In this final blog post shining a light on detail from within the recent report School Art: Where Is It? (2024), co-author Dr Joanna Fursman reflects on how contemporary art, design and craft practice is used in the secondary school art and design curriculum.
In their 2004 report, School Art: What’s in it?, Downing and Watson (2004) showed interviewees a set of eight artwork images and asked for their responses. In our interviews with art teachers for School Art: Where is it? (2024), we asked interviewees to do the same. Five of the images we used were the same as those featured in the 2004 report. Three artworks were changed, to diversify and include women identifying artists in the selection. Our list of images was not designed to be provocative, as described by Downing and Watson (2004). It was instead intended to develop a discussion around the diverse media that demonstrate the practical and conceptual complexity possible in artistic practice, 20 years on.
During our interviews, we recorded valuable commentary and expansive discussions about how artists’ practice became integrated into a project or scheme of work. We heard how teachers still feel that they need to evidence drawing and painting in their GCSE and A Level students’ portfolios, and the artists featured in their projects often reflect this. We also heard how moderating exam portfolios featuring often-used images (such as Andy Warhol) makes it easier to assess.
Justifications for using artist practice as evidence of the prioritisation of technical skills over content was therefore a key element of the discussions that came out of the interviews. In 2004, Downing and Watson questioned: to what extent do teachers’ own understanding of practice – traditional, modern and contemporary – impact the priorities of their curriculum intentions?
In 2024, in light of our interviews, we ask art teachers, how does the artist practice in your curriculum reflect the lived experience of pupils and help them to reflect on life in the 21st century? We felt encouraging this perspective in art teachers enables them to select from the full breadth of artistic practice, make connections between genres, and techniques through time to better help pupils understand how artists work and the function of art in the world.
The power of artistic practice to communicate links pertinently to our questions to art teachers about their perception of the purpose of their art and design curriculum, and encourages reflection on the importance of a curriculum to function affectively and with liveliness. We ask art teachers, how does your curriculum holistically allow pupils to know about artists and their practice? One of the seven outcomes of this question focused on pupil dialogic knowledge with social, cultural and natural environments. What happens if the expectation of pupils succeeding in knowing about and making choices about the artists they will explore in their exam portfolios, and later in their creative careers, is raised? Does this lay down the possibility for pupils who study art at GCSE and A Level to thoughtfully and carefully shape their own cultural capital?
We further ask then, when there is an opportunity to study an art curriculum where content has been designed to meet the lived experience of pupils and provide agency in art making activities, what kinds of powerful effects can this have on pupils both at the time of their studies and later in life?
Richard Billingham, Untitled, 1995
Karla Black, At Fault, 2011
Sonia Boyce, Feeling Her Way, 2022
Vincent van Gogh, Bedroom at Arles, 1889
Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991
Julie Mehetru, Other Planes of There (S.R.), 2018
David Shrigley, Terrible News, 1998
Andy Warhol, Marilyn x 100, 1962
The first blog in this series is authored by Dr Will Grant and focuses on the ‘stuff’ participants reported as the content of their curriculum and explores the experience of talking with art teachers. The second blog in this series is authored by Dr Carol Wild and examines the factors that influence the choice of art curriculum content.
About the author
Dr Joanna Fursman is Leader of the PGCE Secondary Art and Design programme at Birmingham City University. Joanna’s research and art practice examines non-normative representations of education through photography and film-making to critically explore the distinct field of pedagogy and it’s appearances in contemporary art-practice and the photographic image.
School Art: Where Is It? (Re)exploring Visual Art in Secondary Schools (2024) was co-authored with Dr Will Grant, Associate Director of the School of Arts, at UWE Bristol, and Dr Carol Wild, Leader of the PGCE Secondary Art and Design programme at the Institute of Education, UCL.
Image
Billy McGregor, Balls in Stools (Red & Blue)
References
Downing, D. & Watson, R. (2004) School Art: What’s In It? Exploring Visual Arts in Secondary Schools. National Foundation for Education Research, Slough. Available online: nfer.ac.uk/publications/school-art-whats-in-it-exploring-visual-arts-in-secondary-schools/ (Accessed 10 April 2025).
Fursman, J., Grant, W., & Wild, C. (2024) School Art: Where Is It? (Re)exploring Visual Arts in Secondary Schools. National Society for Education in Art and Design, Corsham. Available online: nsead.org/resources/research-reports-and-reviews/school-art-where-is-it-2024/ (Accessed 10 April 2025).