More, Different and Better

The Rootstein Hopkins drawing exhibition at Morley College.

I like it when a well turned phrase shows up in our generally bad tempered national debate on education, especially where it is carried out in the letters pages of the newspapers. For example, Michael Gove recently dubbed his critics “enemies of promise” (well they had called his draft national curriculum ‘Michael Gove’s pub quiz’).

“Enemies of promise” is a phrase borrowed from the title of a 1930s book by the critic Cyril Connolly, in which he comments the arts were “under a blight”. Ever thus, you might think.

As part of the arts and culture strand of Adult Learners Week 2013, I recently agreed to be one of three judges for the Rootstein Hopkins drawing exhibition at Morley College. It was hard work: 70 drawings had to be selected for inclusion from over 400 entries and winners identified. If you are in the vicinity of Lambeth North between now and 8 June, you should go and see the exhibition.
On the way in, the walls of the gallery are posted with the names of participating adult learning centres/colleges and short statements the participating learners gave on the subjects of  ‘adult education’ and ‘’why I draw’. The responses (“it’s a lifeline”, “changed my life”, “I’m finally following my dream”) are familiar testaments to the transformative power of learning and creative expression. I always think such one-liners act as a teaser for the individual life stories that lie behind the statement. My reward for the judging was an invitation to the private view, where I got to meet the learners and hear some of the life stories behind the drawings. I’d like to share three with you.

Anne Gardner is a student at SCOLA and is thrilled that two of her drawings are included in the exhibition. She told me that for her, drawing was something she had finally been able to do once her family had grown up and she’d been able to go part time at work: “when my son moved out, my drawing took over his room”. Her story is typical of the many adults for whom learning is a key element of their strategy for negotiating transition from one part of the life-course to another.

Jill Hopper is a student at City Lit whose drawing ‘Trolley’ won first prize. Jill, a working Mum with an 8 year old son, told me that she’d studied art at school but life had taken her down other paths. The City Lit course has been a way of picking up with art. Jill volunteers with the Wandle Trust, an environmental charity dedicated to restoring and maintaining the health of the River Wandle. The ‘trolley’ of Jill’s drawing is a shopping trolley pulled from the river by the trust. The drawing is made on three pages of a bible that once belonged to a WW2 serviceman, also found dumped near the river. Jill chose to make the drawing on pages from Leviticus, a book of the bible concerned closely with themes of cleanliness. The drawing therefore conveys information about environmental themes in a very direct way.

Another winner, Ann Gordon, told me she took an art class at Morley college “as therapy” when her full time job as a programmer threatened to become a bit of a problem. “I was sinking in a world of code”, she recalls, “I was even dreaming in html. For me, the drawing is definitely about giving a balance to my life. Through the drawing, I refuel in order to do the day job”.

These three learners have very different motivations: to reinvent life post-family, to find a new way of communication environmental messages, or to stop dreaming in html. But for all three, drawing has been a means for them of bringing their intelligence to bear on experience or subject matter critical to them. As (fellow judge) Professor Stephen Farthing puts it:

“Drawing is one of the three mechanisms we have at our disposal for translating time, sounds, forms, light, movement, emotions narratives, memories and ideas into comprehensible two dimensional matter. Matter that we use to remember, share and develop information”.

Connolly’s book is about his own unrealised potential as writer. Too often in recent times, supporters of arts education (and in particular its disciplines such as drawing, lazily dismissed as not digital enough or not C21st enough) have been labelled as ‘enemies of promise’. Those of us arguing for an education system with a richer conception of information and intelligence need to redouble our efforts to make the case for creativity at the centre, not periphery, of a curriculum that enables individuals and communities to fulfil their potential.