The Industrialisation of Arts Education

189 Pages·2022·5.148 MB·English

by  Samantha Broadhead

The Industrialisation of
Arts Education
Edited by
Samantha Broadhead
The Industrialisation of Arts Education
“In what ways have the demands of industry helped to shape the course of arts
education to date, and has industrialisation of the arts been beneficial towards the
student experience as we march through the fourth industrial revolution?
Broadhead has curated and contributed this anthology of perspectives, in which
academics and practitioners offer important insight into relationships between arts
education and the creative industries through discussion of the past, the present
and the potential futures.
This book opens a dialogue which could help to define a new concord between
arts education and industry for the fifth industrial revolution.”
—Matthew Clark, Lecturer in Digital Media, Sheffield Hallam University
“We need a timely reminder that arts education has much to contribute to society
and industry - perhaps now more than ever. We need to be able to take notice, to
highlight the wider good that can come from arts education while acknowledging
its positive social and economic impact. This book brings to light important
debates surrounding arts education as it stands in today’s society that need to be
examined and discussed more widely in order to help shape a better future for arts
education and its role for future generations.”
—Alistair Smith, Lecturer, School of Art and Design, Lincoln College
“A rigorous yet holistic approach to arts education is needed now more than ever.
Young people are leaving school without their creative and critical thinking skills
being developed, and often without any sense that this is missing from their lives
or that to invest in those skills and ways of thinking can be worthwhile. They miss
out, and we miss out; we're poorer for it as human beings and as a society. We need
to sit up, be brave, and radically transform our approach to education as a way to
be truly transformative. This is an important book as part of that process.”
—Paula Briggs, CEO and Creative Director of AccessArt, Cambridge
Samantha Broadhead
Editor
The Industrialisation
of Arts Education
Editor
Samantha Broadhead
Leeds Arts University
Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK
ISBN 978-3-031-05016-9 ISBN 978-3-031-05017-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05017-6
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To the compassionate Paul Whiteley and his furry or feathered friends:
Candy; Felix and Fifi; White Spot; Ivy and Mary; Single and Double;
Amelia and the two Honchos; Little Grey; Limper; Emu and Little Titch.
F
oreword
The Creative Industries are an important part of the UK economy and in
2018 it was reported that 1 in 11 jobs was within them (BEIS 2018).
Their success is linked to the way that we spend our leisure time, the
advancement of technologies and the influence of media streams of com-
munication. The skills needed to be effective as part of the workforce are
the skills that our current education system does not promote, because it
operates on an outdated curriculum model, which is built around politi-
cally driven ideology, leading to a hierarchy of subjects which devalue the
arts, despite what consecutive governments say. Creative subjects have
been side-lined in favour of the so-called core subjects that emphasise
Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) rather than
Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM), and
the development of a workforce which will be compliant.
Although early years’ curriculum models value creativity, children then
move into a school system which uses testing from a very early age and
which values numeracy and literacy above other subjects, meaning that
time for foundation subjects, including the arts, is squeezed out in many
schools. Primary schools often teach ‘to’ the Standard Assessment Tests
(SATs) in key stage 2 (the legal term for Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 of schooling
maintained in schools in England and Wales). Secondary schools reduce
option choices because the UK government and the Office for Standards
in Education (OFSTED) are pushing the EBacc (English Baccalaureate)
as a measurement of success. Some schools have become exam factories
(Coffield & Williamson 2011) and the disappearance of centralised local
authority support and being replaced by the academy system has damaged
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viii FOREWORD
shared-subject specialist pedagogy, quality assurance and the vision and
philosophy needed for a contemporary and progressive arts education.
Fewer children study the arts post-14, with subsequent impact on study
and career pathways after 16.
Many schools encourage the knowledge-rich curriculum which does
not emphasise how knowledge is used, but it is about rote learning of
factual information. The Department for Education (England) cherry
picks the research that it wants to use for curriculum models. The govern-
ment also measures the value of degrees by the amount of money that a
graduate earns a few years into their career, taking no account that many
of those in the arts are self-employed or freelancers, and does not measure
job satisfaction or the value to oneself of doing what you love to do. It
now even refers to some higher education courses as ‘low value’. The
value, of course, being purely fiscal.
What happens in schools has a domino effect on the number of people
studying creative subjects in further and higher education. Ultimately the
talent pool is narrowing and this will have an impact on the cultural sector,
where there currently is a lack of diversity in its workforce. The danger is
that only those who can afford an arts education will be able to access
highly skilled careers in the Creative Industries. This book argues for the
importance of arts education at all levels for the future growth and flour-
ishing of the sector.
To be successful and world-leading the Creative Industries need young
people and adults to become creative, articulate, problem-solvers and
innovators who can think critically and collaborate. Our current education
system with its misplaced values is not creating the diverse thinkers and
innovators that will be needed to help the Creative Industries thrive in the
post-pandemic world. The current government has deliberately sought to
silence creative thinking and actions through a toxic ‘one-solution-fits-all’
pedagogy.
This book looks at the various relationships arts education and its stu-
dents have with the industry and how those relationships are influenced by
various neoliberal policies. It also explores how educators have to recon-
cile their professional values about what constitutes a good education with
the various demands on their curricula, including the need to prepare their
students in an ethical way for creative careers.
Coffield, F. & Williamson, B. (2011). From exam factories to communi-
ties of discovery: The democratic route. London: Institute of Education,
University of London.
FOREWORD ix
Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
(2018). Industrial strategy: Creative industries sector deal. https://assets.
publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/
attachment_data/file/695097/creative-i ndustries-s ector-d eal-p rint.pdf
Accessed 08 March 2022.
Visiting Professor for Education Through Art Susan Coles
University of Sunderland
Sunderland, UK
Secretary to the All-Party
Parliamentary Group on Art, Craft,
Design in Education, London, UK
P
reFace
The origins of this book began with a symposium, ‘Aspiration and
Constraint in the Post-COVID Post-Compulsory Crisis’, on 5 October
2020 organised by the British Educational Research Association (BERA)
Special Interest Group for Post-Compulsory and Lifelong Learning. This
event opened up conversations between researchers interested in work-
place learning, vocational and higher education and arts educators.
The ensuing dialogue led to a collaborative symposium between the
University of Derby and Leeds Arts University, ‘The Industrialisation of
Arts Education’, held 16 March 2021. The multi-discipline programme
included perspectives from specialists in animation, creative writing, fash-
ion branding, music, education and employment. The contributors came
from research, practitioner and educational backgrounds and their work is
underpinned by close-to-practice research and scholarship that interro-
gates the policies and practices related to arts education and the creative
industries. The debates have now been developed as part of this
publication.
It seems that within the context of UK higher education the language
and practices of the arts have been industrialised. Within the cultural or
creative industries artists, designers and makers are described as producers.
Furthermore, due to research assessment, such as the Research Excellent
Framework, paintings, drawings, exhibitions, musical performances, film
and designs are perceived as outputs.
Each chapter of this book brings with it a particular orientation of
industry to arts education, such as teaching and learning for industry, the
impact of industry-focused policies and industrialised systemic influences.
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xii PREFACE
The extent to which arts pedagogies have been informed by the agendas
of the cultural industries as well as wider neoliberal ideologies is consid-
ered. This leads to fundamental questions about, firstly, the many, contra-
dictory functions of arts education and, secondly, the ways teaching and
learning practices have evolved.
This book would be of interest to students, researchers and academics
who are interested in arts further and higher education as well as post-16
technical and vocational education.
acknowledgements
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Christopher Graham, Dr Jill
Fernie-Clarke, Henry Gonnet, Frances Norton, Kate O’Donnell and
Leeds Arts University for the support they have given me and the chapter
authors in writing this book.
Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK Samantha Broadhead