to the concrete, steel and broken spaces of the institution. The performative and embodied nature of my practice within landscape and water are present, but so too are the disembodied and fragmented, the jarring, discomforting and glitching, the task, the spreadsheet, and the results driven nature of state education. My art practice explores themes and pedagogies of care, resistance and hope; and juxtaposes these against the backdrop of art education.
Through art practice I choose to bring attention to ‘gap spaces, and the “in-between” as sites of resistance and transgression’ (Strauss 2021: 142). The work explores overlooked spaces of imagination, wilderness and open bodies of water as a counter point to the concrete, steel and broken spaces of the institution. The performative and embodied nature of my practice within landscape and water are present, but so too are the disembodied and fragmented, the jarring, discomforting and glitching, the task, the spreadsheet, and the results driven nature of state education. My art practice explores themes and pedagogies of care, resistance and hope; and juxtaposes these against the backdrop of art education.