From an artist’s perspective — Breaking Boundaries

Everyone Is An Artist, led by Eden Court, has supported nine small, rural schools in the North West Highlands to use arts-based approaches to support the teaching of Health and Wellbeing and Social Studies curriculum areas. By small, we mean maybe only eight children in the whole school. By rural, we mean over two hours away from Inverness by car. A team of teaching artists, specialising in film-making and drama, have worked alongside teachers to upskill and build confidence in order to embed film and drama-based creative activities into the curriculum and the classroom. I am a drama specialist and have thoroughly enjoyed building relationships with the teachers and the children over the past two years.

I had a wonderful moment during a school visit, where the teachers were leading on the topic of heritage and using drama as a way to investigate it. The session focused on the heritage of their school, and the teachers made each classroom into a different time zone of the school’s past. The students had to follow a piece of string, as if the tapestry of the fates had unravelled, allowing them to ​‘time travel’. Each thread led to a time zone where they would meet a ​‘teacher in role’ from a particular era of the school’s history. The school buzzed with excitement and laughter, as they found their teachers dressed up in moustaches and Victorian outfits or even travelling into the future. I couldn’t decide whether the students were having the most fun or whether it was the teachers. It felt like a significant and powerful moment, where everybody was exploring the topic together, learning from each other, being creative, imaginative and most importantly, experiencing joy. 

There is sometimes controversy around the word ​‘fun’ in a school setting, but the Everyone Is An Artist project has allowed me to appreciate the level of joy that is needed for learning in schools. How necessary it is to break the barriers that can sometimes form between teachers and young people, allowing a different type of learning where teachers become participants as much as the young people, and they work together rather than the adults just ​‘telling’ them. 

The schools in this programme operate with a very different dynamic to most UK primary schools. The numbers are low, with most having fewer than 20 pupils, while some have as few as eight. All have composite classes with mixed year groups working together, sometimes P1‑7. This comes with obvious challenges, but I witnessed that the relationship between the teachers and the students changes when engaging in creative activity. There is instantly more familiarity; it is harder for the students to ​‘hide’ and the relationships that emerge are extremely supportive, especially when the older students guide and mentor younger ones. 

This breaking of boundaries and putting everybody on an even level allows investigation and innovation, framing lessons as ​‘we will discover things together’. This invites fun; it encourages a culture of ​‘it is fine for things not to be perfect, but we will find the answers together,’ and if there are no answers, that is fine too. It allows those moments of wonder that the young people will remember forever.