Campaign For Slow Art
As I look through my rose tinted spectacles, I think I remember that when I
began going into schools in the mid eighties (before the National Curriculum)
there was a need for artists to come in and do something polished. Schools,
especially primary schools, seemed more relaxed in those days – even the
teachers dressed in a more relaxed way. (The office clothing and power dressing
didn’t really appear until the nineties).
It seemed that I was entering environments where the learning was slower than in
the artistic world that I inhabited. The artist came in to the school and showed
how to ‘raise the game’: to bring skills and to work with the skills in the
school to create ‘wonderful’ performances. If you like, schools seemed places of
process and the artist came in to demonstrate how to create a high quality
product and within a short period of time.
For the recent Where Do Ideas Take Us? Project that I was involved in for
Creative Partnerships London North, the two artists that I was working with and
myself took the concept of the title and applied it to our very process,
allowing us to explore the question posed by the theme. That is, we didn’t go
into the school to do a project that gave the answer to the project title.
Instead, we allowed ourselves to be taken from one idea to the next by the flow
of the moment. The sessions therefore had a wonderful gentle feel to them as
activities morphed into other activities, and usually within a context of a few
ideas (or activities) happening at the same time.
This got me thinking…. I wonder if we are in a time now when the role of the
artist coming into school is different to how I have described my eighties’
experience. Very few schools are as relaxed as they used to be; very little of
education seems to have as much time for play and experimentation. If you like,
schools have become more product orientated, namely, in the meeting of targets,
good grades and ultimately league table positions. If this indeed is the case,
then perhaps there is a need for today’s artist to bring in the slower (and not
so sexy) process skills into schools. Perhaps teachers now don’t need artists
coming into schools to show how to quickly create quality product – after all,
they can go on a course for that. Perhaps what is needed is for artists to bring
their actual creative process into schools to show how they journey from one
idea to the next, reflecting on what they have done and considering what they
might do subsequently, as their art-piece gradually evolves. Perhaps teachers
now are in more need to be shown how to slow down and to simply trust the moment
and have faith in the natural evolution and progress of ideas. In short, perhaps
every project should embed the concept of 'Where Do Ideas Take Us?' into their
very process....
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