OLIVER HERBERT

For more information visit www.unknownlearning.com.

A collaborative project between Oliver Herbert and Jose Campos.

Unknown Learning is a project from Jose Campos and Oliver Herbert.

The Covid-19 pandemic which closed schools for the majority of students this year has forced us to relocate our practice as artist teachers and learners. Bedrooms, kitchen tables, living room side tables and garden deckchairs replace the art studio. School uniform and suits are swapped for leisure wear and pyjamas. Art materials are reduced down to half empty biros and nubs of pencils found at the bottom of a kitchen drawer.

There is no doubt that the Covid-19 pandemic has been a global and national tragedy which has shone a light on shortcomings in our government, social inequality and huge funding chasms in the NHS and social care.

Scrolling through Instagram or watching TV there seems to be a newfound appreciation in the British psyche for the arts. Between the news of daily death tolls and rhetoric enthused government briefings many of my friends are reaching for art making as a way of rationalising this inconceivable situation.  Grayson Perry’s Art Club [1] and Kirsty Allsop’s Keep Crafting and Carry On [2] would have us believe that making art is a way out of it all. The reality for our students is somewhat different.

We work in inner city comprehensive academies in South East London many of our students live in cramped accommodation without access to IT equipment or an internet connection making ‘online learning’ close to impossible. This coupled with working parents, limited food supplies and the anxiety caused by the situation have provided significant barriers to art making.

Through the use of Microsoft Teams a unified business communication and collaboration platform that combines chat, videos, file storage and application integration we have been told to ‘teach remotely’.  We have set projects and feedback to young people on their artistic practice. Studio crits, gallery visits, sharing of skills and feedback on sketchbooks now exist within the 13 inch screen of our laptops within the purple interface of Microsoft Teams. Uploaded smartphone pictures of works (sometimes with SnapChat filters) are now the basis for conversations about studio practice. A new collaboration has emerged of artist, teacher, Microsoft Teams and learner.

The framework for dialogue has taken on a new form which at times feels more native to the students. The formalities of the physical space of the classroom have dissolved into a world of memes, gifs and emojis. Many teachers panicked about the open forum of the chatroom feature of Teams for ‘safeguarding concerns’ but what has emerged is a democratic space where equal access is provided to font size and airtime.

What has taken place is a rapid shift in paradigm and power. The traditional space of the art classroom and wider school environment can seem mutually parasitic. The teacher demanding a volume of physical work to be produced in order to meet assessment objectives and performance targets. The student demanding guidance and ‘ideas’ due to continued academic pressure in an industrialised market driven education system.

The pandemic has provided distance, independence and resilience for artist teachers and learners. Where lack of access to materials, space and time has disabled students as educators we need to pay attention to what’s potentially emerged as a more critical pedagogic practice with space for empowerment for artist teacher and learner. Perhaps artist teachers and learners will feel liberated by new spaces, places and timescales for making?

Is the art classroom is often portrayed in an almost folkloric way as a creative refuge for students in the UK education system. Is it? Was it? If not why not? Is there a way we can provide this given our new perspective? So what, now what?

Unknown Learning is a project to interrogate this new way of working as artist teachers. The project will present new works produced during the pandemic by artist teachers Oliver Herbert and Jose Campos. The works are a meditation on the new realities of the practice of an artist teacher and learner in 2020. The project will also provide a forum for discussion around a new way of learning in Art and Design pedagogy.

[1] Greyson Perry’s Art Club, Swan Films, Channel 4, 27th April 2020

[2] Kirsty Allsop Keep Crafting and Carry On, Raise the roof productions, Channel 4, 21st April, 2020