Review of Cultural Education -DCMS
Crafts Council response.
The Crafts Council submitted a response to Darren Henley’s Review of Cultural Education, which was commissioned by the DCMS following his Review of Music Education. Read our response below.
1) Understanding the value of cultural education
How would you define cultural education?
The Crafts Council welcomes the Government’s initiative to examine cultural education through a second Henley Review. We strongly support the premise that cultural institutions make important contributions to education and that public funds should be used, in the first instance, to ensure that every child has a well-rounded cultural education.
Whilst craft education sits within cultural education more broadly, craft practice, with the development of practical skills and understanding of materials that it entails, has distinct learning benefits, both within school and beyond.
Our comments on the review are specific to craft and its relationship to education.
Craft teaching has a place within formal educational settings. The Crafts Council is committed to reinforcing the importance of craft in schools and to the reintroduction of craft to the curriculum, as an independent statutory subject with distinct learning benefits.
The Crafts Council’s programme Firing-Up is an exemplar project of how this could work effectively – a replicable, scalable national programme that aims to reinvigorate ceramics teaching across the country working with Higher Education Institutes, their technicians, tutors and pupils to reintroduce pupils working with clay and getting school kilns taken out of mothballs and refired. The programme uses a ‘cluster’ model constructed around the ceramics departments within partner Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) working with five secondary schools and local professional craft makers to show ceramics as a viable career, at the same time giving teachers the skills to teach craft confidently and increasing the engagement between schools and HEIs.
Craft education also has a place beyond the classroom and the Crafts Council’s programme Craft Club uses the skills of the local community through the WI to teach young people yarn skills, engaging boys alongside girls through projects such as knitted graffiti and reinforcing intergenerational contact and a sense of community.
Other craft programmes have been successful in engaging hard-to-reach learners and have resulted in job creation. For example, the Xtravert programme, set up in 2009 and funded through the European Social Fund, is a training programme to help young people in the South West of England, who are not in education, employment or training to develop carpentry and business skills. With an emphasis on craftsmanship the programme provides young people with the chance to build new skills and begin a career for themselves.
What is the value of Cultural Education and how do you measure this value?
Craft practice encourages creative thinking and innovative learning; research shows that developing haptic skills aids cognitive development (Benefits to the Learner of 21st Century Craft, Nicholas Houghton (2005) London: Crafts Council).
Craft skills provide children with a firmer grasp of the 3-D world, allowing young people to experience how the world works in practice, to gain an understanding of materials and processes and to make informed judgments about abstract concepts. Craft learning has the capacity to aid cognitive development and fosters a range of transferable skills. This can engender important cross-curricular learning benefits and feed into a number of other disciplines, including STEM subjects. Craft practice can contribute to well-being and learners’ sense of personal agency as well as creating links between home and school. It has significant spill-over effects; the problem-solving skills, practical skills and materials knowledge developed through craft practice feed into a range of subjects including STEM subjects and professions such as engineering, software design and medicine. See Crafts Council Making Value research.
In schools, engagement with materials and the development of associated skills can inform other areas of the curriculum. This is one of the key principles of the Crafts Council’s programme Firing-Up, which acts as a vehicle for cross-curricular learning, forging links with other subjects and involving staff. In the case of science for example, observing firing processes and glazes on clay can assist understandings of chemical changes in everyday situations.
Looking beyond the classroom, craft can facilitate the inclusion of hard-to-reach learners. For example, in the British Ceramics Biennial, the Graffiti*d project, profiled in recent Crafts Council research, saw a group of 13-16 year old boys working with ceramicist Cj O’Neill to develop public graffiti pieces. The boys, who were excluded from school, used the graffiti to transform ceramic plates into installations which commented on the closure of the Ainsley Pottery in Stoke-on-Trent. In the process, they gained a voice on local issues within their community through media coverage, whilst developing pride in their work and enthusiasm for work opportunities in the creative industries.
The Graffiti*d project is just one example of craft’s well-being potential which is examined in Craft and Wellbeing, a recent briefing note from the Crafts Council. The briefing argues that developing craft skills can build the confidence that strengthens social interaction and ultimately well-being and cites research which suggests that social connectedness is perhaps the single most important factor in distinguishing happy people from those who are merely ‘getting by.’
The value of craft education is also in its contribution to the contemporary craft sector, which is part of a vibrant cultural and creative sector in the UK that generated 5.6% of the UK’s GVA in 2008 (source: DCMS). Promoting the value of craft to the learner in schools contributes towards the development of the next generation of makers and audiences for craft as well as those who become designers, architects and artists. The enormous popularity of craft is demonstrated through the Taking Part research, which showed that 18 per cent of the UK adult population took part in a craft activity in 2009/10. (Taking Part: England’s Survey of Culture, Leisure and Sport, an ongoing survey originally commissioned by DCMS/ACE/SE/MLA in 2005).
Craft graduates have important technical and entrepreneurial skills. Recent research by the Crafts Council Crafting Futures, commissioned as part of the wider Creative Graduates, Creative Futures survey, found that craft graduates are adept at working independently in the landscape of micro-businesses and freelance work that characterises the craft sector. The research also showed that craft graduates are exceptionally socially mobile with a high percentage stating that they were the first family member to enter HE and with no difference in their success after graduation compared to those from more privileged backgrounds.
Finally, the craft sector has spill-over effects into a range of creative industries and beyond. The recent Crafts Council briefing note, Craft and the Digital examines this in the context of technology, showing how makers are harnessing digital tools ranging from rapid prototyping and Quick Response (QR) codes to Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) and augmented reality.
What cultural education do you think a child should experience at each key stage?
The Crafts Council strongly believes in the promotion of balanced education in which a variety of skills are recognised and valued in the schools system. Pupils should have access to rigorous teaching in a broad range of subjects and only qualifications that meet stringent quality criteria should be offered in schools.
Underlining the importance of craft in schools and advocating the reintroduction of craft to the curriculum are major strands of Crafts Council activity.
We believe that numeracy and literacy skills should be taught in schools to Key Stage 4 and by comparison practical skills, including craft knowledge and skills should form an integral part of the National Curriculum to Key Stage 3. Whilst we do not advocate compulsory craft teaching at Key Stage 4; when craft is taught at this level it should be as an independent subject accompanied by a Programme of Study to provide proper guidance to schools – although it is possible that Programmes of Study could be more flexible and/or less prescriptive than currently understood to be planned.
The Crafts Council believes that an adequate proportion and amount of lesson time must be available for cultural subjects, and advocates a regular amount of time for practical subjects including Art and Design and Design and Technology and craft at KS3 with lessons of sufficient length to be meaningful, while accepting that the exact quantum must be the subject of discussion.
2) Delivering Cultural Education
What is it that works best about the way cultural education is currently delivered?
Craft education is most effective when it harnesses the benefits outlined above, including the development of practical skills, engagement with materials, cross curricular learning outcomes and increased learner well-being.
There are a number of successful examples of craft teaching in schools including the Crafts Council’s Firing-Up programme (see above) and Creative Catalyst, a pilot project by the Crafts Council in partnership with Creativity, Culture and Education (CCE) to give makers with an established contemporary craft practice the skills to share their creativity, practical skills and material knowledge effectively with teachers and pupils. The programme has evidenced makers effecting meaningful differences for children and young people, with impact on their creative learning, confidence, craft and communication skills.
The benefits of maker engagement in schools are also recognised in the Ofsted report Drawing Together- art, craft and design in schools [Ofsted 2005/8], in which a key recommendation was to promote opportunities for every child and teacher of the subject to have the opportunity to work in an art gallery, or with an artist, craft worker or designer as part of their cultural entitlement’.
Craft education works best when students have sufficient time and freedom to explore materials and when teachers have the requisite skills to teach craft. However, the provision of craft education in schools is currently patchy, and fragmented. And while we support the inclusion of Art and Design and/or Design and Technology, under which craft skills currently fall, as a statutory requirement in the National Curriculum for Key Stages 1-3, we strongly endorse recognition of craft as an independent subject in the curriculum with distinctive learning benefits as being the best methodology to maximise potential impact.
What is it that could or should be working better in the way that cultural education is currently delivered?
School Age
We are concerned that recent initiatives in school age education including the framework of the National Curriculum Review, the introduction of the E-Bac, recommendations in the Wolf Review and declining numbers of arts teacher training places in 2011/12, signal a renewed emphasis on a core of academic subjects and threaten the provision of practical and cultural education in schools.
Whilst we support the Government’s ambition to give greater freedom to schools and teachers and recognise that schools will still be able to teach subjects which are not statutory alongside the National Curriculum, the current situation poses a threat to cultural education and the benefits it engenders; sending a message to pupils, parents, schools and employers that implies a lower value relative to other subjects.
Without sufficient levels of quality craft education there is no demand at FE/HE for further study in this area. This combined with the cost of equipment and space means craft courses have been threatened with closure. Although it is still taught at HE level it is often as part of wider subject and therefore the deep skills required to excel in craft are not covered sufficiently. HEFCE is currently reviewing its policy on SIVS (Strategically Important and Vulnerable Subjects) and the Crafts Council would strongly argue that craft should be treated as one.
FE/HE/apprenticeships
Further down the education/training system, the Crafts Council welcomes the new Government initiative to introduce 75,000 new apprentice places by 2014/15. The apprenticeship system provides one possible pathway into the cultural sector, although it typically works well in sectors with a preponderance of large-employers and less well in sectors comprising smaller organisations. The model therefore needs to be more flexible to take into account the structures of different sectors, including the craft sector.
If we had a blank sheet of paper, what would be your view of the ideal funding and delivery structure for cultural education?
The Crafts Council welcomes the Government’s position on practical learning and the increasing recognition from business ministers of the vital social and economic contribution of practical skills, including craft. The Government has a vital role to play in translating dialogue into policy by addressing hierarchical distinctions between academic and practical learning and restoring the opportunity for skills and practical learning in schools and to the National Curriculum, encouraging the development of craft knowledge in young people and the recognition that craft is a viable, entrepreneurial career.
To harness the important learning and socio-economic benefits of craft practice, there must be adequate provision for craft teaching throughout the education system. The Crafts Council would endorse the following measures:
• Practical skills, including craft knowledge and skills should form an integral part of the National Curriculum to Key Stage 3. Whilst we do not advocate compulsory craft teaching at Key Stage 4; when craft is taught at Key Stage 4 it should be as an independent subject accompanied by a Programme of Study to provide proper guidance to schools.
• An adequate proportion and amount of lesson time must be available for cultural subjects, and the Crafts Council advocates a regular amount of time for practical subjects including Art and Design and Design and Technology and craft at KS3 with sufficiently long lessons.
• The apprenticeship and work experience model needs to be more flexible to take into account the structures of different sectors, including the craft sector.
• Increased professional training for teachers should be implemented to ensure that they can learn and pass on practical skills. Initial Teacher Training offers very little in the way of practical training in craft, art and design.
• There should be opportunities for craft makers to work in schools, providing role models and supplementing the core teaching and experience of teachers.
• Policy makers must play a role in addressing hierarchical distinctions between a core of academic subjects and cultural subjects, acknowledging the important cross-curricular benefits of cultural subjects including craft and restoring practical learning opportunities in schools. It is important that craft is seen not only as a practical subject but one which is a hybrid of practical and intellectual skills, best summed up as intelligent making.
Further thoughts
Background
1. The Crafts Council is England’s national development agency for contemporary craft. It aims to build a strong economy and infrastructure for contemporary craft, to increase and diversify the audience for contemporary craft and to champion high quality contemporary craft practice nationally and internationally.
2. As the national development agency for contemporary craft, the Crafts Council works to raise the profile of contemporary craft through critical debate and by building an evidence base that demonstrates the nature and value of craft. It supports makers’ professional development, builds the market for contemporary craft by running fairs and promoting export, and works to encourage participation and learning, promoting opportunities for interaction and informal engagement with craft.
Rosy Greenlees
Executive Director, Crafts Council
