13/01/2023
Rights of the Child
in Art and Design education
I'm sure this list isn't definitive, but while I’m no online troll I AM heartily FED UP with reading appallingly reductive online posts carving out a corner of the universe for art that excludes the majority of children. Equally, VERY sadly, I have seen some appalling practice in schools making children feel bullied or inadequate or makes their voices and intelligences invisible.
Of course, it is hard work to build a safe and calm classroom where every child’s artistic voice is enabled, but ironically, the more that children are allowed ownership of their own journey, the easier creating that learning space becomes.
I’ve been a teacher for 25 years and worked with brilliant colleagues who value/d children, their learning and their voices and I know would agree with this list.
To most art teachers and parents, this list will seen obvious but their are many still out there [politicians, school leadership teams and indeed bad teachers] that will want to argue with these rights. Sorry, we all deserve opinions, but to ignore these rights is wrong and cruel and damages children and all parts of their development.
[in no particular order]
1. A child is allowed to LOVE learning about Art and Design, and it is their teacher’s responsibility to create a learning environment that enables that to happen.
2. A child should be allowed to experiment and explore and get it wrong. Getting it wrong is a vital part of an artist’s journey. They should be praised and indeed assessed for the depth of their exploration and bravery in experimentation over and above the quality of their outcome.
3. A child deserves to see [and therefore be shown] as wide a range of stimuli as possible. They have a right to be taught that art has and is made by people ALL OVER the world, that it wasn’t just dead white men that made great art, that social and political oppression and traditions made invisible much of the great work made by women over 1000s of years. They have a right to learn how Euro-centricity and colonialism past and present have either deliberately or by ignorance edited non white voices from art-history, books, the internet and museum/gallery spaces. Equally, they also deserve to be shown the beautiful oil paintings made by European artists of the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. They have a right to enjoy the beautiful mark-making, inspiring compositions and skilful techniques of the past, but then at the same time they have a right to learn that great paintings are being created TODAY in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Bolivia and in the Philippines. They have a right to know that there were some brilliant women that were able to access the male dominated studios of the past, but also that there were millions of women that made beautiful textile work as part of their daily process whose work has been destroyed by time.
4. Children deserve to apply their own non-discriminatory beliefs to what art they look at and respond to. They have the right to choose not to look at work that they might feel is inappropriate, and they have a right to develop work without responding to work that might cause offence. Specifically, if a young person doesn’t want to work from the naked form or look at depictions of the naked form then that's OK. It’s not hard to for the teacher to find and show sculptures of the human figure that might cause less offense and drawing from the clothed figure is as nourishing and powerful as drawing from the n**e. Specifically children have a right to work in a space where they are not confronted by subjective or denigrating images unless it is to identify, discuss and respond to inappropriate imagery.
5. Children have the right to feel safe in their art classroom at all times, knowing that the leader of that learning space [usually a teacher or learning assistant] will ensure they know how to use equipment and materials safely, and that their work will be looked after carefully [if they put their name on it! (or if they don’t have the ability to do this themselves, someone will put their name on it on their behalf)]. They have a right to create work knowing that it won’t be ridiculed or unfairly criticised. The teacher/assistant’s language will always start with a 'well done' for what they have done before new targets are offered to help the student create/develop their work/ideas/skills further.
6. Anyone on the planet is entitled to identify themselves as an artist. There IS NO [or shouldn’t be] hierarchy. Artists aren’t just people who’ve been to art college or people that can use a pencil or a brush with a certain level of skill or people that work in the way that the society or teacher or parent thinks they should work. The student has a right to create work in the work that they want without their process being relegated to being ‘not art’. If Picasso could put a bicycle seat on the wall and be named [rightly or wrongly] as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, then any child has a right to do this [or their own equivalent] and identify as an artist making an artwork so long as it doesn’t insult or hurt any other living creature.
7. A child deserves access to pencils and paper, nice paint-brushes and paints. Therefore, the child has a right to work in a space where they and their peers are taught how to look after art equipment and materials, and governments have a responsibility to ensure all schools are sufficiently funded to ensure children have access to these materials.
8. Every child has the right to respond to and create their work inspired by any source without being criticised or diminished for doing so, so long as the work they create is not insulting or hurtful or dangerous to themselves or others. They have the right NOT to be accused of cultural appropriation because they make a copy of a sculpture made by an artist elsewhere on the planet [so long as they credit their source] – this is how an artist loves and learns.
9. The child has a right to learn and it is the teacher’s responsibility to ensure they develop skills and understandings regardless of their abilities. They have a right to individual feedback from their teacher enabling them to refine their skills.
10. Every child has a right to excel as an artist and at public examination. They have a right to be shown how to succeed in every sense, but also to know where they find a skill hard to acquire or realise, that there is still value in what they have done. Achieving a lower grade doesn't make them a lesser artist, unless they have been actively lazy or deliberately careless in their journeys.
11. Every child deserves to be shown how they can progress their practice beyond the classroom both as a young person and by access to further education and pursuit of Art and Design either as a career or simply an activity that they pursue in parallel with the necessities of adult life.
I’m sure this list is not definitive and I would welcome others' additions/thoughts.
