Volume 1/January 2009

TheAspirePapers

A series of texts of, fromand inspired by ArtsEducation practice

Published by theAspireTrust Press:Liverpool andWallasey: 2009

Price: £12.50

ISBN: 978-0-9561423-0-6

Designed by: www.bobbyandsophie.co.uk

This book is the first in a seriesof texts which have emergedfrom the practice, reflectionsand networks of the work of theMerseyside based Aspire Trust,an Arts and Creative IndustriesDvelopment Agency which hasbeen working since 2002 in thefield of creative and innovativesupport for schools and communitiesin Merseyside.

TheTrust was originally set upunder the auspices of theAspiremini EducationAction Zone (EAZ)which operated withinWirral’sExcellence in Cities (EiC) programmefrom 2002 – 2004.When this fundingcame to an end andEiCwas remodelled,this provided the ideal opportunity tobuild on the work of the EAZ whilstoperating within the context of theThird Sector as a social enterprise.

TheTrust now produces a wide rangeof arts education projects engagingmany different communities and sectorpartners: visual artists working creativelywith very young children;musiciansmaking music with disengagedteenagers; and arts based researchprojects in schools. Since 2005,we havecreated employment and ContinuingProfessional Development (CPD)opportunities for over 60 artists andeducators.Whilst our work has beenlargely focused within the region andacross England, we have also extendedour work to Greece, Germany, Italy,Kenya, SouthAfrica and Uganda inrecent years.We are committed to acontinual and ongoing internationalismin all aspects of our work.

Whilst this first edition is composedof the work of theTrust’s currentDirector, Dr. Nick Owen, we envisagethat in time it will become a biannualpublication which provides a broaderplatform for other contributors whowork in the spaces and cross theboundaries between arts, education,culture and community.

Dr. Nick OwenLiverpool /WallaseyJanuary 2009

Welcome

Page 2 /Welcome

Table ofContents

Page 4 /Table of Contents

Paper 1/ Page 5 – 8Constructing an überteacher: the role of writers in schools.National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) Conference: Reporting Back, Manchester, 2008.

Paper 2/ Page 9 – 18The Puppet Question revisited: movements, models and manipulations.Festen des Sinnes 4th European Festival of Performance for Disabled People, Germany, October 2008

Paper 3/ Page 19 – 28That’s Entertainment? - how teachers represent their work with CP artists.Discourse, Power and Resistance, Manchester Metropolitan University, March 2008.

Paper 4/ Page 29 – 38Living the life in the dying school.Oxford Ethnography Conference, 2008

Paper 5/ Page 39 – 46When Herbert met Ken: understanding the 100 languages of creativityEnglish in Education / Research Journal for the National Association for the Teaching of English, 2007, Vol 41 No. 2.

Constructing anüberteacher:

Seminar Brief: What creative writersin schools might achieve is shroudedin mystery. Should writers’ work inschools guarantee improved SATSresults? Should schools expectto change the way they workto accommodate writers’ oftenimaginative approaches to readingand writing? Can wemeasure theachievement of creative writers inschools and should we even bother?What happens when the creativityof writers and the imagination ofchildren are brought together andhow does this fit in with the aimsand objectives of schools? Is theend result an arts experience, aneducational outcome, or both?Should creative writers beingenhancing, subverting or ignoringthe environment in which they sooften find themselves working?

I have two initial responses to this brief. Firstly, to askwho’s missing from this picture? Whilst this premiseexplicitly mentions writers and children, the absenceof teachers, teaching staff, parents and the myriad ofother people who compose the whole school communityis surprising. All these people are engaged in someform or another in a pedagogical relationship withchildren. By this I mean a relationship which designsstrategies for learning and so encompasses everythingfrom how children are addressed, what the content ofthat address is and the time and space for that address.It includes everything from formal lessons to informalchats in the dinner queue; from marketing slogans inthe canteen to the hanging literacy gardens of Babylonwhich seem to descend from the ceilings of mostprimary classrooms these days. These relationshipsand strategies have an important influence on thework of visiting writers and to omit them from anyconsideration of writer-pupil interaction is askingfor trouble.

My second initial response is to interrogate thesuggestion that an arts experience is not implicitlyan educational experience is a bizarre propositionin itself. Coupling this suggestion to the proposal thatwriters in schools only offer art or education is a formof false binary reductionism, which closes downthinking and minimises possibilities for connectionmaking, analysis and other forms of creativethinking. Accepting this binary opposition leadsus up a cul-de-sac very quickly if we’re not careful.

But firstly, the question of whose missingin the picture.

To use the catch-all, reification ‘school’ not onlyunderestimates the complexity of those relationshipsbetween people in school, it also misses out an essentialcontributor to those relationships - the teacher. I’m goingto argue here that missing out the teachers makesnot only for bad writing, it makes for bad art and badeducation. I’m also going to suggest that we’re dealingwith two types of teacher here - both tangible andshadow, and that when writers work most effectivelyin schools it’s when they participate in an articulated,tandem pedagogical role: that of the überteacher,composed of both tangible and shadow teachers.

Page 6 /Paper 1

the role of writers in schools.National Association of Writersin Education (NAWE) Conference,Reporting Back, Manchester, 2008.

References

Ball, S.J., (2003)The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity. J. Education Policy, Vol. 18 (2). pp. 215 - 228.

Griffiths,M. andWoolf, F., (2008)The Nottingham apprenticeship model: schools in partnership with artistsand creative practioners. British Educational Research Journal,Vol. 34(4).

Fichte, J.G. (1847)TheVocation of the Scholar, trans. Smith,W. London:The Catholic Series.

McRobbie,A. (2002)ClubsTo Companies: Notes OnThe Decline Of Political CultureIn Speeded Up CreativeWorlds. Cultural Studies,Vol. 16 (4) pp.516 - 531.

The promiscuous school with its school gates open, its children and staffready, willing and desirous of external influence, funding and profileinhabits what Ball and others refer to as a performative culture: onewhich is highly attuned to setting targets, citing indicators and demandingevaluations and measurements of everything from the water childrendrink to the clothes they wear, the staff that teach them and the writersthat aim to inspire them to write with passion, creativity and purpose.This project as a whole is one attempt to find out how writers go aboutgenerating that passion, creativity and purpose in a culture which all toofrequently is obsessed with performance, scrutiny and compliance.

The second set of findings which are emerging revolve around the rolewriters take, are given or find themselves adopting once in the messy,complex space that is the classroom.Once in the school, writers talk aboutthemselves taking on far more roles than just being a writer would suggest.Most writers acknowledge they playmany roles including enabler, facilitator,performer,director, instructor, and in some cases, rolemodel.The significanceof the role model is an interesting one particularly as it begs the questionof what kind of role it is that writers are offering either wittingly or not.But we must ask: role models for what? Louche individuals with poorbank balances?Apprentice writers?

The concept that children are ‘apprentice writers’ has been describedin earlierWriters in schools projects.More recently, the apprentice modelhas been elaborated upon - albeit within a Creative Partnerships context -in which Griffiths andWoolf (2008) describe anApprenticeship model ina CP project in Nottingham where everyone learns from everyone.

Their use of the term apprenticeship raises the question ‘who isthe apprentice?’ but also suggests that the CP model being tested inNottingham has less to do with developing creativity of children, andmore to do with importing work based values and practices into the school’slearning space.The surprise in this model is that the protagonists who areoffering a model of employability are the artists whose working practicesare more erratic and less stable than those of the teachers they work with.Griffiths highlights several other ambiguities which arise from the seeminglystraightforward process of an artist working with children in a classroomwhen she points out that children are not learning to be artists or studyinga curriculum focused on producing professionals, even though they areexpected to participate in practical, artistic activities.

The concept of the master whose working practice is to be emulated isfrail given the nature of the ‘master’s’ working practices; the ‘apprentice’is in a learning space which they have not intentionally chosen; the writeris a freelance individual who works for no one organisation but who isengaged as and when required within a volatile and unpredictable marketplace: a trainee cultural entrepreneur perhaps who, according toMcRobbie(2002) becomes his or her own enterprise, sometimes presiding over two separatecompanies at the same time… (and for whom…) social interaction is fast and fleeting,friendships need to be put on hold, or suspended on trust… when such a non-categoryof multiskilled persons is extended across a whole sector of young working people,there is a sharp sense of transience, impermanence and even solitude.

If writers are to be role models for children, then we best take care ofwhich attributes are being role modelled: transience, impermanenceand solitude would not rate highly on many teachers or parents lists.

Whilst there are questions over the nature of the role that writers per-form in the classroom, the different pedagogical moves they make whichbring about the effects they aim to inculcate aremore clearly observable.The third set of findings of this programme has been about how writersdo what they do and in doing so has uncovered several techniques, toolsand tips.

Do sustained residencies of writers in primary and secondaryschools enhance the quality of writing and literacy of pupils?

If so, what are the conditions which stimulate or preventenhanced writing and literacy?

How is this enhancement demonstrated in pupils attainment,raised educational standards and attitudes to writing?

Page 8 /Paper 1

I’m going to do this by referring to theWritingTogether project,the NAWE writers in schools research project which is exploring theeffectiveness of writers working in nine schools through a three yearprogramme funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the QCA.The aim of the programme is to address three main research questions:

The project involves the placement of writers by NAWE in nine schoolsover nine academic terms from September 2006. Initial findings haveemerged which concern the expectations of a residency; the roles thatwriters take when engaged in those residencies; what they do within aresidency to achieve their effect and why considering writers as lone,heroic figures capable of single handed transformational change ofchildren is both outdated and misguided.

Firstly, we have found that the writers residency is frequently constructedas a metaphorical space - or zone - to bring about the amplification ofacademic achievement, social assimilation and personal developmentthrough the introduction of simultaneously unreal and real actors andagents. By this, I mean that many teachers view the introduction of awriter into the classroom as a means of providing real life experienceswhich have a real purpose and are for a real audience, something theyallege is unfamiliar in the everyday classroom. The second feature of thiszonal model is that by extending time in the real, children are more likelyto cross a threshold into occupying imaginary time. By inhabiting theimaginative time that a residency is expected to provide, writing skillsare expected to be amplified and heightened in ways which can not beachieved in normal, workaday unreal school time.

Whilst many teachers suggests time spent in a zone of educationalamplification is fundamentally about contributing to academic standards,other amplifications are also expected. InAsh Primary for instance, theprogramme’s zone allows children to increase the amount of fun they’rehaving. Chris at Foxglove High School suggests that writing well is alsoimportant for increasing the emotional, intellectual and social wellbeingof children and adults. He also wanted to introduce the concept of theresidency across hisArts department as a whole - ironically envisioningthe amplification of a plain old English Department into an Englishdepartment that writes.The programme for him is also aboutdeveloping creative writing skills, risk taking, transferable skillsand deep learning opportunities.

If we add to these expected amplifications that these residencies areexpected to produce not just a great writing experiences but great artexperiences too, then we might wonder what is the programme expectednot to amplify?And what is it about that ambition and enthusiasm for aninitiative which equates to 3 full days a term for 9 terms? Is there somethingin schools constitutions that causes them to expect so much output fromsuch a modest input? Are there expectations of magic? Miracles? Or arewe seeing a breed of young teachers emerging who are required to, asBall (2003) puts it, to set aside personal beliefs and commitments and live anexistence of calculation.The new performative worker is a promiscuous self, anenterprising self, with a passion for excellence.

Some might call it art, others might call it education. I would callit the very best of teaching - scholarship - a term which one of theearly educationalists Johann Fichte wrote about in his lecture series,TheVocation of the Scholar, at the University of Jena in 1794.I’ve taken the liberty of amending it to address our 21stcentury sensibilities:

Writers in Schools: teachers of the human race?That’s about right(ing).

Eamon for example talks of restructuring the classroom, not so much inthe usual sense of rearranging the furniture, a common enough approachby many writers, but by restructuring classroommetaphors, or by movingthe classroom from the indoors to the outdoors, with all the concomitantproblems that the real life outdoors poses when children and teachersencounter it. His work offers explicit connections of global, historical andmythic proportions to local specificities, reinforced with suggestions ofsharing children’s stories with family members out of the classroom.Whilst physically constrained by the confines of the classroom, the learningtakes place in different mental, geographical, intellectual, temporal andcultural spaces. It involves making connections between those other spaces- an intellectual network of connections, nodes and web like filaments, thinand tenuous on their own but tenacious when linked; there is resiliencein this web which can absorb weighty concepts and approaches andchallenges and absorbs the weight through its complex suspensionmechanisms.The web is deceptively innocuous but powerful.

Other writers address the question of how to structure writing andparticularly the question of endings by simply avoiding the issue througha common technique of using cliff-hanger endings: unresolved, open storylines which require an audience to come back another time in the hopethat resolution will be found, climax achieved and the story closed.The cliff-hanger too is thus a zonal phenomenon - it acts to extendthe residency beyond school hours by tapping into that perhaps primaldesire for closure. Much of the evidence from popular culture howeveris that closure is impossible: stories continue to regenerate, to morph,to set out new questions, to perpetually test an audiences patience anddesire for answers.

Children’s views of the work they experienced are wide ranging andcorrespond agreeably with the co-intentions of writers and school staff.They frequently expressed their sense of pleasure and enjoyment in theprocess especially when it refers to them being able to give voice to their owndesires and interests and make decisions about their own writing, ratherthan being a ventriloquist’s puppet to some other voice.They appreciatethe chance to be expressive, creative individuals instead of secretarialcopyists.They also welcome learning new techniques, or being able toshare their work in a social context, or developing new relationshipswith writers or re-casting relationships with teachers.

Perhaps the most significant thing that writers do though is to talkdifferently. By talking differently and using new languages, they aredifferent from teachers who not only adopt each others ways of talkingwithin a school but are also invariably avoiding being drowned in aperformative language of outcomes, behaviours, results and outcomes.

The talking, writing and thinking of writers stimulates news ways ofthinking, of speaking, of writing, of listening, and of appreciating thevalue of sensual responses to the world children live in.Writers catalysemoments of surprise, shock, challenge and discomfort.They contributeto the scribbling and mark making of new traces and literary fragments,provide a starting point for perhaps future writers, but perhaps moreimportantly better human beings who can speak, read,write with authority,clarity, passion and purpose, irrespective of whether this be in fictional orfactual forms. They contribute to better communication between peoples,children and teachers - but it is a contribution, not a magical, totalising actwhich sweeps all before it.The most powerful work perhaps comes aboutwhen the writer is aligned to the work of the teacher, the musician, thedancer, the mentor, the pastoral worker, and works with those energiesand passions - not despite them and not in contradiction to them: whenthe work of the writer and the work of the teacher merge into the role Ireferred to earlier, the überteacher: an articulated, tandem form which isboth tangible and shadow.

The Scholar is destined in a peculiar manner for society:their class, more than any other, exists only through societyand for society:- it is thus their peculiar duty to cultivate thesocial talents, - an openness to receive, and a readiness tocommunicate Knowledge - in the first place and in thehighest degree…. Readiness of communication is alwaysneeded by the Scholar, for they possesses this knowledge notfor themselves but for society….Thus, so far as we have yetunfolded the idea of their vocation, the Scholar is, by virtueof it, theTeacher of the human race…(Fichte, 1847: 56-59)

The PuppetQuestionrevisited:movements,models andmanipulations

This paper is a response to aprevious paper - The PuppetQuestion: Integration of DisabledPeople into the Performing ArtsIndustries - initially presented at the2nd Fest der Sinne European Festivalof Performance for Disabled Peoplein Lingen, Germany in 2000. In thatpaper, I explored how the SocialModel of Disability had been astarting point for the design of auniversity course, Solid Foundations,which was being delivered at theLiverpool Institute of Performing Arts(LIPA). Eight years on, the course atLIPA has been discontinued andthe simple polarities offered bythe social and medical models ofdisability have themselves becomeincreasingly messy and thecomforting models they offer havebecome subject to greater scrutiny.

This paper, in calling on the work of Deleuze andGuatarri (2004), points to ways in which Deleuzianconcepts of creativity can transform a theoreticalapproach to the cultural politics of disability arts.In building on the work of Goodley (2008) and Bojeand Dennehy (2003) this paper will discuss routesto new models of disability arts, new potential flowsof thinking which bypass the blocks that the oldbinary model of medical and social models pose.It is structured around four contributions to the Festder Sinne conference: firstly, an opening provocationI gave at the opening plenary session; secondly, a reviewof some constant themes which emerged fromwatchingand discussing performances held within the conference;thirdly, details of a practical text workshop I gave toseven volunteer students, and finally a closing seriesof observations and conclusions I gave on the lastmorning of the conference.

I. The Puppet Question:an opening provocation

Integration of disabled people into the performing artscontinues to be a hot topic these days. It’s like a badgeof courage we might have won at school, somethingour mothers proudly stitched onto our jackets, wearingit over our hearts to show our professional andpolitical credentials.

Many arts projects view the prospect of completeintegration up as a kind of holy grail of achievement,distinguishing them from other projects using thelanguage of segregation, inclusion, participation andjoining in. In this provocation, I would like to considerthose assertions closely and to see whether the badgeof courage we think is stitched onto our jackets ismore like those temporary children’s tattoos whichwash off in the rain.

I want to discuss with you the differences betweenintegrated performance and assimilated performance.And I want to ask whether our desire to get people tojoin us and join in to our artistic endeavours is gettingin the way of the more radical desire to join up adisability arts aesthetics to a wider critical pedagogydiscourse. A discourse which relocates and nurturesthe power of production in the hearts of those who aremore frequently on the receiving end of the powers ofcultural producers (artists and educators) who have theirown artistic vision and agendas to promote: howeverbenign and well intended those visions might be.

This will involve revisiting the puppet question,a proposal I developed here in 2000 which asksof performances, performers and audiences:

Who in this performance could be replaced by puppets?

But first, a small piece of history.

Page 10 /Paper 2

4th International Festival of SensesTheaterpädagogisches Zentrum(TPZ / Theatre Pedagogical Centre)and the European Centre Européenof the International Amateur TheatreAssociation (AITA / IATA), Lingen,Germany, October 2008.

The Medical Model of Disability however identifies disability as beinga individualised medical problem based on impairment, deficit anddysfunction.This model depoliticises disability and extracts it from widersocio-economic,political and cultural contexts. In this extraction from context(and to rewrite and to elaborate upon Goodley, 2007) the medical modelmeans that performance environments, artistic content,performer identitiesare all at odds with the specificities of disabled artists.Theatres continueto exclude by virtue of their physical and sometimes geographicalinaccessibility. Curricula of artists training courses promote standards thatsome with (or without) impairments will never reach. Curricula contentsay nothings of the history of exclusion experienced by disabled people.Artists are assessed in ways that celebrate achievement over contributionand difference.And at themost ordinary level, disabled performers continueto be singled out for the specialised attention of specialness, are segregatedfrom non-disabled peers through the presence of non-disabled adultsupporters and remain unrepresented in images of schooling andeducational attainment.

There are three further consequences of the Medical Model on theinvolvement of disabled people in the PerformingArts.

Firstly, it generates a culture of dependency in which relationships betweendisabled and non-disabled people are often seen as a kind ofmaster - servantrelationship in which the masters - non-disabled people - may sometimesmasquerade as servants and vica versa: in short, relationships which are notonly defined by an imbalance of power and control but relationships wherethe locus of power is neither easily identifiable nor controllable. In someexamples we’ve seen, the ‘master’ is not necessarily the simultaneous presenceof another human being on stage: it can be the disembodied presence of aplaintiff voice in a song or the digital imperative of a 4:4 rhythm generatedby a computer programme: the performer becoming what you mightcall becoming, thanks to that old Grace Jones track, a slave to the rhythm.The masters of the action on stage come in all shapes, sizes, sounds,pictures and media.

Secondly, the Medical Model generates the notion of a Hierarchy ofDisability. In this Hierarchy, disabled people with hidden impairmentssuch as dyslexia may be disinclined either to see themselves as disabledor,more dramatically, see themselves higher up a scale of social value dueto their perceived lower degree of impairment. It also leads to conversationswhich uses the assessment of the degree of impairment as a means to assessthe aesthetic quality of the work in question.Here, we say things like‘Wasn’t that work fantastic bearing in mind they are . . .’ where the dot dotdots of the punctuation can be joined up by using such terms such aslearning difficulty or deaf or blind.The hierarchy of disability also leadsto the possibility that the value of a piece of work can plunge rapidly - muchlike the share values on stock exchanges across the world at the moment -if we learn that rather then being performed by a group of disabled people,it was performed by some people who weren’t disabled at all. Hierarchy ofdisability means we are constantly assessing the degree of impairment: notthe meaning of the work presented before us.

A third consequence of the power of the medical model can be detectedin how audiences are encouraged to respond to the work before them.The medical model leads to the phenomena of disabled people as beingdescribed as tragic but brave; as having suffered with a particular physicalor mental impairments; and as people to be either pitied, patronised ordemonised.The ‘ahhhh’ moment is a frequent manifestation of audiencesand can be brought about by the falling cadence of a solitary accordion,the slow fading light of a follow spot or the isolation, centre stage, of acharacter who’s been presented with an external hostile world of attendantcharacters and impossible plot demands.The techniques of isolation andsegregation here are critical in establishing this kind of response fromaudiences who might find themselves whispering to their partner, therebut for the Grace of God reflecting perhaps a sense that there is moreat stake emotionally for certain audience members in this momentof performance by disabled people than there is in performances bynon-disabled people. Perhaps the histories of conflict with the medicalauthorities,with the social services and with the wider, dominant expressionsof normality that disabled people and their families share means that theexpression of audience responses to disabled performers is always likelyto carry extra layers of implication and momentousness.

Page 12 /Paper 2

Disability Arts: movements and models

In the UK, the DisabilityArts Movement developed through the 1970sand 1980s and as in other young cultures such asWomen’sTheatre, GayTheatre and BlackTheatre, considerable debate has taken place withinthe movement in order to define its identity, purpose and role withinthe context of mainstream arts and popular culture. Paul Darke (2003)suggests that

Disability Art used art to identify and reveal how ‘cultural forms andpractices do not simply reflect an already given social world but, rather,play a constitutive role in the construction of that world’ (Bowler, 1994).In this respect Disability Art saw, from its inception, the art world and theart establishment, through its exclusion of disabled people, as playing animportant role in society’s, and its constituent cultures, broader exclusionof disabled people and its continuing denial of disability as a social issue.

Darke also held up ambitious hopes for the movement:

Disability Art is about the nature of the barbarism of contemporaryculture in relation to itself through exploration of the construction ofotherness and disability. As most non-disability canonical art practicewas, and still is, structured around the culturally hegemonic of normality(the Medical Model of life, let alone disability), Disability Art is nothingother than a threat to the core values of the aesthetic values of contemporarycultures (art or any other).Thus, Disability Art is, perhaps, the last greatrevolutionary art at humanities disposal that is solely humanitarianand non-ideological in intent.

This last sentence is quite some claim which might bear some furtherinterrogation at some point.At the very least it provides us with a seriesof questions through which to assess art work in this festival and beyond:is what we are seeing a threat to our existing aesthetic values? Or does itreinforce those values through respectful attempts to emulate them?Are we witnessing examples of revolutionary art? Or have the artisticrevolutionaries become discredited forces, lured away from the taskin hand by government funding or record contracts or 15 minutesof fame on nationalTV?

However, in what is almost a casual aside, his reference to the medicalmodel of life inadvertently asks artists to consider, integration into what?Integration into a dance industry which damages young bodies in thepursuit of some highly contorted and physically stressful dance practice –ballet for example? Integration into a music industry whose dependenceon drug and alcohol abuse is almost an occupational hazard? Or integrationinto an acting industry whose employees are out of work 85% of thetime and who are consequently prone to periods of depression, nervousexhaustion or psychological neurosis? In some sense, integration intocontemporary performing arts is an integration towards disability andimpairment as opposed to the expressive and creative experiences itmight be.

Darke thus summons up two of themost powerful models of representationof disability in recent years: the social and medical models of disabilitywhich see impairment, exclusion and starkly different terms.According toGoodley (2007), the Social Model was described in 1976 by the Unionof the Physically ImpairedAgainst Segregation which proposed thefollowing definitions:

Impairment - lacking part of or all of a limb, or having a defective limborganism or mechanism of the body (and which now may also be takento mean defective or absent biochemical or genetic factors)

Disability - the disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by acontemporary social organisation which takes no account of peoplewho have physical impairments and thus excludes them frommainstream social activities).

It is interesting that the evaluation forms for example we are asked tocomplete after watching the performances focuses our attention on whatis ‘special’ about the performances and the festival as a whole. The ques-tionWhat were the moving or emotional moments for you? suggests thatthe type of audience response we are seeking has to be especially movingor emotional, perhaps at the expense of engaging the intellect. The med-ical model highlights the manipulative, emotional power of theatre andart, perhaps to the disservice of both performers and audience.

Modelling a disability aesthetic:the ebb and flow of integrative practice

The use of medical and social models of disability have starkly differentconsequences on how an agenda of integrative practice is developed andconstructed. I have two proposals to discuss and explore through practicewhich attempt to develop a disability aesthetic from a social model ofdisability perspective.

Firstly, that in assessing what levels of integration have been achievedwithin a production, I suggest we look for a number of signs whichrevolve around questions of gaze and power:

Where are we being asked to look?

Who are we being asked to look at?

Who are we being asked to listen to?

How are we being asked to look and are we being asked tolook at everyone through the same conventions? Or are someconventions being allowed for some performers but not others?

Who are the protagonists in the piece?

Answers to these questions combine to address my earlier question, thePuppet Question: who in the performance could be replaced by puppets?

I suggest that any performer:

we’re being asked to look away from,whose presence we’re not being asked to consider,who is not a protagonist,who does not initiate or tell the story or a significant activeagent in that story,who is not in control,

or who could be replaced by a puppet:

is not part of an integrated performance but an assimilated performancewhich is addressing agendas of funding or social conscience, and not theagendas of establishing the cultural presence of disabled people or adisability arts aesthetic.

I also suggest that in our intentions to develop an disability arts aesthetic,we can inadvertently reinforce the cultural absence of disabled peopleand this is something we need to be careful about as integration is oftenmasking a process of assimilation. That is, a process which encouragesstudents to accept the values of the dominant culture, a process whichis disinclined to challenge the values of that culture; and as a resultminimises the voice and presence of the disabled artist in the creativeand production process.

I will now present a review of some aspects of some of the performancesof the Festival. This does not set out to be a comprehensive, authoritativereview of all performances and does not attempt to evaluate performancesor audiences responses in any strict quantitative fashion but rather attemptsto draw out common themes which were present in the productions Iwitnessed and which were alluded to by other audience and conferenceattendees in various fora throughout the festival.

II. Emergent issues from festival productions

One common question which has constantly emerged from presentationsthroughout the conference has been the issue of how decisions weremade which led to the manifestation of a particular performance. It hasbeen noticeable that after so many performances, directors have beenunwilling or unavailable to discuss the directorial choices they havemade.Without knowing whether and how participating groups hadcontributed to the overall aesthetic of the production, we are left to ourown interpretational devices or, where possible, rely on the programmenotes which are provided to lesser or greater degrees.

In the production Jukums by the Nest of Hope company from Latviafor example, an interesting contradiction emerges from the performance.Whilst on the one hand,many audience members complement theperformance for its use of light, props, costumes and clear engagementby all the cast members in telling the story, the end of that story doeshave some disturbing implications which need the interaction betweendirector, cast and audiences to discuss and consider.

According to the programme notes, Jukums is

The story about a boy who is different from other boys in his ages, He isnot able to do his homeworks and be useful for his father on the field.His best friends are birds and butterflies. Finally his father finds a jobthat he is able to do - to stand in the field and scare away the birds.This work is humiliating and very hard for Jukums.The birds feelsorry for him and they take him away from this cruel world to anothermysterious place.

Towards the end of the performance, Jukums is presented dressed incolourful tatters which prompts an ahhhh response by some membersof the audience.Whilst adopting the role of a scarecrow he suffers fromthe rays of the sun (suggested by other actors poking him with sticks andthe combination of sticks and a lighting effect lead to a quasi crucifixionpicture being briefly established. Jukums’ music motif - a single keyboardtone becomes multilayered and repetitive, resembling a Philip Glasscomposition with its semi religious and spiritual overtones.

The difficulty which arises is in the concept of the mysterious place.Visually,we are led to believe that Jukums is ascending into heaven amongsta flock of birds who closely resemble a host of angels.There’s little questionthat Jukums has died, become and an angel and has been taken to heavenby his friends, the birds.

So what does this say about the place for disabled people in this kind ofsociety?That the only way out for them is death?That the world is so cruelto the Jukums in it that there is no alternative except severe separationand segregation?

Whilst this reading of the performance might be a somewhat extremereading, the point here is that no director was on hand to address thequestion and respond to the challenge that this reading presents.The company too, were not available for post-show discussions: so theabiding image at the end of the production is of a disabled boy beingwithdrawn from his society in the most severe way imaginable. It mightbe argued that the production is reflecting the world as it currently is:but as Mandy Redvers Rowe commented later in the symposium, disabledtheatre practitioners have to not only to reflect the world within theirtheatre but also have to change it. Or as Brecht was alleged to have said:

Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.

Whilst I am unaware of whether there has been any substantial audienceanalysis at the festival, what became clear was the complexity of audiences’responses. In Dreaming about theHand that caresses the water for example,applause would start in a small sector of theAudience and ripple acrossthe audiences: often in response to an action which appeared, on the surfaceof it, to be quite rudimentary: a walk across stage or the speaking nameson the beat of a drum for example. In the production of Becket’s EndGame for example by the Danish groupTheatergruppe Slutspel, a cluster-audience laughter at some of the slapstick performance at the start of theshow served to draw attention away from the performers and ontothe cluster-audience itself; roars of laughter from a cluster-audiencesuggested that this event was quite possibly the funniest thing they hadseen in a long time: which may have been true, but wasn’t shared by othercluster-audiences around the auditorium or theAudience as a whole.Later,Hallo! is shouted out by a single voice from theAudience to theperformers: an interesting moment in which Becket almost becomes anopportunity for audience participation - albeit in a microscopic cluster-audience of one, kind of way.

More heightened cluster-audience responses were further in evidence atthe performance ofVarietéOlé by the German group, Circus Sonnenstichand it became noticable how almost every single movement the companycarried out was greeted by applause generated from one small cluster-au-dience which then rippled across the auditorium.The rhythmical natureof this process was noticeable: boy walks onto stage with brush (clap);Balance on gym ball (clap); 3 actors place one leg each on ball (clap); theylink arms on the floor (clap); they lay their stomachs on the gym ball (clap).

The desire to award pathos is never far away. Cluster audiences clapthroughout but this is not clapping of community and shared experi-ence but experience of a few, knowing, perhaps relieved family mem-bers who seem to show no discernment whatsoever about what they areclapping about. Are they clapping because someone has to? Because ifno-one clapped, then we'd be sitting here in our audience silence, tellingthe performers: actually no, what you're doing is not good enough, wedon't value it at all, you've all been wasting your time, it's completelymeaningless what you've been showing us? Perhaps those cluster-audi-ences are doing the rest of us a favour, hiding and protecting us from ourembarrassment of the pathos. One moment highlights the absence of thecluster- or any type of audience: a girl swings two clubs in front of herand another girl behind her speaks phrases in single words behind her.Is this some kind of intended text based artistry? Some attempt at contentamongst the walk, balancing and juggling content-free zone of the gym-nastic circus antics of the rest of the performance? Interestingly it is metwith no applause from any part of the auditorium, not even from a mi-croscopic cluster-audience of one.

But soon enough we’re back to a performance in which all performers geta go at skipping around a rope and all cluster audiences get a go at theirPavlovian clapping.Who are the dogs and who are the bells in this sce-nario? What rewards are being offered up? Recognition exchanged forpersonal salvation?Are we audiences applauding ourselves? Perhapsthough there are stories in these complex simplicities which the directorcan only be frustrated about that he or she can't tell us about and per-haps the processes behind this work are as interesting as the products oftheir process are inane.The major point remains the same though: with-out a forum to address the directors and their companies, we are left witha sense that this work results from the efforts of producers and directorswho are disability auteurs: skilled in manipulating enthusiastic groups fortheir own visions and ends and who speak to audiences for whom anytangible and recordable achievement is good enough

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The director was also visible in their absence at the performance by theHeldringtheater from the Netherlands who performed Dreaming aboutthe Hand that caresses the water a production in which, according to theprogramme notes:

Drama, dance and percussion elements are used by the 12 players in apoetic way to illustrate the motives taken from the songs of theTurkishsinger Sezen Aksu….The drama group give the players a platform andan audience so they can show their special qualities.

This production was constructed through the use of many productiontechniques, only one of which was the energy and vitality of the performersthemselves.Moody partial lighting shone onto flats painted in a zebra-motif meant that the performers were difficult to see in the semi-dark;an effect exacerbated by dry ice being pumped onto stage so envelopingthe performers in a mist, as well as the gloom.The choreography of thepiece was such that performers had been taught straightforward moveswhich they repeated in unison or performed in simple mirroring exercises.There was little in the way of individual interpretation.Text phrases toowere choreographed to be read out, one word at a time and then repeatedby the group as a whole.The rhythm of the music too was followed steadily,in a controlled, onbeat fashion although occasional whoops and whistleson stage by the performers indicated some real, genuine anarchistic offbeatresponses to the crushing uniformity and symmetry which had beenimposed on the group.

The addition of the songs of SezenAksu (theTurkish Queen of Pop)added a further level of anonymisation to the process. Songs were playedloudly through the PA system and the performers sang in shadow voices,mere echoes of the voice booming through the speaker.This was notkaraoke in which the musical track of a song is added to by enthusiasticsingers who attempt to sing the words from an autocue but who are able toimprovise, ignore or just plainly get it wrong.This element of performancewas a kind of reverse dubbing technique in which the offstage voice (usuallybackgrounded) became foregrounded and in which the onstage liveperformers (usually foregrounded) became backgrounded.These werenot just puppets, but shadow puppets - operating in shadows, becomingshadows and occasionally offering shadowed, echoed gestures to otherpuppets on stage.

However, once the performance is completed and the performers move offstage, their real breath and life becomes evident: there is much rampantnoise and letting off high spirits by them, a sign of their outward breathesin a relieving contrast to much of the controlled, held breath that wasexhibited during most of the performance.They party, off stage, loud andlong and we sense from aware the achievement they feel they have attained.

Nevertheless,Whose work is being presented here? became an ever pressingquestion as the performance continued: and the heavily directed qualitysuggested an auteur director at work: a director who had his or her ownclear vision which was to be enacted out by a group of performers whowere apparently happy with that process - or certainly were not given anyspace to offer any critique of the process they were going through. But italso has to be noted that perhaps this question is irrelevant: audiencemembers responded positively and enthusiastically to the production -as they did in many of the events of the festival so perhaps this critiqueis missing the point in quite some significant fashion.

However, if we are to take audience response as a marker of quality then thistoo leads us into some difficult waters because one thing that these audienceresponses clearly show too is that at these performances, the notion of theaudience is a suspect term too. In many audiences at the festival, we did notencounter just one homogenous audience but often many smaller clustersof audiences who happened to be attending the same event.The concept of‘TheAudience’ fragments into ‘the cluster-audiences’ at these performances- and these audiences displayed very different characteristics.

III.a Using narrative deconstructiontechniques within a discourse of resistance

My second proposal for this conference is that the application ofstory deconstruction processes might assist in re-presenting andrecombining narratives of assimilation and integration.A model ofnarrative deconstruction is offered by Boje and Dennehy (1993) isoffered below. It provides a useful counter strategy to the dramaturgywhich is so heavily formed by the presence of the disability auteur:

1. Duality search.Make a list of any bipolar terms, any dichotomies that are used in the story,Include the term even if only one side is mentioned. For example, in malecentred and or male dominated organisation stories,men are central andwomen are marginal others. One term mentioned implies its partner.

2. Reinterpret the hierarchy.A story is one interpretation or hierarchy or an event from one point ofview. It usually has some form of hierarchical thinking in place. Exploreand reinterpret the hierarchy (e.g. in duality terms how one dominatesthe other) so you can understand its grip.

3. Rebel voices.Deny the authority of the one voice. Narrative centres marginalise orexclude.To maintain a centre takes enormous energy.What voices arenot being expressed in this story?Which voices are subordinate orhierarchical to other voices? (e.g. who speaks for the trees?)

4. Other side of the story.Stories always have two or more sides.What is the other side of the story(*usually marginalised, underrepresented or even silent?) reverse the story,by putting the bottom on top., the marginal in control, or the back stageup front. For example, reverse the male centre, by holding a spotlight onits excesses until it becomes female centre in telling the other side; the pointis not to replace one centre with another, but to show how each centre isin a constant state of change and disintegration.

5. Deny the plot.Stories have plots, scripts, scenarios, recipes and morals.Turn these around (move from romantic to tragic or comedic to ironic).

6. Find the exception..Stories contain rules, scripts, recipes and prescriptions. State each exceptionin a way that make its extreme or absurd. Sometimes you have to breakthe rules to see the logic being scripted in the story.

7.Trace what is between the lines.Trace what is not said.Trace what is the writing on the wall. Fill in theblanks. Storytellers frequently use ‘you know that part of the story’.Tracewhat you are filling in.With what alternate way could you fill it in (e.g.trace to the context, the back stage, the between, the intertext?)

8. Resituate.The point of doing 1 to 7 is to find a new perspective, one that resituates thestory beyond its dualisms, excluded voices of singular viewpoint.The ideais to reauthor the story so that the hierarchy is resituated and new balanceof views is attained. Restory to remove the dualities and margins. In aresituated story there are no more centres. Restory to script new actions.

I would now like discuss this model alongside various examples ofpractical work presented in the conference and explore practicallyhow this model can be used to re-write narratives of exclusion, usinga scene from Shakespeare’s play,AWintersTale. Using the abovedeconstruction techniques we will investigate whether the play mightbe about a psychological weaknesses which lead to an individual’semotional breakdown, or whether it might alternatively be about thedysfunction-generating consequences of power. Is it about individualdeficit or social deficit?

III.b Practical Deconstruction: outcomes of the workshop process

I was offered the opportunity to work with sevenTheater Pedagogik studentsfrom the OsnabruckTechnische Fachhoch Schule.My workshop intendedto explore how the eight elements of Bojeian story deconstruction mightbe applied to a piece of Shakespearian text in order to see how and whetherthat text may be re-presented as a text of inclusion, as opposed to the textof exclusion that Shakespeare texts can be portrayed as.

My session begins with a simple name game played in a circle: I namemyself, throw a small pocket size German-English dictionary to a workshopparticipant and suggest they repeat the exercise.Before long, all participantshave picked up the idea and are beginning to establish the names of theother members of the group. I develop this game eventually by pluckingat random a word out of the dictionary, repeating my name then throwingthe dictionary to another participant, again suggesting that participantsrepeat the exercise. I encourage participants to pick any word, quickly,whether this be German or English, comprehensible or incomprehensible.I accelerate the game so that participants eventually build up a chain of sixwords, five of which are taken from the dictionary, the sixth being their name.

I then request the participants to write the words onto flip charts I haveattached to the wall. I encourage them again to write quickly, with little timeto consider of reflect on what they are doing.Once up on the wall, I askmembers to construct an imaginary story using the six words of anothergroup member, but using additional words as they see fit. Eventually, shortstories are generated by each of the groupmembers about the other groupmembers. Given these short stories are based around six random words,the stories themselves display remarkable levels of abstraction, illogic andfantasy. Nevertheless,members construct stories which are intelligibleto varying degrees: the point being made here that human’s abilities togenerate meaning is deeply ingrained in our psyche and that our powersof interpretation and meaning-making are perhaps as essential as ourability to breath and digest and reproduce.

This idea is further elaborated through the an automatic writing exercisein which I place participants in groups of two or three and ask them to writea composite letter, one word at a time, passing the writing paper back andforth from partner to partner as quickly as possible so as to minimisethinking, blocking and inhibiting time.This generates a variety of letters -identifiable by their starting phrases such as ‘Dear John…’ and finishingclauses such as ‘Yours….’ but within which much fantasy, nonsense,non-sequiturs and surprising and shocking juxtapositions are created.

Participants recognise a common trend in this game in which they tryand control the narrative development but realise that the presence of anequally strong voice in the writing process means that desires to control thewriting come to nothing and that to keep the task moving, they have tosuccumb to the rules of the game and enjoy the experience.This invariablyproduces entertaining letters which often have frequent sexual, religious orbodily function motifs emerging from the text. For this group, the exercisewas concluded by providing the group with 8 large flip chart sheets in aline and asking them to write one word each on one sheet and then moveonto the neighbouring sheet to respond to the written word(s) that havepreviously been written there.This is continued for several cycles untilthe papers become full or the energy sags. Once again, the ‘letters’ areread out and displayed for later discussion and entertainment.

Example of these composite letters are shown in Figures 1 – 3.(Page 18)

Living theLife in theDying School It’s just a loss of identity, that’s all…

(Head teacher, Centenary Primary School)Whilst the logic of school closures is rationallyportrayed in communications from the DCSFand local authorities, school closure invariablygenerates press stories of incensed parents,irate communities and exhausted teachers.What is frequently lost amongst the sturm unddrang of closure however are the tiny stories(Denzin, 1991) of loss of teachers, pupils andfamilies: the loss of professional expertise,collective memory, and shared hopes and fears.

This study examines what is lost from a schoolcommunity once the programme of closure hasbeen agreed, the land set aside and the redundancynotices posted and refers to earlier workconducted byWhitefield (1980)Molinero (1988),Schmidt (2007) and Picard (2003) who isparticularly scathing about the rationalefor school closure when arguments about sizeand value for money are brought to bear:

There is no solid foundation for the beliefthat elimination of school districts willimprove education, enhance cost-effectiveness,or promote great equality and except forextraordinary circumstances, districtreorganization should be a voluntarydecision of local voters and school boards.Size does not guarantee success, as “goodschools come in all sizes.” Disputes on schoolmergers or consolidations may be costlydiversions from the more important issues ofdisadvantage and equal opportunity,especially as they relate to school performance.(Picard, 2003: 3)

This study is an ethnographical study ofthe closing months of a single primary school,Centenary Primary School in theWirral,a medium sized primary school which earlierthis year celebrated its 100th birthday – withits imminent closure just months away.

The study aims to use an arts basedmethodological approach (Bagley, 2008;Clough, 2002).This paper provides interimfindings of data which are intended at a laterdate to inform the development of a communityopera which will examine and dignify the quiet,not so quiet and positively raucous responsesto the ending of a small, local primary school.It also investigates the need of a widerethnographic approach to school closures:research which could turn the tiny storiesinto noisy histories and so informfuture rationalisations.

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Ethnography Conference,St. Hilda’s College16 – 17 September 2008

However, the claim here is not merely that an ever increasingly complexseries of actions transform a simple narrative into a complex story.They also make the point that:

Narrative is intrinsically fictional.The idea goes back to Sartre (1965) for whomthere are no true stories, and has been adopted by postmodernist historians (White,1987;Hutcheon, 1988; Jenkins, 1995). But it can be found in the health careliterature, too: ‘all narratives are socially constructed and thus, forms of fictions’(Aranda & Street, 2001, p. 792). However, this ‘does not invalidate them forresearch purposes’, because stories ‘can achieve a degree of critical significance…and promote emancipatory moments’ (Barone, 1995, p. 64; Blumenreich, 2004).(Paley and Eva, 2005: 84)

Whilst also identifying the affective significance of stories:A story, saysVelleman (2003, p. 19), enables its audience to assimilate events, not to familiarpatterns of how things happen, but rather to familiar patterns of how things feel.(ibid: 92)They suggest there are four key concepts to understandingnarrative: types of plot, narrative unity, point of view, and emotional cadenceand describe plot as transforming:

a chronicle or listing of events into a schematic whole by high-lightingand recognizing the contribution that certain events make to thedevelopment and outcome of the story (Polkinghorne, 1988, pp. 18–19)…a unifying device, responsible for the ‘schematic whole’ which is a story.It ties narrative constituents together in such a way that each event,each particular facet of character, will make a necessary contributionto the outcome.(ibid, 89)

In recognising a potential failure to distinguish between the characteristicsof narrative and story, Paley and Eva signal an important note of cautionwhen it comes to the analysis of conversation that arises from interviewsand the inclination to convert that talk into narrative.

Talking about ourselves: a caveat in narrative enquiry

With increasing frequency over the past several years, we as membersof the community of investigative practitioners have been telling storiesabout teaching and teacher education, rather than simply reportingcorrelation coefficients.This trend has been upsetting to some who mournthe loss of quantitative groups, of quantitative precision, and, they wouldargue, scientific rigor. For many of us, however, these stories capture morethan scores of mathematical formulas – the richness and indeterminacyof our experiences as teachers and the complexity of our understandingsof what teaching is and how others can be prepared to engage in thisprofession… Story has become, in other words, more than simplya rhetorical device for expressing sentiments about teachers…It is now, rather, a central focus for conducting research in the field.(Carter 1993:5)

Goodson and Hargreaves discuss a representational crisis which informshow teachers and teaching are talked about:

In education there has always been a problem of how we in our scholarly accountspresent this thing we call practice, these things we call teachers. It's always verydifficult to actually re-present those in a text.(Goodson and Hargreaves, 1995)

They suggest this arises from a research process which, in tryingto understand the lived experience of teachers, is undertaken byresearchers who are detached from that lived experience and whopresent their findings as a captured, and implicitly separate, text.They argue that this process of textual generation and capture hasgenerated a research practice which privileges the creation of narrativeand story as a means to communicating data about the lives of teachers.They also warn that there are perilous difficulties in this process of captureif the text becomes the agency that records and represents the voices of the Other,then the Other becomes a person who is spoken for.They do not talk; the text talksfor them. It is the agency that interprets their words, their thoughts, their intentions,their meanings, their actions (ibid).

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This paper is structured around the interplay of competing narratives toldby competing narrators who demonstrate varying degrees of reliability(Booth, 1983), observational astuteness and rhetorical cloaking. Officialdocumentation is juxtaposed against interview transcripts, field notesand voices mediated through the local press: a macro-political contextis assessed alongside the micro-event, sometimes purposefully, sometimesfrivolously, in an attempt to detect new narratives emerging unscathedfrom the forceable juxtaposition of their parent narratives.

Tiny stories, noisy histories: the need to maintain narrative vigilance

Jamie and Jack are both seven years old and like to play football.They take great delight in telling Derek and me ‘they support Evertonfootball team.’ Both boys show us their skill by running as fast as they can.We praise them for their willingness to tell us their favourite game.Thesetwo boys are so enthusiastic in showing us their skills Derek and I join in.I play hopscotch and Derek begins running as fast as he can at theirrequest.This was so enjoyable we nearly forgot the purpose of the interview.(field notes, 4April 08)

Whilst Franzosi argues for the significance of narrative analysis in sociology,(Franzosi, 1998), Paley and Eva provide an account of narrative analysisin health care in particular, and describe how narrative and stories relateto each other.They argue this important because of a tendency they seein the literature to fail to distinguish between the characteristics ofnarrative and story. In their account:

‘story’ is an interweaving of plot and character, whose organizationis designed to elicit a certain emotional response from the reader, while‘narrative’ refers to the sequence of events and the (claimed) causalconnections between them… we suggest that it is important not to confusethe emotional persuasiveness of the ‘story’ with the objective accuracyof the ‘narrative’, and to this end we recommend what might be called‘narrative vigilance’.(Paley and Eva, 2005: 83)

In borrowing from the literary criticism the concept of narrativity, theypropose a model of Degrees of Narrativity (Paley and Eva, 2005: 87),in which a narrativity ladder is built up in a series of levels as shown inTable 1, where Level 1 is the lowest level of narrativity and level 8 is thehighest level. In their account:

an account which incorporates features 1–3 on the narrativity ladderis a narrative, and an account which also incorporates features 4–8is a story. It follows that all stories are narratives, but not all narrativesare stories.(ibid; 88)

Table 1Paley and Eva’s Narrativity Ladder: Degrees of Narrativity

8_ and presented in a way that is likely to elicit anemotional reaction from the audience

7_ the explanation being related to the problem they confront6_ characters who are confronted by some kind of difficulty

or problematic issue5_ there being one or more characters centrally involved

in the events described4_ causally related in such a way that a certain event

is explained3_ two or more events, some of which must be causally related2_ The recounting of at least two events1_ The recounting of one or more events

They warn of the dangers of relying on stories as a methodological deviceand make a case that the process of narrative generation from teacherstalk is a classic basis of academic colonization, where you capture the other in atext presented for your own scholarly purposes. The authority of the original voicethere is subsumed (ibid). This process of subjugation of the original voiceis a potential dilemma for researchers who wish to use the talk of theirresearch participants as a means of generating narratives and storiesof research participants. Cochran-Smith and Lytle also suggest that theprocess of colonisation becomes apparent in terminology which seesteachers engaged in small talk:

…teachers swap classroom stories, share specific ideas, seek one another’sadvice, and trade opinions about issues and problems in their own schooland the larger educational arena. In most professional contexts theseexchanges are typically considered ‘small talk’ which implies that they arepleasant but unimportant relative to the ‘big talk’ or the more seriouspurposes for which the (research) group has convened.(Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 1993: 94)

That caveat aside, Krall suggests however that it is valid to generate newknowledge and understanding through the application of an arts basedtechnique, specifically through the process of transforming narrativeinto poetry:

Poetic language removes the dreadful tedium from educational research.It does not put readers to sleep, nor does it mystify them; it is clear andlyrical, and it teaches, inspires, and questions the reader as well as thewriter. Language used in this way with reverence becomes a sacred symbolthat carries depth of meaning.(Krall, 1988: 476)

The suggestion that not only does the act of writing lead to the generationof narrative for research purposes but that narrative can be rendered intoart (in for example the shape of poetry) leads to the potential applicationof an arts based educational research methodology as discussed by(Piirto, 2002; Egan, 2002; Eisner, 2002;Nutbrown, 2005; Sparkes, 2002;Gauntlett, 2007). Whilst Piirto is enthusiastic about the possibilities thisbrings about:

To learn the essence of the domain’ s educational implications at the feetof artist / teachers who are seeking to synthesize the expression of their workin both domains - the domain of the art and the domain of education -is an exciting possibility.(Piirto, 2002: 444)

She also sounds a necessary note of caution in recognising the needfor qualification in this endeavour:They will create new forms, new expressions,new ways of thinking that bridge domains. Let us welcome our artist-educators,as well as our self-exploring novices. But let us not confuse the quality of and theirqualification for rendering, making marks, embodying, and distilling. Let us notconfuse the seekers for the masters (sic). Let us not confuse the poetasters forthe poets (ibid).

Methodological similarities between the processes of artists and researchersis a phenomenon which has been made explicit by other researchers:

The researcher, like the artist, attempts the impossible, attempts thecomplete understanding. Each perception is colored by tacit knowledge,both personally and culturally constructed.The effort to represent,to narrate, to explain, to understand is forever incomplete, yet forevergenerative of new possibility.(Stake and Kerr, 1995: 57)

However, Goodson and Hargreaves caution against the narrative effortand the tendency to take stories at face value:

Like all new genres, stories and narratives are Janus-faced.They maymove us toward new insights, or backward into constrained consciousness,and sometimes they may do the same thing simultaneously.(Goodson and Hargreaves, 1995)

And refer to Carter’s warning:

Anyone with an even passing familiarity with the literatures on storyrealizes, however, that these are quite turbulent intellectual waters andquickly abandons the expectation of safe passage towards the resolution,once and for all, of the many puzzles and dilemmas we face in advancingour knowledge of teaching.(Carter, 1993: 5)

The turbulent intellectual waters that stories stir up stem from actsof interpretation. Given that stories can be read in a multitude of ways,that they do not succumb to one, authoritative reading, that they donot express one unequivocal point of view which lends itself to beinginterpreted as the definitive voice is a methodological weakness if theprovision of reliable research testimonies is sought: but it is also perhapsa strength.Human lives themselves do not succumb to one reading,a single act of interpretation which can be neatly analysed and classified.Stories, because of their multiplicity are perhaps the most appropriatemeans to talk of the multiplicities of human beings lives. A point thatGoodson and Hargreaves acknowledge albeit with a consistent warningin the background:

The narration of a prefigurative script is, in fact, a celebration of existingpower relations. Most often, and this is profoundly true for teachers,the question is how to rewrite the life script. Narration, then, can workin many ways, but be clear-- it can give voice to a celebration of scriptsof domination.(Goodson and Hargreaves,1995)

Carter reinforces the need to treat narrative and story with our analyticaleyes wide open:

And for those of us telling stories in our work, we will not serve thecommunity well if we sanctify story-telling work and build an epistemologyon it to the point that we simply substitute one paradigmatic dominationfor another without challenging domination itself.We must, then, becomemuch more self-conscious than we have been in the past about the issuesinvolved in narrative and story, such as interpretation, authenticity,normative value, and what our purposes are for telling stories in thefirst place.(Carter, 1993: 11)

These tiny stories are not part of the building schools for the futuremeganarrative of secondary schools; no bright new shining visionof educational pods for sophisticated young people who are able to optfor down loading content from their mobile phones over the attendanceof a master class by an overperforrming uberteacher who will beperforming ballet steps one minute an entertaining the visiting privatesector funders the next. These stories have no shine, no brighter pictureof a future but are stories of a quiet, seeping desperation which isprevented from turning into a collective madness by the efforts ofteachers and children who continue from day to day as if nothing is aboutto happen.This is not a indignant narrative about the alleged lack ofconsultation of the authorities, an ironic parable about administrativedysfunction or a moralistic tale of performative brutalism – althougheach of those narrative genres have emerged in the fabric of this story ofschool closure as it unravelled in its last few months. It’s a collection oftiny stories of a tiny school told by tiny narrators.

1.How small is too small?Minute 449 of 23 January 2008 of the cabinet meeting of Wirral’sChildren's Services notes:

…following consultation with governing bodies, staff, parents and otherstakeholders, Cabinet had decided that statutory notices should be publishedregarding the closure of Centenary Primary School and the establishmentof a new F1 (nursery) class at Livingstone Primary School… the Directorof Children's Services described the outcome of the subsequent representationperiod, recommended that the proposals be approved, and requested thatauthorisation be given for implementation of the two proposals…The Leader of the Council thanked everyone that had taken part…

2. Celebration. Commemoration. 11 December 2007On January 4, 1908, a new school built on RostherneAvenue openedits doors to pupils for the first time… despite extensive bomb damageduring the second world war, it has provided continuous education forlocal children and evolved into the Centenary Primary School we knowtoday. The governors, staff and parents are organising a number ofcelebratory activities for the children during the centenary year…The school would love to hear from any past pupil or staff member whowould like to be kept informed of the arrangements… contact the schoolor email the Headteacher.

3. Consultation. Consternation.Consultation meetings were held at three schools.These meetings wereattended by 261 persons, and a third of pupils of statutory school agewere represented by at least one parent/carer. 57 written responses toconsultation were received, of whom 42 were from persons directlyrelated to one of these three schools. Concerns were raised about thepotential loss of school staff, disabled access and facilities, educationaldisruption and standards. On 17th October 2007, proposals were widelypublished.The statutory representation period ended on November 28th2007. During this time, the Director of Children’s Services receivedno written objections.

4. Centenary Primary parents 'duped': Tuesday 27th November 2007As a parent from Centenary Primary I was wondering if parents fromHeslington Primary have been duped by the director of education as wehave.We were assured that the authorities upon closure of our schoolwould do "all in its power" to ensure that children were placed in a schoolof their parents' choice. Now,much later in the process, we have beenadvised that we are guaranteed a place in a school that does not want us(meetings were held by the friends of Livingstone and leaflets distributedencouraging parents to vote for no amalgamation)…

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Tiny stories, micro-climates and macro-consequences

The phenomenon of using tiny stories as a tool within the practice ofcreative writing workshops is not uncommon: nanofiction or microfictionare terms given to writing exercises in which the length of a story isarbitrarily determined to perhaps absurd lengths: Sterne’s microfictionmodel for example states that micro-stories should be no more than250 words.TheWorld's Shortest Stories (Moss, 2008) is more stringent:stories should contain no more than 55 words (excluding the title whichmust be no more than 7 words long) and each story must contain thefollowing four elements: 1) a setting, 2) one or more characters,3) conflict, and 4) resolution.

The improbably namedAndy Looney (2008) takes the process perhapsan inevitable step further with his model of nanofiction in which nomore than 55 words can be used, formatted as a single paragraph.Snellings Clark (2008) refers directly to the term tiny stories and whilstoffering another set of limits on length (100 words) also directs the writernot to use the sameword twice (albeit making an exception for contractions).She also offers a set of aesthetic criteria which describe how the tiny storymight most effectively function:

Little stories that are larger on the inside than they appear on the outside.Stories that leave an aftertaste, that linger.Special nod to stories that include elements of the fantastic.Little things with big effects: lost keys, a scrap of paper, a chink in thearmour, a missing screw.The inexplicable in the definable, the fantasy in the reality, the uncommonin the everyday, that something under the surface.The secret little things…

This paper is written as a series of tiny stories which conform to the SnellingsClark model: no more than 100 words in length, in commemoration of theage of the school at its closure. There will be 78 tiny stories, each onerepresenting a child who would have been on the school role had it beenkept open in September 2008.

The tiny stories of Centenary Primary School

This story study is a collection of tiny, tiny stories. It’s a small ethnographicproject where n=1; where the timeframe was narrow,where the characters,narrative, dialogue and critical actions whilst appearing to inhabita microworld with microscopic movements, cataclysmic change is feltwidely, resonating out across the landscape in which the school is basedin ways not fully understood or predicted.

The soundscape of the territory is a microcosm of silence. Resistance hasbeen purposeless, directionless if not completely futile. Questions remainunanswered, under investigated, under challenged: the assumptionof logic, incontestability is all pervasive.These are tiny stories of life goingon for as long as staff have jobs to go to and children have a class roomto go to and their education will continue albeit under a differentsimilar, oh so similar regime.

In this world of tiny stories, teachers identities are sometime subtly,sometimes seismically challenged: John, a class teacher of some 15 yearsin the school had decided he just wanted to continue to teach in anyschool, despite being offered extra pay for taking on enhancedmanagementduties. But he just wanted to teach; and unable to play the job interviewgame refers in an observed class to the on-looking new head in a throwawayaside as an old witch which didn’t enamour him with her – so he failedto win the job in the new school and had to revisit his cv, his approach,his understanding of how he did what he did. No longer a respectedteacher for 15 years who had taught at the school classes across therange – he was now back in the market place with a label of as beinga bit of a trouble maker.

5. The best of all possible worldsThe review, consultation process and statutory notice have been carriedout and published properly.There are sufficient places in the local areawithin reasonable travelling distance in order to accommodate all displacedpupils, at good quality schools. Children with statements of special needswill transfer their statement to their new school, and the needs of all pupilswill continue to be met in their new schools in line with the Every ChildMatters Agenda. The views of interested parties have been taken intoaccount, and no objections were received following notice publication.

6. Pupils in a PE lessonThe teacher gives clear instructions on how the game of pass ball isplayed. This game of pass ball is fast paced. The relationship betweenthe two teams is very good the teams continually share the ball andalthough this game of skill takes a lot of energy there is no one losinginterest… each team scores points. The competition becomes moreintense and one boy wants to be the person who makes the rules. Theteacher intervenes by telling him the rules of the game. Without toomuch of a fuss the team resumes play.

7. Numbers gamesIn January 2007, Centenary had 151 pupils on roll, and 27% (57) surplusplaces. The number on roll had fallen to 98 byAutumn 2007 (53%,110 surplus places).The Key Stage 2 contextual value added measureof 99.9 in 2007 indicates that pupils at the school made the expectedrate of progress, and standards are therefore not low inWirral terms.The Decision Makers Guidance on closure suggests that standards,geographical / social issues (such as travel distance to alternative schools)and impact on community use of the building should be considered.

8. The Literacy HourThis second small class are going to write a story they are given a themeto begin with and write notes to use in their story.Their story is basedon the theme of a ‘key’As usual the class is very interested in producinga good story.Mr M. asks his class to plan their story by writing a list ofcharacters, names places, words… such an easy way to structure a story.Most of the class had written some brilliant stories in such a short spaceof time.

9. No grounds for rejection (1)There is no significant difference in terms of CVA between standardsat Centenary, Livingstone or St Stephens, the two schools to which theCentenary catchment area is proposed to be re-zoned. Closing a schooldoes not save any money for the Council.All the money which is savedis re-invested automatically in other schools and their pupils, includingformer Centenary pupils.This means more money would be availableto all schools to spend on children’s education and raise standards…closure of the school would not be expected to reduce standards,and this is not a ground to reject the proposal.

10. No grounds for rejection (2)The proposal to close the school indicates that the catchment zone ofCentenary would be rezoned largely to Livingstone, with a small areato St Stephens. For the 78 pupils expected to be on roll in September2008, all would travel a shorter or similar distance to Livingstone, thanthey currently do… Three of the 78 pupils could potentially be entitledto an in-zone place at St Stephens, should parents decide to apply…The impact of closure of the school on travel and transport is expectedto be minimal. This is not a ground to reject the proposal.

11. Playground movementsWe talk to Ellie, 4, and Georgia, 6, about the playground and the lovelynumber patterns on the floor. Ellie was very keen to show me how wellshe could hop, count the numbers, and point to all the letters in her name.Georgia hopped on to each letter to spell her name. ‘Fantastic’ I say toher. We walk to other patterns on the school ground floor and the fourchildren jump from the number ten and count competently.We decideto let Georgia and Ellie return to class because the wind was cold and thegirls were shivering.

12. Building Movements: Impact on community useThe F1 (nursery) class at Centenary Primary would close, but would bereplaced with an F1 class at Livingstone Primary School under the linkedproposal.Any new F1 provision would meet current DCFS regulationsfor room size, outdoor facilities and so on, and would be the right sizefor the number of expected pupils.

13. Next stepsImplementation of these linked proposals can begin immediately. Parentsof pupils who would be on roll at Centenary on 1st September 2008 willbe asked to submit a preference form for an alternative local primaryschool. It is proposed to re-draw the catchment zone of Centenary largelyto Livingstone,with a smaller area to St Stephens in order to make a bettermatch between where pupils live…All former Centenary pupils on rollwho opt to transfer to Livingstone, regardless of home address, will beguaranteed a place at Livingstone. Dependent on parental preference,additional classroom provision may be required.

14. Building Schools for the futuresThe scope of the required capital programme at Livingstone will dependon the pattern of parental preferences and allocated places.All formerCentenary pupils can transfer to Livingstone, should they wish to do so,however, based on experience from previous primary school closures,it is likely that some parents will express a preference for a different localschool. In these cases, places will be allocated where there is space in theappropriate year group, and in conjunction with the national Infant Classsize limit.

15.Tracking the Finances (1)The closure of Centenary will release £142,258 annually into theindividual Schools Budget as a whole. An amount of £50,000 is includedin the draft 2007/08 Schools Capital Programme for “schemedevelopment resulting from primary reviews”which will allow schemes tobe drawn up, costed and tendered, with any balance contributing to buildcosts. The balance of the capital build costs would need to be drawn fromthe following sources: DCSF Modernisation Grant, council capitalincluding capital receipts from the disposal of surplus assets, PrudentialBorrowing and capital forming part of other national initiatives, such asthe Primary Capital programme.

16. Tracking the Finances (2)Centenary has been allocated a 5/12ths budget for 2008/2009.Theremaining 7/12ths budget has been redistributed through the Budgetformula toWirral schools.The minimum capital expenditure required atLivingstone is the construction of a new F1 class in time for September2008.Once pupil places have been allocated, an option appraisal will becarried out to examine the most effective solution to the accommodationrequirements of receiving primary schools.This is likely to include thereplacement of mobile accommodation and sufficient new build for therevised pupil numbers.

23. Staffing ImplicationsIn the event of the closure of Centenary Primary School, all staff at theschool would be made redundant. TheAuthority has a long and successfultrack record in assisting redundant teaching and non-teaching staff intonew positions.Wirral does not have a redeployment scheme in place forteaching staff at present, and the present arrangement relies on theco-operation of governing bodies when making appointments.

24. Staffing implications, pupil ripplesThere are major concerns regarding the children with special needs.Two of the teaching staff in Centenary Primary hope there will be thesame support for those children with major physical disabilities as well asthe children with learning disability… because of the loss of staff there isalways the possibility that one-to-one support may not be possible and thechildren who need support may feel vulnerable. On the plus side lack ofspecialised support could encourage a child who need extra help becomeindependent. Unfortunately the teachers have had to move on to otherschools. Other staff such as support assistants have not found employmentand they are worried they may face long term unemployment.

25. Pupil ripples, staffing absencesThe atmosphere in the staffroom amongst teaching staff who haveretained their jobs is very good. After this stressful period of not knowingwhether there would be employment or not there is a sense of relief forsome. Unfortunately one member of staff is not so lucky and is still in theprocess of arranging to attend further interviews. This is very sadbecause this same teacher is the teacher who was a former pupil ofCentenary Primary School. We did not see this particular teacher on thisvisit today.

26. Equal Opportunities Implications (1)It is essential to plan school provision across theAuthority so that it isboth efficient and effective in the interests of all pupils.

27. Equal Opportunities Implications (2)When I stopped parents in the schoolyard to speak with them about theclosure a parent told me how sad she feels because she was a pupil inCentenery. Her little boy took some time to settle in the nursery and nowshe is worried he will be unsettled again when he moves to Livingstone.When I worked in a nursery in Liverpool, the nursery children did noteven take particular notice of my skin colour. I am a black Liverpudlianand I observed the nature of the younger child in the nursery intently.

28. Community Safety ImplicationsRationalisation and refurbishment of schools allow the most vulnerableaccommodation to be removed and other security improvementscarried out.

29. LocalAgenda 21 Statement (1)The provision of efficient and effective education is a vital part of servinglocal communities; inefficient use of resources is wasteful both ineducational and physical resource terms.

30. LocalAgenda 21 Statement (2)When we first entered the school there was the smell of old vanish fromthe natural wood floor. We noticed features such as the radiators andalthough they are old, are still in good working order. These radiators arethe original radiators used when the school first opened. In the pre-waryears the caretaker supplied the coal to all the school rooms.A shaft wasused to distribute the coal to different classrooms. Fireplaces had beenbuilt into each classroom to keep the rooms warm. In the hall two coalfires stood one at each end supplying heat during exercise.

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17. Echoes from the past (1)We ask the library staff if we can display photographs from the past to thepresent: a wealth of history on the life and times of all the teachers andchildren.A teacher wore a long dress with an apron worn over the dress.Obviously Miss wanted to keep her clothes clean.The design of theclassroomwas very basic: no drawings on the walls unlike today’s classroomswith their array of colourful pictures drawn by the pupils. In one of theseold photographs PE actually took place in the playground with no matsto cushion any falls.

18. Echoes from the past (2)When Derek and I are setting up the display boards, two families gatherround us and instantly recognise one of the teachers in the photographdisplay.A father and son looking at the photographs took great delight inseeing a photo of a teacher who teaches in his school. Word of mouthshould see more visitors come to Seacombe Library to look at CentenaryPrimary School photographs. We hope the few remaining staff inCentenary Primary will try to find the time to see the display: we don’tthink that some staff have seen all of the pictures on display.

19. Echoes from the futureBoth the Livingstone and Centenary sites are outside theWestWirralplanning restraint area for new housing. Should a site be declaredsurplus to requirements, it could be made available for other purposes,including the possibility of sale for redevelopment, subject to planningrestrictions and the regulations on the sale of school playing fields.

20. CentenaryVics Social Club 'not closing' /Tuesday 27th May 2008I wish to inform all members and visitors that CentenaryVictoria Sportsand Social Club,Wallasey, will remain open. Rumours are running aboutto the contrary, but believe me the committee is fully committed to theclub remaining at its present site.

Tom Brown,CentenaryVictoria Club,Wallasey. PS: One of our members,Mr Doug Sharkey, has written this poem called ‘CentenaryVics':

21. CentenaryVics (1)It's happening all over the landOur pubs and clubs all aroundAre closing their doors for the last timeAnd then being knocked to the groundMost clubs years ago to be sureWere chokka with people galoreBut now it's well knownthey just stay at homeWatchingTV by the score.Now I think I have said this beforeThe reason for this is obscurePrice rises, it's true,maybe stopped a fewAnd the smoking ban a few moreNow we've just heard some news we can't faceOur own social club isn't safe.

22. CentenaryVics (2)CentenaryVics,Wallasey, is in danger you seeSpeculators are viewing the placeCentenaryVics is a lovely clubAnd the people there are greatBut the thought that it may be knocked downIs hard to contemplateSo you CentenaryVics club members bewareWe may meet stormy weatherBut we'll beat the speculatorsIf we all stick togetherSo if you reside on Merseyside Past members, strangers tooGo to CentenaryVics inWallaseyIt's true that we need you.

31. Anti-Poverty ImplicationsThe redistribution of funding released by school reorganisation, incombination with theAuthority’s intention to realign the schools budgetto give higher levels of funding to schools with high levels of deprivation,as well as improved accommodation, goes towards raising aspirations andnarrowing the attainment gap for vulnerable groups.

32. Social Inclusion ImplicationsSchool re-organisation and transforming accommodation through thePrimary Capital Programme and other schemes, provides opportunitiesto promote joint agency work to promote co-ordinated solutions forpupils and their families.There is scope for community participationin the design process of any new school buildings, raising the school’sprofile within the community.

33.Tears as fight to save schools is set to fail: Liverpool EchoTwo primary schools are set to close after education chiefs said therewere too many empty seats. It’s a bitter blow for Centenary inWallasey,which this year marks its centenary.The move is the latest phase in arolling programme of planned closure to tackle plummeting pupilnumbers.Centenary will be replaced with a new nursery class at Livingstone.Mother-of-three Rachel Clynch said:“My lad has special needs and thisschool has made sure the extra support he needs is there.”Emma Robinsonsaid:“My kids will go to Livingstone.The worry is class sizes arealready growing.”

34. Two children playing in the playgroundI don’t see any outward signs of distress from any child but I have beentold by one of the teaching assistants that there is concern about two ofthe children in this school. One child has the condition known as scoliosisand her condition has noticeably become worse.This child is worryingabout her move to a new school in September. The second child keepscontinually asking about the move to Livingstone whenever she is withthis teaching assistant. All the teaching assistant can do is reassure thischild that she will be fine and will make new friends.

35. Parents chorus in the playground (1)Parent 1: Centenary has always been a good school, and it is terrible

that they are going to close itParent 2: We signed a petition to keep the school openParent 1: It was already decided what was going to happen

We had no say in the matterParent 3: My son took a long time to settle in Centenary he has really

improved in every aspect of his learning and now I am worriedthis forthcoming upheaval when the school closes for goodwill unsettle him.

Parent 4: It is terrible just terrible.

36. Parents chorus in the playground (2)Parent 1: How do the council expect teachers to teach knowing they

are losing their jobs?Parent 2: Why do we have to close our school it would be better

to close Livingstone.Their land is too small to rebuild on.

Parent 3: Our play ground is bigger and what about the amount of childrenin each class the school will have to think about class sizes.

Parent 4: Our children are used to having so much land to play on andnow the small school ground in Livingstone is supposedto accommodate two schools.

37. Parents chorus in the playground (3)Parent 5 I am sad about the closure and I wish the school was going

to stay open. I am nervous about my children moving to a newschool but I am looking forward to seeing the new school builtand how it will look. The positive side of things is that we willhave a modern school.

38. Parents chorus in the playground (4)Parent 8 Oh it is awful… I was a manager and I was made redundant

along with my staff so I know how all the school staff must befeeling. Especially the head of the school. My son keeps askingme what is going to happen and it is so awful when you say youdon’t know. The two councillors who conducted a meeting withall the parents could not tell us all we wanted to know.We justknew they were not aware of all that was happening. What wasso sad was the not knowing.

39. Merging staff culturesThe staff who have been accepted for employment with Livingstoneare unhappy about the lack of information from the head about theirtransition to Livingstone. A meeting was arranged between Centenarystaff to meet with the head to discuss this issue of no information abouttheir role, and the routine of Livingstone staff; but this meeting wascancelled before it began. Not a very good start for Centenary staffor the reputation of their new manager. It would be sad if the stafffrom Centenary Primary School were not valued in the same way asLivingstone staff are now.

40. Merging backroom culturesAnother thorn in the side of one member of Centenary Staff is officemanagement.Messages and letters have been sent to Livingstone ona regular basis and not acknowledged: this is very frustrating. The Centenarystaff member who mentioned the lack of communication in Livingstonewas so frustrated about this poor practice. This particular attitude madeher effort in her office at times seem pointless. I asked staff how they feelnow that Centenary Primary School is nearing the final days of closure.I am told they feel very frustrated about the ‘not knowing’.

41. Sense. NonsenseSpeaking with a mum and her husband at length and listening to theircomplaint about this move reaches always the same conclusion. ‘Whyclose Centenary Primary School when there is more room for thechildren to play in than in Livingstone Primary School?’ It does not makesense to move two schools to a smaller school with less land. When Ilooked at this school closure it makes no sense at all.

42. Nonsense. SenseCentenary Primary School is a brilliant example of a well built school.To still be standing after being built one hundred years shows us thenature of this buildings construction. Why demolish this school?The staff who work in Centenary have said that Centenary needs to beupdated: how much would it cost to upgrade this school? I don’t think itwould cost as much as building a new school with all modern amenities.If and when Centenary Primary School is knocked to the ground thecouncil should revert this land to playing fields for the local community.

43. The Last Days (1)Centenary is preparing to practice their end of term play. This is a sadtime for this school because their school name will change to Livingstone.Teachers and some of the children will move on to other schools. Supportstaff have been given new posts with Livingstone. I watched the rehearsalof Centenary play:Mr Singleton the music teacher is such an inspiration.One teacher said Centenary has been standing firm for 100 years.Whycan’t the powers that be reconstruct this school instead of closing it?I could not understand the logic of moving children to a smaller building.

Conclusion: Tiny does not mean immaterial

Behind these tiny stories,more complex narrative compete for attentionand recognition as sources of authoritative voice. The bigger narrativespull at the microscopic texture of school and community and familyrelations and the unravelling of that texture pulls on deep seated threadswhich pull elsewhere in our civil fabric: echoes and rumours of closureand melt down permeate the rest of the community. The loss of a nameis mirrored close by with the demolition of a local church and the slowseepage away of local sights, knowledge and identity: the local CentenaryVicWorking Mens Club has to announce it’s not closing in a letter to thepress, perhaps indicative of a microscopic flaking away of locality ofwhich the school is part of. These microscopic actions have macro effectswhich are unpredictable, chaotic, complex and only partially understood.

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44. The Last days (2)It is the end of term and the long summer holidays are here once again.Today is our last delivery and after lunch we will call in to CentenaryPrimary School to say our goodbye to the staff who have welcomed us into their school sinceApril this year. It has been a good journey for Derekand me although sad at times because teachers were forced to look forfurther employment with other schools. We were told today that ateacher has not been accepted for employment yet.

45. The Last days (3)The Head has come to the reception area and most staff are bustlingabout taking down pictures from the school walls. A support assistantexpresses how tired she is. It is all the uncertainty and stress and notknowing if she would find further employment. At least this member ofstaff can enjoy the summer break without worrying if she will beredundant.This will be the last day for year six pupils in CentenaryPrimary School and some staff are signing good luck in washablecoloured ink onto pupils school shirts.

46. The Last days (4)Specialist staff are entering the reception area expressing their bestwishes for the remaining staff in and around the school. All the colourfulartwork is removed piece by piece from the walls and all the interior looksbare. The atmosphere inside the school seems lifeless without colour andthe bare walls feel clinical. The staff have so much to do in such a shortspace of time.They have a week to clear the school of all the equipment.We convey our best wishes and prepare to leave. We walk up the stairwayone last time to see the office manager.We pass the teacher who has yet tofind further employment.

47. The School SongCentenary Primary School is an impressive building built in 1908 anddesigned by the artist and architectMrRolandwho also designed St StephensSchool inWallasey.This red bricked building has been rebuilt after partof the school that housed the nursery was destroyed during the 1914 war.Boys from Centenary Primary School were called to fight for freedom.In remembrance of these boys a verse from the school song mentionstheir bravery.

48. PlaytimeThere came a barrage of questions from different little girls. ‘Where do Ilive, and what is my name, will you come and work in my class’ after thosequestions were asked I was offered a rope to skip. Two girls used what isknown as a space hopper to balance on and skip with a skipping rope atthe same time.Their gross motor skills are excellent bouncing andbalancing without falling off this spacehopper.

49. PlaytimeThe boys play was football they ran at a pace but during play a disagreementbetween two boys occurred.This argument between two boys was overbefore this matter developed into verbal aggression.Other boys I observedstayed in the shaded area of the schoolyard amongst the greenery theywere talking and smiled at me as I walked by.

50. DCSF, Public Communications UnitSchool place planning is the statutory responsibility of the local authority(LA). Each LAmust strive to secure high standards, diversity of provisionand increased opportunities for parental choice. They must review schoolplace provision regularly, ensuring there are sufficient places to meet theneeds of the population. Where there are high levels of surplus placeswe expect LAs to take decisive action to reduce these, as maintainingexcessive surplus places represents a poor use of resources – resourcesthat can be used more effectively to support schools in raising standards.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Katharina Böhrke,Margaret Connel, Dr. LarsGormann,Anneliese Hanelt, Norbert Rademacher,Mandy Redvers Rowe,Professor Bernd Ruping, Prof. Julian Stern and all the staff and studentsat theTheaterpädagogische Zentrum (TPZ) Lingen for their support andinterest in helping make this work happen.

IV. Can you remember October 2000? Some closing conclusions

October 2000 was sometime before the recent Beijing Olympics whichstarted to see the fall of cultural barriers to the peoples and culturesof China; some time before the recent collapses of international stockexchanges and the falling of our exchange rates; and some time before11 September 2001 and the fall of those iconic towers in NewYork. Back inOctober 2000,Mandy Redvers Rowe and I were however in the process ofbuilding a higher education course in performing arts for disabled studentsentitled Sold Foundations.We designed and built a curriculum,we changedan organisation’s cultural habits, we recruited students, we started toconstruct a reputation for high quality innovative higher educationfor disabled people in the UK.

However, some years after, these attempts at building these new culturalformations came to zero.They too fell into the cultural dust of HigherEducation funding, organisational political desires and uninterestedpersonal ambitions which meant that the course was discontinued.We saw our work fall in the fraction of the time it took to build it.

The tidal ebb and flow of cultural realpolitik sometimes washes in greatopportunities to us as easily as it washes moments of potential growth andcreativity out to sea.Whether the tide is turning to take existing culturalopportunities away from us or towards us is unclear.There are currentlyno answers, no solid foundations we can be sure of.

However, if there is any opportunity to build on, it will be in the futurethat the students we have observed this week. In the cultural Olympiadwe are preparing for,we now have to pass the baton with care and attentiononto those students - but with the knowledge too that they might decideto run a completely different way around the running track.They may evenrun out of the stadium we have built for ourselves.We should anticipate,welcome and applaud this future shock. But we also have responsibilityin this scenario and some future jobs to complete before sitting back toapplaud the endeavours of those students.

We need to start dismantling the stadium we have built for ourselvesand which lock us into ways of thinking about disability which may haveoutlived their purpose.The social and medical models of disability arejust that:models.They do not represent disability perfectly - these modelshave their own imperfections, their own impairments and their own accessrequirements.There may be a third, a fourth, a fifth, any number of ways ofconceiving of disability which we can’t envisage as we continue to inhabitthe overpowering stadiums of the social and medical models.AsAlfredKorzybski’s dictum has it, the map is not the territory.

We also need to be instrumental in introducing new students to the job inhand: students who we have not encountered before in positions of powerand influence: students for whom disability is more than a subject on acurriculum and is more than occasional opportunities to act or sing orplay percussion.We need to recognise that for the foundations of ourwork to be destabilised, for the dialogues to multiply and for the work atFest Der Sinne in 2012 to be transformed, that a new cohort of culturalleaders needs to be identified, encouraged and challenged.These culturalleaders will be future directors,musical directors, educators,managers andproducers who have themselves direct personal authentic experience ofdisability and arts and media generation, production and communicationand who, like the students we have worked with and admired so much thisweek, can challenge us, their peers and their audiences.

I would like to invite you current cultural leaders to join us in the searchfor the new cultural leaders of the future, leaders who, perhaps like ourown family teenagers, will look at us askance in four years time and saywhat on earth did you do you think you oldies were doing?That’s not theway to do it…we’re going this way.And with any luck they will take our hardbuilt work off our shores and out to their own cultural oceans where newopportunities, different challenges and transformed conversations willlead to the Fest Der Sinne becoming a site for the world to visit, wonderat and to marvel at the achievements of all our young people: disabledand nondisabled, together, side by side.

The men’s group presented a non-verbal presentation in which the ‘king’- identifiable by his posture andmimed cape - issued control of his kingdomand subjects through the use of visible computer remote control whichhe wielded at random both at imaginary characters in the play and tothe audience in an apparent attempt to control their words and actions.This control was in vain though: as he continued his attempts at control,the two other actors - who take on the role of off-stage, stage managers,steadily removed parts of the set and his costume whilst he was apparentlyoblivious to their actions. Eventually his set and key costume elements -wooden blocks and scarf - were taken away from him and he was leftwith nothing apart from the ability to curl up, foetus like, on the stagefloor. The presentation ends in silence and finally, on applause, the actoracknowledges the audience and the presence of the two stage managerswithin it.

The performance was touching and regarded sombrely by the audience.We were left with a picture of a dying, reducing king whose influence andpower was steadily declining.We were encouraged to feel pity for him: afar cry from the usual portrayal of Leontes, the king in the ur-text, whois portrayed as a man who suffers from extreme jealousy which leadshim to lock up his wife (and thus brings about her eventual ’death’) casthis new born daughter into the wilderness and lose his son into the bargain.In this scenario, the text has been decentred from a performance intendedfor two actors playing within Shakespearian conventions, to a performancefor one solitary actor performing to an unseenmultitude of other charactersoff stage as well as two actors playing the roles of two stage managers.

The women’s group however produced a piece which was far morepantomimic in character.They produced a script which was performedin a graphic, comic style.A narrator announces characters who gestureor offer a few words at particular moments to reinforce the words of thenarrator.They played with theatre conventions of the stage curtain (byusing the black out curtains of the rehearsal room in a mock theatricalmanner) and stage lighting (by switching the overhead neon lights of theroom off abruptly at the end of the presentation).They bow together, asa company at the end of the performance with tongues firmly in cheeks.

The script they produced is as follows.

Schauspielerin: Es gab einmal einen König. Dieser König hatte eine sehrgute Königin. Doch die Königin gehörte einer feministishcen Bewegungan. Immer wieder schrie sie: Erhängt alle Ehemänner! Und ihr Mann, derKönig sagte: Du bist einTeil vom Nest voller verräterinnen. Er wart ihrsogar vor, der sahn sie ein Bastard, und nicht von ihm selber.Als eh ihreines morgens den Hals umdrehte, schrie er: Nimm den Bastard! DerSohn reif verstört: Ich bin nichts, bei diesem guten Licht!

Licht aus.

Alle: Besser!

In summary, both groups managed to significantly rewrite the Shakespearetext presented to them using the elements of story deconstruction describedpreviously.The text work particularly offered participants to use the eighthelement described: resituation: i.e the ability to find a new perspective, onethat resituates the story beyond its dualisms, excluded voices of singularviewpoint. Participants reauthored the story so that the hierarchy wasresituated and new balance of views was attained. They re-storied the textso as to re-present dualities and margins and thus scripted new actions.

Whilst this process took place over only a few hours on a Friday afternoon,it offers a number of possibilities that can be used in further text workshopexercises,particularlywith groups of participantswhomayhave felt traditionallyexcluded from participating in an integrated interpretation of aShakespeare text.

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In the final part of the warm-up phase of the workshop I ask participantsto identify a space in the room with which they felt comfortable in. I thenask them to listen to that space - to connect with it both physically andthrough their other senses - smell, touch, audio, visual or taste. Participantsare asked to immerse themselves in the space and listen to the stories thatthe space suggests to them. This process pays homage to the concept ofthe stone tape, the concept that inanimate objects can record and preservethe presence of living things. I then invite participants to share their storieswith the group. Some members agree to share, others decide to holdback from that process.

The purpose of these exercises was threefold: firstly for me to assess theskills and confidence in the group itself and to reach a judgement as towhat I could expect them to cope with; secondly to demonstrate thathuman beings have a deep-seated and innate capacity to generate storyfrom the most meagre of sources; and thirdly to begin to use some of thedeconstruction techniques that Boje and Dennehy propose, in particular:

Reinterpreting the hierarchy: writing a letter is frequently abouttrying to present a story from one point of view: introducing asecond point of view which distorts and attempts to force its owncontrol on the emerging narrative means that story writers areconstantly reassessing and reinterpreting the hierarchy theyare trying to establish.

Establishing rebel voices: the automatic letter writing exercise -especially in larger groups acts to deny the authority of theone voice.

Denying the plot: these writing exercises are designedto confound plot at all stages of its possible grip.

Tracing what is between the lines: constructing words from sixrandom words encourages participants to trace and generatewhat is not said by filling in the blanks and imagining possibilities,however ludicrous or far-fetched.

After these warm up exercises, I then present participants with two pagestaken from Steve Gooch’s Cut Shakespeare version ofTheWintersTale(attached in the Figure 4).Apart from the Gooch technique of presentinghis cut version of the play in a mix of bold and ordinary type face in thedocument, I provided no other contextual or explanatory informationabout the play. Participants claimed not to know anything about the playat all and a number of them professed difficulties with understandingthe language.This prompted a discussion about the status that Shakespearehas within the traditional literature canon and how this compares withthe place of Goethe in Germany. Students’ alienation from the text thusprovided a metaphor of disability within the group: in one sense studentscould be seen, if viewed through a medical lens, as having a deficit in thatthey had a lack of intelligence to grasp a text presented to them: in anothersense, if viewed through a social lens, the text had the effect of disablingthem as there were no immediately apparent mechanisms open to themwhich would assist them in accessing the text.

Example of these pages are shown in Figure 4. (Page 18)

However, participants were open to attempting to read the piece andbegan by identifying particular phrases - whether in bold or in ordinarytype - which caught their attention.These phrases were discussed andpossible meanings established. I confirmed for participants that therewas no right or wrong answers in this process.After some initial cautionin the process which I interpreted as participants wanting to know whetherthey were giving me the right answer or not, they continued to work onthe pieces in two groups: one group of three men participants, and onegroup of four women participants. The two groups then developed theirown interpretation of the texts which they presented back to an invitedaudience of other students after about 15 minutes preparation. 1.The stone tape hypothesis was proposed in the 1970s as a possible explanation for ghosts.

It speculates that inanimate materials can absorb some form of energy from living beings; thehypothesis speculates that this 'recording' happens especially during moments of high stress suchas murder, or during important moments of someone's life.This stored energy can be released atany given moment, resulting in a display of the occurred activity.According to this hypothesisghosts are not spirits at all, simply non-interactive recordings similar to a movie. (Wikipedia,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Tape [accessed, 13 October 2008]

Page 18 /Paper 2

FIGURES 1 - 3: EXAMPLES OF COMPOSITE LETTERS FIGURE 4 : SCENE FROM SHAKESPEARE’S THE WINTERS TALE

That’sEntertainment?How teachersrepresent theirwork withCP artists

This presentation refers to the workof the Creative School ChangeProject, managed by the Universitiesof Nottingham and Keele between2006 and 2008. The project aimedto explore how schools haveunderstood and mobilized CreativePartnerships (CP) to construct schoolchange of various kinds. To do so ittakes account of the relationshipbetween schools, CP regions andnational CP policy, and, centrally,looks at the processes throughwhich CP has become embedded,in a range of schools. The researchteam consisted of Pat Thomson,Christine Hall, Ken Jones, NaksikaAlexiadou, Susan Jones, Jane Mc-Gregor, Lisa Russell, Ethel Sandersand the author.

Its just one of the sad mistakes that sort ofsurrounds the arts - that it’s just entertainment…(Teacher,Acacia Primary School)

Redesigning the teacher:an über-teacher in the making?

At the national Creative Partnerships conferencein November 2006, a student film, System Up-grade, opened the conference in which threechildren are shown to visit various classroomsand encounter various clichés of 'old school'such as a teacher wearing a mortar board andthreatening a cane and classrooms composed ofdesks in rows.The children retreat to a basementand switch on a computer which provides variousquestions relating to what their ideal schoolmightlook like. In this scenario, the role of the teacherin elucidating children’s’ desires and needs isreplaced by a computer.The young people areoffered various pieces of advice by the computeron how to design space for learning (e.g. ‘the useof music is an aid to learning’) and how to thinkabout ‘resources’ which could be used in manyareas of the curriculum.The computer asks them‘who would you like to be taught by?’ and a comicsequence ensues which shows a prospectiveteacher being advertised for a teaching jobby playing out various roles (multitalentedsportsman, comic, dancer,musician).

They all agree, computer and humans, thatit would be useful to other skills to come intoschools to show different perspectives, offernew approaches to learning and provide arange of stimulating educational opportunities.Teaching will never go back to chalk and talkwas a commonly heard aphorism during thatconference, and indeed, during the researchfor this project, the implication being thatteachers may now be able to address manymore different learning styles in the classroomdue to the extra skills they have developed byworking with artists was often encountered.As artistcatalysed,über-teacher they are expectedto deal with every need, enquiry, learning style,attitude and behaviour. But is this the onlyscenario that teachers are faced with in theirrelationships with artists? Might other scenariosexist in which teachers are able to resist andsubvert the system upgrade which seems toflourishing within contemporary school cultures?

Page 20 /Paper 3

Discourse Power and ResistanceConferenceManchester MetropolitanUniversity, March 2008

This view is however contested by Hannon at the launch of FutureSightat the International Schooling forTomorrow conference in September2004, which, in presenting a description for educational reform thus:

Our goal is to improve the quality of teaching and learning throughoutthe system.We will do this by building capacity and providing flexibilityat the front line, backed by an intelligent accountability framework andby targeted intervention to deal with underperformance.(Hannon, 2004)

demonstrates the terms of current policy discourse about ‘reskilling’teachers, within Barber’s model of contemporary education reform,This model suggests that development has been characterised from ashift from uninformed professional judgement through uninformedprescription to informed prescription to informed professional judgement:informed that is by DCFS approved evidence-based research, rather thanby some notion of autonomous professional judgment (see figure below):

It is within these deskilling / reskilling discourses that CP was launched in2002.Charged with aiming to develop the skills of teachers and their abilityto work with creative practitioners, the success of the CP programme thushinges upon effective working relationships between school ‘insiders’, suchas teachers or teaching assistants, being established with ‘outsiders’ to thoseschools such as artists or other creative practitioners.Whilst the CP initiativeis significantly less prescriptive than the National Literacy Strategy or othernational initiatives, this lack of prescription has enabled a startling diverserange of practices to be established under the CP brand.This paper attemptsto identify the spectrum of practice that flourishes within that brandand discuss what effects different practices have upon the deskilling /reskilling agenda.

Alternatives to the skills obsessed agenda: why is this necessary?

The very diversity of the CP programmemeans that the clinically efficientmodel of the Hannon / Barber agenda only partially helps an increasedunderstanding in what’s happening with CP-encouraged relationshipsbetween teachers and artists. Other presentations of ‘teacher skills’ needto be looked at - cognitive as well as technical - and we need to exploreways in which they can help us understand this aspect of what Hannonchooses to call capacity building in education.

One problem we encounter in this search for alternative presentationsof teachers skills however is the tendency to view the argument about theshaping of teachers identities in starkly polarised terms, comandeered byeither academics or policy makers which leave little space for nuance orcomplexity.Alexander, for example, presents an extended pedagogy - acounter to whatmight be determined as a skills obsessed agenda - in which heargues that the teacher engages with a number of distinct but related domainsand values concerned with Children, Learning,Teaching and Curriculum.

Page 22 /Paper 3

Creative Partnerships: the policy terrain

The Education ReformAct of 1988 and subsequent educational policyreforms since 1997 have led to considerable contested discourses on theidentity of teachers. On the one hand, some argue that teachers havebecome passive, deskilled technicians, shorn of agency and professionaljudgement whose function is to ‘deliver the curriculum’; others see thesecontemporary reforms as the means to reskill teachers,making them ‘fitfor purpose’ for 21st century educational requirements. (Fielding, 2000;Fielding, 1996; Jeffrey andWoods, 1996;Hannon, 2004.)This paper intendsto explore the deskilling-reskilling relationship via a focus on the educationalinitiative funded largely by theArts Council, Creative Partnerships (CP).

This paper uses data drawn from interviews with head teachers, teachersand other education staff from 40 schools involved in the Creative SchoolChange project to identify how these policy movements play out on thedevelopment of relationships between visiting artists and resident teachers.It will demonstrate that a deficit model of the technicised teacher whichplaces the artist as a‘special one’ who can provide a portal to reconfiguredrelationships, enhancement of skills and elaborated expertise is commonplace in many schools.However, it will also propose that the CP programmehas led to an alternative model of teacher - artist engagement in whichteachers approach the prospective relationship from a position of strength,competency and agency.The CP programme doesn’t only reskill teacherswith techniques, it more importantly allows for - perhaps inadvertently -for teacher to reconfigure or rediscover their critical thinking capacities.

It places these findings in the context of work undertaken by Hall andThomson (2007), Ledgard (2003), Pringle (2002), Griffiths (2008), Galton(2006), Stronach et al, (2002),House (2000);Hextall, Gewirtz, Cribb andMahony (2007); and theTDA Professional Standards forTeachers (2007).This alternative model allows for the work of the teacher - artist relationshipto shift from ‘the sad mistake’ of mere entertainment to significantenrichment for all parties: educators, children and artists. It thus suggeststhat there now exists a significant space for change within school practicesthat have for a long period been subject to close regulation.

Redesigning, reskilling or deskilling?Playing out policy in the classroom

In referring to the article,Why No pedagogy in England? (Simon, 1981)in his article Still no pedagogy? Principle, pragmatism and compliance inprimary education (Alexander, 2004),Alexander argues that educationaldiscourse in English primary schools has tended to make pedagogysubsidiary to curriculum which means that teaching essentially hasbecome a process of judgement rather than:

the wider sphere of morally purposeful activity, of which teachingis a part, which we call education – teachers become technicians whoimplement the educational ideas and procedures of others ratherthan professionals who think about these matters for themselves.(Alexander, 2004: 11)

The concept that teachers have become more like technicians in theirpractice in contrast to a view of them as professionals echoes the viewthat teachers have become reskilled in their practice since the onset of theNational Curriculum in the later 1980s and the implementation of educationreforms since 1997 (Stronach et al, 2002; Fielding, 2000: 53; Fielding 1996,Jeffrey andWoods, 1996: 325,House, 2000).

He adds layers of context with their own characteristics, requirementsand expectations concerned with the nature of the school, policy, culture,self identity and history. (Alexander: 2004: 11 -12). In considering theseadditional elements in his extended pedagogy, he argues that this modelmarks the transition from teaching to education (Ibid: 12) and refersto further conceptual elaborations such as in the field of teaching,recategorising this concept as frame (boundaries set by space, pupil,organisation, time, curriculum, routines, rules, rituals); act ( defined bytask, activity, interaction, assessment) and form (for example, the lesson).

Clearly, pedagogy is a somewhat more complex enterprise than may berecognised by those who reduce effective teaching to ‘what works’, or ‘bestpractice’ lessons downloaded from government websites.(Alexander, 2004: 13)

His disdain for those who espouse effective teaching through adoptingwhat works and following best practice is further articulated by Saunders:

…what works is a matter of discussion and debate, not simply of data;what works is a value statement not simply an empirical statement… whatworks for whom, with what resources, under what conditions, with whatimpact on other groups, with what unintended consequences, and whatcost / benefit ration’ is a rather less immediately amenable question than‘what works’. (Saunders, 2004: 10 -11)

However, whilst coupling disdain of what works with the concept of bestpractice may provide the solace of an rigourous, intellectually coherentspace, it may not be of much use to the struggling Newly QualifiedTeacheron a wetTuesday morning in a Sunderland school when faced with anemotionally distraught young child who has just seen their mother walkout of the nursery class for the first time,who perhaps has little conceptionof when they are likely to see her again and is faced with the sight of anactor role playing the wolf who’s about to dismantle the houses of the threelittle pigs. What works in this case to represent Saunders, is no longer amatter solely of discussion or debate but is highly empirical, immediate in itseffect and of the moment. Years of training, CPD or contextualisation maybe leached away for the teacher in that single, first felt moment of anguish.

Luke however provides some useful indicators as to how theoreticiansand practitioners may be able to begin to describe a settlement in whatconstitutes effective artist and educator pedagogical practice:

Profound and sustainable educational change and innovation requirethat we move beyond a search for a ‘correct’ and accurate meaning andpractice of pedagogy from a less causal and linear model of educationaleffects to an ecological model that explores the complex embeddings andmediations of teaching and learning within cultures and discourses,systems and everyday practices. (Luke, 2006: 3)

What Luke’s ecological argument points to is that pedagogy is a living,dynamic concept which changes according to culture and context, and isnot an immutable doctrine which is something to be guarded from attack.Given the flux of cultures in the schools we have observed, pedagogicalconsiderations of artists and teachers working together need to be fluidenough to respond to the changing environments they are operating within.This paper now sets out to explore the ecologies of teacher artist relationshipsin CP-encouraged programmes and identifies the potential substrates fromwhich deficit, deskilling and technicising models of teachers identities canbe resisted and transformed into models of agency and delf determination.

The artists are coming! Expectations, desires, hopes and wishes

The prospect of an artist coming to work in the school can be an ambiguousprospect for those host teachers. Arts practice can be perceived as frivolouspractice which whilst it may offer entertaining divertissements in the shortterm, offers little value to the mainstream curriculum in the long term.Artists themselves are frequently viewed ambiguously. Cautionary talesof artists using schools for their own artistic or financial benefit abound,mythic stories of artists working with no regard for children or teachershaunt classrooms and the casualties of those short term experiencesare quick to relate the risks taken in classrooms which backfired onboth children and staff alike.The question of whether arts practice is aquestion of enrichment or entitlement is a question which is thrown intosharp relief by the insider - outsider relationships which Creative Partnershipprojects establish.

In this project, schools motivations for engaging artists to work with werevariable, complex and contradictory. Some teachers saw the engagementwith CP as little more than providing them with the case to re-positionthe arts further up the internal school agenda than had been previouslyallowed; some artists were seen as extra help in the classroom, with noother function than to provide ancillary crowd control mechanisms forover stressed teachers. In some cases, the instrumental nature of artistsand arts practice was seen as providing a panacea for dysfunctionalstaff relationships, brought in to create a family feeling and psychologicalbenefits for children - the constant refrain of increased self esteemand confidence from several teachers points to CP artists working withemotionally impoverished children and staff; the walking wounded of theschool corridors whose desperate existences are provided with spiritualsustenance through their interaction with the iconic, catalytic figure ofthe visiting artist. The visiting ‘creative’ is seen as offering the portal toskills, learning, funding and a better life for all.

However, this is not the whole story. For every teacher who sees an imminentsaviour entering the staff room early on aMondaymorning, there are otherperspectives which have emerged from this research which indicate thatrather than adopting the role of needy, compliant and passive aggressiveobject of the latest government initiative, there are pockets of resistanceto that stereotype which lead to more equitable, sophisticated and longerlasting effects and consequences. The roots of that resistance can be foundin the cynics in the staffroom who witness the arrival of the Mondaymorning messiah with suspicious, distrust and doubt:

NA, who is our catalyst…. came in and engaged with the children inthe school… the first time she came in to assembly, and actually taughtthe whole school, children and adults, a song in a way that almost tookpeople’s breath away… it also needs to be said that during the time thatAngeline has been in the school (it) has been through some difficult times,in that we have a dispute with the National Union ofTeachers going, aquite serious dispute including strike action, pickets on the gate…I think Angeline, in a way was viewed by some people with suspicion.(Head teacher, Baytree Primary School).

The viewing of NA with suspicion in this instance became coupled to aresponse which perhaps stems from resistances to changes which arisefrom the implementation of other government policy directives:

I think the suspicions… probably on one level it was, well, is this personsent here to spy on senior management to see what we are up to?... otherattitudes are a determination that it wouldn’t work.. instead of lookingat it as an opportunity… it is just something else we’ve got to do anddon’t want to do… (Head teacher, Baytree Primary School).

KNOWLEDGE POOR

1980’sUniformedprescription

1990’sInformedprescription

2000’sInformedprofessionaljudgement

1970’sUniformedprofessionaljudgement

NATIONALPRESCRIPTION

PROFESSIONALJUDGEMENT

KNOWLEDGE RICH

The surprise here is not that this programme is about enhancingemployability; the employment and economic agenda of CreativePartnerships has always been evident.The irony in this model is that theprotagonist who is offering a model of employability are the artists whoseworking practices are more erratic and less stable than those of the teachersthey work with.Although Griffiths develops her argument that anapprenticeship model most closely reflects, and is more educationally valid,learning through creative practice she also highlights several ambiguitieswhich arise from the seemingly straightforward process of an artist workingwith children in a classroom:

The children are not learning to be artists; they are not studying acurriculum focused on producing professionals.Yet, like apprentices,they are expected to observe and take part in practical activities. It is notsurprising if there is ambiguity about what kind of learning is going on.(Griffiths, 2008, in publication)

So perhaps this is where the limits of the apprenticeship model areto be found: the concept of the master whose working practice is to beemulated is frail given the nature of the ‘master’s’ working practices; the‘apprentice’ is in a learning space which they have not intentionally chosen;the pedagogy of artists and teachers in this model is thus the becomingof compliant future employees or free+lance individuals who work forno one organisation but who are engaged as and when required within avolatile and unpredictable market place: a trainee urban creative who, torefer to Peck: can not only cope with, but positively revel in, this environmentof persistent insecurity and intense, atomized competition (Peck, 2005:764) or trainee cultural entrepreneur who, according to McRobbie:

becomes his or her own enterprise, sometimes presiding over two separatecompanies at the same time… (and for whom…) social interaction is fastand fleeting, friendships need to be put on hold, or suspended on trust andwhen such a non-category of multiskilled persons is extended across awhole sector of young working people, there is a sharp sense of transience,impermanence and even solitude (McRobbie, 2002: 519 - 529)

The militaristic overtones of the free+lancer are echoed particularlystrongly by the artist, OK, working at Silver Birch High School:

I tend to use people who work in the industry. I charge a lot for what I do.I mean CP rates are CP rates but all my guys are more commandoes: theywork in the industry as well as teach as well as have the street respect andthe ability to speak at street level to the kids. So that’s why I charge a lot.I only work with very few people because I find it hard to find commandoesin this field. (OK, artist at Silver Birch High School)

and the presentation of rough and tough, rugged commandoes engagedperhaps in a war against (educational) terrors is found elsewhere in othersecondary schools in which artists, or creatives, are described as embeddables;and in one particular case,due to the large number of them over a particularweek, an army of embeddables:

CP has also provided us with lots of materials and an army of embeddablesand they’ve been coming into the school with project lighting teams and, atkey points during the start of the projects we’ve had huge amounts of inputfrom schools creatives.This week, for example, there were probably up to adozen people in here working in the ECC area: some of them were tryingto resource us; doing some joined up planning for teachers and makingsure we were getting our hands dirty doing some of the projects that we run.(Teacher, Sycamore Comprehensive)

Page 24 /Paper 3

However, suspicion, secrecy and stealth metamorphosed elsewhere as alearning tool for children who are struggling with their reading. InAspenPrimary school, the artistAM developed the SecretAgents project whichrelied on children keeping the purposes of the project secret from otherchildren and teachers for its efficacy:

if you make something secret and hide it from someone; it generates anawful lot more of interest doesn’t it? (laughter) If you say, ‘Come and seethis, come and see this’, people go ‘oh’…. the fact that you’re not showing itmakes people more interested to see it.(Head,Aspen Primary School)

First contact, first relationships: from community to society

I was very much into the arts and when CP was first introduced to schoolsin Sunderland, it was introduced by the arts advisors and schools that wereinvolved in the arts in a big way were invited to apply, and I applied, largelybecause I thought here’s £20,000 for the arts in my school.(Head teacher,Acacia Primary School)

The head ofAcacia Primary assumptions about the introduction of CP toher school were a common feature of many teachers initial responses whenfaced with the potential huge investment that CP offered: an opportunityto reinvigorate struggling arts practice in their schools; the chance to welcomeskilled artists into their classrooms, the possibility of reprofiling the arts inthe school and enhancing the school’s reputation to prospective parents.Many artists too saw CP as a potentially longer termmeal ticket which wouldprovide more regular income than they were accustomed to, a chance todevelop new arts work and call the aesthetic shots of how teachers andstudents would respond to their imaginations, endeavours and creations.But, as the head of Mimosa Nursery School pointed out in his assessmentof how artists first encounter schools:

“…you know you’re self-employed and you work in your way, you do yourown thing, you wear what you like, you look what you like, you think whatyou like and you behave how you like and that’s sort of not how schools work."(Head teacher,Mimosa Nursery School)

The artist’s condition of self employment generates a working culture where:

autonomy and self-expression are highly prized, (and) many practitionersprefer to remain outside of the employee job market and pursue freelanceor self-employment.(Burns Owens Partnership, 2006: 8)

and this pursuit of the freelance or self employment condition gives rise toa series of potentially interesting unexpected consequences.The OnlineEtymology Dictionary describes the origin of the term ‘freelance’ as beingsynonymous with the term "medieval mercenary warrior" (i.e. free+lance)– all three aspects of which might come as a surprise to artists working inschools – particularly with its implications of working for financial gain,irrespective of the ethical aspects of the contract. Playing the role offree+lancer also leads a particular type of pedagogical relationshipbetween artist, teacher and student - that of the apprentice, althoughthis is not as straightforward as the term ‘apprenticeship’ might suggest.

Griffiths andWoolf in 2005 who researched anApprenticeship modelin arts, creative and cultural education and its impact on learning on allparticipants in a Creative Partnerships project inNottingham.Their proposalof apprenticeship model is where everyone learns from everyone althoughthis is not a model of apprenticeship that traditional ‘master - apprentice’relationships would recognise. The use of the term apprenticeship aswell as begging the question ‘who is the apprentice?’ also suggests thatthe Creative Partnership model being tested in Nottingham had as muchto do with with importing a particular work ethic into the school’s learningspace as it did with the development of creativity of its host children: inthis instance, the work ethic being inculcated being the culture and practiceof the free+lancer.

The head of the school was equally enthusiastic about the value of thearmy of embeddables in her school.Whilst many schools still refer toartists in residence, fewer speak confidently of creatives in residence andyet in this school - a BE specialist college - have made an explicit connectionbetween creativity and entrepreneurship and in doing so generated the roleof entrepreneur in residence (who is also part of the embedding process):

the entrepreneurs in residence that we’ve had – I mean on occasions we’vehad thirty crawling all over us on one day which is just amazing and somuch so now because they are totally embedded.We’ve got a laughterconsultant with us and she came on our residential as well so she gotinvolved in the evening activities that we did and because of that she gotto know the staff and I think that is fundamental to success.(Head, Sycamore Comprehensive)

The artist warrior comes home:the hankering after relationships of Gemeinschaft

This is not intended to give the impression however that a significantnumber of CP schools are engaged in a surreptitious process of employingcheap, cut price labour which can be summonsed at will and who are castas opportunistic,mercenary,militaristic warriors.Heaven forbid. Even free+lancers want to come in from the cold after a while and feel safe in thebosom of an organisation who have their best interests at heart and whosubscribe to developing relationships in which artists and teachers workalongside each other, in which artist and teachers collaborate to reframestarter and plenary sections of the 3 part lesson plan, in which childrenare able to develop group working skills as a result of teachers and artistsmodelling collaboration, in which the relationship is seen by both partiesas a partnership not an affair in which artists become the children’sfriends and which in some cases teachers in the school might be seen tobe falling in a long term permanent love affair with their visiting artist:

She is just outstanding.We just have a fantastic relationship. It was like,I guess, some of these people that pair folk up you know, relationshipagencies and so on. Because it was just a marriage meant to be.Mandy came into school and…I mean she’s a very astute lady who soonsaw what potential there was and I think there was a huge amount ofpotential here with the staff that we’ve got and the children, the parentsand the governors are all very, very supportive. She was able to tap intothat. She was very tuned in to what we wanted, where we wanted to go….the honeymoon period isn’t over….. I think we’re going to make our silverwedding. In fact I was with AM recently.There was a head teacher andproducer morning at one of the hotels last week, and we were actually talkingabout sustainability because of course, you know, this isn’t going to continueand we’ve got to look at ways that this can become firmly embedded inour school. (Head,Aspen Primary School)

In short, establishing relationships within discourses of human relationswhich are borne of gemeinschaft: a theme endorsed by Fielding in hisdiscussion on the development of professional relationships in schools:

Sergiovanni argues for a professional ideal which is made up of fourdifferent dimensions which sit more comfortably in the move towardsGemeinschaft.These are:

1) a commitment to practice in an exemplary way;2) a commitment to practice toward valued social ends;3) a commitment to the ethic of caring; and4) a commitment, not only to one's own practice,but to the practice of teaching itself.

(Sergiovanni, 1994 in Fielding, 1996: p152)

But relationships borne of Gemeinschaft are perhaps bothsimultaneously desirable and notoriously elusive to establish; andthis is no less true of relationships which are established in schools duringthese times of performative mania and the accompanying ever present urgeto compete, to achieve and to come as high up the league tables as possible.Relationships between artists and teachers which arise from conditions ofGesellschaft on the other hand are no less susceptible to pressure, tensionand strain:

AL and AN moved towards becoming artists in residence and they startedto do some work in the corridors because that was the only space we hadleft to put them in… we looked at our relationship and I think that we’vetried to make them fit in with the school and the pace of school and actuallythat was less productive.They couldn’t keep up with the pace of school;their visits couldn’t keep up with the pace of the school and, I think, that’swhen our relationship became strained.(CP Co-ordinator, OakTree Primary School)

In times of stress and strain, of pain and pressure, the consequence oftaking risks, of exhibiting risky behaviours and of chancing your armwith an artist with whom you have had no prior experience can backfire:

OR created a piece of music which aimed to capture the student’s sense ofbelonging and we took a dance group over there to perform.And his briefwas to impact on creativity so that it would spread in the school and he hada small impact with a small group of students but (he) was taking risksand asking the children to take risks which were well outside of his remitand the children realised this and they knew it wasn’t right. And theyflagged this up and OR was withdrawn and Creative Partnership werevery good in supporting us through that withdrawal actually and veryquickly we then moved on to other projects (Teachers,Ash College)

Talk of embedding practice, of impact, of the short term casualtiesof gesellschaft determined relationships is never far away, even in theoccasional urban primary school:

If you walk in you’ll see that star and constellation outside – it’s that claypattern tile. It was one of the first things we did and we had a very talentedpotter and ceramic artist come in and she cut out all of the stars the childrenmade some marks on it and then she painted it and then she fired it andshe came back and stuck it on the wall. So the children had almost nothingto do with it…. . I’ll be interested to know, when the research comes out,how much long term impact there has been and what the casualties havebeen in terms of those short term experiences: have they had any real effect?(Head, Birch Primary School)

I came into the school, I’ve been involved with CP as a creative advisorright from its inception, so with one hat on I’ve been about trying to developcreative practices in schools as an advisor…..so that’s with one hat… I’veworked as a creative artist, creative practitioner, dance artist, call it whatyou will… I’m now a sponsored Governor by creative partnerships…I’m the governor who became the chair of governors… I became the firstnational sponsored governor for the arts council and creative partnershipsworking in a school….So in a way my relationship with this school is actuallyquite unique. (AJ, dancer, governor, RowanTree Primary School).

AJ’s recognition of himself as occupying a unique, special role in the schoolis an interesting phenomenon, reiterated in other schools with otherartists who also wear many hats; although forAJ, this can be problematic:

And for me personally, to know which hat I’m wearing at any one point,can sometimes get a little bit confusing. So basically I forget about thehats I wear, forget about the hats, work out what you think is right at theright time.(J, dancer, governor,wearer of many hats,RowanTree Primary School).

Frivolously referred to within the project team as the Mourinho Effect(the Special One), the concept of some artists achieving special, uniqueand indispensable status in some schools has emerged in other settingstoo.At CherryTree Primary for example, their artist,AM:

has continued to work with us and he’s been absolutely fantastic. He is ourlynchpin to everything and is always looking out to make sure that we arealright as a school. (Head teacher, CherryTree Primary School)

This is not solely a phenomenon of primary schools either: the specialcreative agent is also to be found in some secondary schools:

I’m very clear that none of this could happen without EJ because he isabsolutely unique. As far as I’m concerned he’s an extra member of staff.He loves our school; he loves the kids and he loves working with us.(Head, Chestnut High School)

and the head is determined that EJ’s special place in the school shouldbe maintained, even if funding from CP is eventually winds down:

We have to find a way of being able to continue working with EJ…. thework that we do with EJ is very important and he is part of the fabric ofthis school and the governors and I are making financial provision tocontinue working with EJ when the funding runs out from other sources.(Head, Chestnut Hgh School)

Would that teaching staff could be assured of such attention and devotion!Interesting in its insistence on the role of a particular kind of individual,within a particular kind of set up, this privileging of a special one is perhapsa natural consequence of the deficit discourse of teacher’s professionalidentity and status. The Special One discourse has taken the de-skilling /re-skilling debate to an uncomfortable conclusion: the teacher is redundant,surplus to requirements and can only operate effectively if they are coupledto the efforts and energies of a special, free, lancer: an entrepreneurial,quixotic force for change and transformation. The collegiate relationshipwhich was emergent during those early, first points of contact hasbeen replaced with dependency, anxiety and a focus on sustaining theunsustainable.Asked what the school would do if EJ was run down by abus one day led to silenced interviews by both the Head and EJ himself.As Mazzei suggests:

The silences are pregnant with with what is to be said but cannot be said,just yet, of the ought-to-be-said, but that which is unutterable due to thepossible repercussions, and the what-is-said, the meanings conveyed moreloudly in silent speech.(Mazzei, 2007: 35)

Page 26 /Paper 3

Emerging relationships, hybridising identities

The gag may be waving the flagThat began with a mystical handHip hooray, the American wayThe world is a stageThe stage is a world of entertain...ment...(That’s Entertainment, Deitz and Schwartz, 1952)

If the world's a stage and the men and women merely players, then ques-tions concerning what play artists and teachers make with each other andwith their children and what players they become, emerges as a theme ofinterest, an unexpected consequence of desires to understand multidisci-plinary approaches to developing new talents in the classroom.

Artists have appeared initially to be artists but are later seen to be per-forming like teachers and in some contexts are asked to operate - howeverbriefly - as proxy head teachers; some teachers lay claim to the identity ofteacher and yet claim to think like artists; some practitioners admit to see-ing themselves as teacher, artist and learner. This project, in its desire tounderstand how teachers represent their work with artists from the CPstable, has found a complex,multilayered and contradictory state of af-fairs when it comes to trying to assess how the identities of artists andteachers play out together; and indeed whether there is any significantdifference between the two identities at all.

In GenderTrouble, Butler argues:There is no gender identity behindthe expressions of gender; ... identity is performatively constituted by thevery ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results. (Butler, 1990: 25) whichGauntlett interprets as gender is a performance; it's what you do at par-ticular times, rather than a universal who you are. (Gauntlett, 2007). Dayet al (2006) also challenge the concept of identity as being intrinsically sta-ble and argue instead for its intrinsic fragmentation, arguing that teacheridentities may be more, or less, stable and more or less fragmented at dif-ferent times and in different ways according to a number of life, careerand situational factors’ (Day et al, 2006: p.601). If as Butler suggests theprofessional identities of artist and educator are chosen and performedthen the ambiguity which arises from these choices means that the re-quirement to distinguish between teacher and artist is perhaps a futileproposition.

Men in tights: a case of mistaken identity

Amore useful stance might be to accept the phenomenon of multiple,contradictory appearances and the interplay of masks, destabilisingchoices and shifting identities which arise from differing performances,depending on the cast members being performed with and the audiencebeing performed to.AJ, a dancer at RowanTree Primary school exemplifiesthis case of shifting identities leading to different performances particularlyclearly. From being introduced into the school as a dancer, he was able todevelop new dance techniques which he was able to apply to other schools:

There’s another technique that I developed here which is actually workingwith elastic…. a huge elastic band which means we’re all connected, allpart of the circle and same group.That’s a lot of fun.We do movementbased to music and the routines we do with the elastic…which (nowinforms) my work everywhere else.(AJ, dancer, RowanTree Primary School)

His role since has become extended with ever increasingly elaboratefunctions: he became creative advisor to the school, sponsored governor,chair: a veritable cornucopia of roles, functions, identities and headspaceswhich required a wearing of a multiple number of hats, perhaps far morethan could have been conceived of by deBono’s 6Thinking Hats strategiesfor learning:

Reskilling or deskilling: or relearning and reconceiving?

Whilst the Special One may be suitable for some schools in some contexts,its valorising the impact of one individual - whose immortality, after all, islikely to be no more heightened than any other lesser mortals who work inthe school - not only puts at risk any possibility of sustaining any advancesschools are able tomakewith the support of CP,but its discourse of deficiencyalso fails to recognise the real advances in teacher skills, knowledge andcompetency that have working within CP programmes have unearthed.

The value of artists has not solely been in the arts expertise or techniquesthat they introduce to teachers and children although the acquisition ofarts based technical skills which have immediate application is frequentlywelcomed. It is not even in their supposed innate ‘creativity’. Some teachersrecognised that the artist is not necessarily any more ‘creative’ than theteachers whose skills they are supposed to be updating or the children whosedisconnection with their schooling they are meant to be re-establishing.RA, in describing a less than satisfactory experience with a visitingmusiciannot only identifies the absence of creativity in the visiting artist butsimultaneously demonstrates confidence in her own creative capabilities;a significant aspect of artist teacher relationships where discoursesare frequently about ‘creatives’ working with teachers in schools (whopresumably are defined as ‘non-creatives’ by association) are commonplace:

they experienced some of the language of a different culture, but theydidn’t go into the art or the creativity, it was: this is what you are goinggo do, it wasn’t creative and I feel that, I know I am a creative person bythe type of mess that’s in here, it doesn’t bother me all this mess, because

I know that underlying it is a very strong system and I’ve got things filedin different colours and in different places and the organisation andplanning is there… I felt that as a creative person myself that the creativitywasn’t coming out there – it was too structured.(RA, teacher, ElmTree Primary School)

The more significant value of artists working with teachers is powerfullyexpressed in terms of broadening teacher’s critical thinking capacities;particularly with regard to matters of space, time and communication.BE at Walnut First School makes the connection between the physicalspace that dance requires (and the development of dance motor skills)and the mental space that emerges when working together with dancerswhich allowed for children’s cognitive development:

We had Dance and Rhythm… that definitely developed my approachto teaching dance and giving them more space. It made me realise thatdance gave them more freedom and space. So, in terms of skill base,I think our skill base had improved. And mental space – so they wereallowed more time to develop an idea.(BE,Teacher,Walnut First School)

Teachers at Cedar Special School are able to conceive of their dance andphysical theatre work in communicative and emotional literacy terms:

I have done a few assemblies in front of Key Stage 2 where I haven’tsaid anything for the whole of the assembly: I’ve just done it in mimeand engaged the children and did something and they’ve come up anddone something…. It’s more than mime….. But we are also seeing thedevelopment of emotional intelligence…. in the school to give them thelanguage in order to explain how they are feeling.(EM andVY, teachers, Cedar Special School)

Dance in education has become significantly more than mime andelsewhere, teachers are begun to be seen as more than teachers.As the CP Co-ordinator and Head at Birch Primary acknowledged,in referring to their thoughts about how to recruit personnel for theCP programme:

We were kidding ourselves.The people whowere doing it were the people who were here.(Head, CP co-ord, Birch Primary School)

In short, the Special Ones were the teachers: and it needed experience ofoutside perspectives, languages and techniques for that realisation to set in.We've been doing this stuff for years is another common aphorism amongstteachers interviewed in this project particularly those who trained beforethe 1990s. It is important that those memories of earlier expertise, artistry,creativity and specialness are not forgotten: and in some cases, it is theartists that are responsible for re-kindling those memories in teacherswhich they did by offering new perspectives, reigniting critical thinkingand nurturing new conceptions of space, time and the curriculum.

Finding a happy medium:the soil science of growing effective artist teacher relationships

Before that we decided to make a little garden area, so that was our firstproject.We learnt a lot of things – it was a challenge, a much greaterchallenge than we had anticipated... Basically, we didn’t know what wewere doing – we had our expert, practitioner, in and we didn’t alwaysunderstand each other, again we wanted to involve too many children atthe initial onset, we thought we’ll use two classes to create this gardenand you can’t really manage 60 children with one adult and onepractitioner and the rota system wasn’t ideal so we learnt about thenumbers, practicalities… also soil is so heavy.(Head teacher, PineTree Primary)

Whilst the Head of PineTree Primary is forthright about the difficultiesher school faced with the first artist on their first CP project, her allusionto the soil of the school garden being so heavy may as easily refer to theheavy soil of the curriculum, timetable and other determinants whichmake up the cultural medium within which the school, its teachers andchildren are trying to grow and flourish. Lightening a heavy clay soil withthe chalk of enrichment activities, increasing its porosity and extendingits capacity to prevent nutrients being leached from its medium throughintroducing cultural changes is a demanding job for any educationalhorticulturalist; and yet many teachers have developed mechanismswhich are able to resist the leaching out of pedagogical influences whichthey sense have arisen in recent years due to the ever present centrallyderived dictations of centralised government policy.This holds true forcertain aspects of CP experiences for teachers too.

AR, a teacher at ElmTree Primary, was described earlier as providing acounter voice to the discourse of ‘creatives’ visiting schools to set aboutworking on ‘non-creative’ teachers.Her resistance comes into sharperinto focus in the example below where the artist was trying to developchildren’s awareness of life and social roles in anAfrican village:

She said – oh no you are hunting, but of course they haven’t anyexperience of hunting or seeing hunting – so of course when she saidyou are hunting, they were just chasing round after each other – she saidoh no, no, no – you have to go down low and be quiet and of course theydidn’t know and she was expecting too much knowledge of them…(AR, teacher, ElmTree Primary School)

She continues to describe how she reacted to the cultural assumptionsthat the visiting artist was bringing to the classroom which she saw asbeing in opposition to the values she was aiming to inculcate in her class:

… the other thing that really riled was she said the girls you all have tocook and clean the house – boys you go off and do the hunting – and Ijust thought NO – that might be the way you are used to in the way youwere brought up in Africa but that is NOT what I want to do for positiverole models in this class, where I have got three quarters boys and onequarter girls. I want the girls to have positive role models, not that theyare the little girls that stay at home.(AR, teacher, ElmTree Primary School)

Through their increasing capacity to resist, challenge and critique practiceand policy, teachers’ capabilities to embrace change, welcome new ideasand test innovative models of practice starts to emerge.

Well the enthusiasm in our school for new and innovative ideas astoundsme really but having said that I like new ideas. I never think: this is it.The staff in the school do embrace new ideas even if they might come backand say they are not sure about that one. But they will embrace new ideasand have a go at things and we do have a very open forum so that ifthings aren’t working then we will re-evaluate them.(CP Coordinator – ElderTree Primary School).

Whilst on one level this may not be particularly surprising, the experience atL Primary is a welcome reminder that the requirement for creative, innovativeand experimental thinking is a core requirement of any teacher’s calling.Whilst many teachers will cite a consequence of CP as giving thempermission to be creative again,many teachers have rejected the offer ofpermission (and its corollary of submission) but demand admission to thedecision making processes, the aesthetic judgements and the criteria forwhat constitutes an effective artist and teacher relationship.Teachers knowwhat they want and what they need and are increasingly capable andskilled in asking for it:

If I’m going to be absolutely honest I said to Creative Partnerships that weknow what we want and we know where we can go and get it so can wejust get on with it? I think that if we hadn’t had the ideas I would probablyhave turned to them a bit more but we have, ourselves, had a clear idea ofwhat we wanted.(CP Coordinator – ElderTree Primary School).

From object to subject; from adoration to agency

Alternative artist teacher relationships, new skill sets and increasedunderstandings in what’s happening with CP-encouraged relationshipscan be encouraged by artists to develop in a manner which refocuses theattention from the artist to the teacher and children. BeechTree HighSchool for instance employed an architect,OR, as their creative practitioner.OR emphasises that his approach to the school was being effective as he wasengaged in a process of asking questions, and not necessarily focusingsolely on his design techniques as such:

The one thing that I think I am good at is responding to any given stimulusand responding creatively to that and bouncing ideas back and lateral –or eclectic – thinking is probably my forte. So it’s design in the broadestsense because we haven’t actually achieved any spatial designs yet.We are considering concepts and ideas.(OR, architect, BeechTree High School).

He felt he was more use to the school as an eclectic thinker as opposedto being an architect although he also stressed that his professionalcapabilities are intimately linked to his cognitive predispositions:

for me, as an architect, my eclectic thinking is part of my architectural designand the way I approach projects. Other architects may not be as free thinkingas I am so, yes, it’s probably more to do with my broad range of interestswhich cover outdoor activities, music, film, literature, whatever. As well asmy ability as a designer which, at its crudest, is solving problems in somemanner to also having an interest in how space affects people and how tobest use the space that you’ve got.(OR, architect, BeechTree High School).

Whilst the experience in BeechTree High was tentative at our stage ofresearch, a more fully developed alternative model had emerged at OakTree Primary School in Derby.As the CP Co-ordinator points out inreference to the work the school undertook with um architects,

Page 28 /Paper 3

AR’s resistance is also noted in terms of how she has receives the playingout of the national curriculum:

the art QCA which was awful, and is awful… year 2 art is the most drycurriculum you can ever imagine, there is no talk of an artist there, it’slooking at line…(AR, teacher, ElmTree Primary School)

She subsequently claims to subvert the guidelines by surreptitiouslyintroducing the work of Paul Klee into how she has been teaching drawing:

‘scuse me – looking at houses is how the buildings speak to us – mother nature,designer, yes don’t put it like they’ve written it in there, but go out there wecan look at fur, patterns, camouflage, lines in trees and stuff…. look at it,look it, evaluate it, no give them a pencil, let them draw it, they should betrying to evaluate it, trying to do it. But you see, how I surreptitiously gotKlee in there… he does these line drawings… he goes over a little blip andthat’s what the pictures are that went up this morning…(AR, teacher, ElmTree Primary School)

AR’s desire for shaping the creative practice in the school also stems froma perceived lack of knowledge of her and other staff ’s skills by a formerhead teacher:

the final thing I really wanted to get rid of was music express, which wehad a head who was not a music specialist brought in who couldn’t domusic and because she couldn’t do music she assumed everybody couldn’tdo music, so instead of doing your own thing, which at least three of uswere really comfortable about doing.(AR, teacher, ElmTree Primary School)

The assumption of an absence of teacher’s knowledge or skills by theirown colleagues is exacerbated where that assumption of absence has beenexpressed by visiting CP practitioners.Mulberry Primary School in Leicesterspent some considerable time in dialogue with its CP partners who theyperceived as assuming that there was a dearth of drama expertise in theschool - with the consequence that relationships between all parties becamefractious until CP was able to accept that the skills present in the schoolcould be complemented by CP and not subsumed within a more acceptablepractice which was being proposed by the practitioners.The theme ofteachers developing confidence to tell visiting artists of the kind ofpartnership they wanted is emphasised at other schools.At ElderTreePrimary, teachers are additionally note the skills that the artist themselveshave acquired through the partnership,

But we also learnt and expressed to any artist that came into school thatwe wanted it to be a partnership in the classroom. It wasn’t them comingin and taking a session: we wanted them to come in with us and to do itvery much together.To be honest when the artists left us they were moreskilled as well because they were skilled in managing children and welearnt from the skills they gave to us so it was a very good partnershipand we started to see the benefits of that straight away because the teacherand the artist were working together.(CP Coordinator – ElderTree Primary School).

As the work at ElderTree Primary developed, the school started to call theshots as to what they expected of the residencies and how they expectedartists to conduct themselves. The free+lance mentality was increasinglycalled into question:

And we did a lot more planning; a lot more communication and we madesure that people were here on time and things like that because you reallyneed that in a school.(CP Coordinator – ElderTree Primary School).

because they know the size of our classroom and they’ve seen the problemswe have in getting all of our staff to sit down together so they were sayingthat actually the school just doesn’t belong to the children.Now that’s quitea strange thing for us to comprehend because most of the teachers actuallyfeel that the school is for the purposes of the children and we forget thatactually it’s our workspace and we need to have places in this which arejust for us. (CP Co-ordinator, BeechTree Primary School)

In this instance, the artists, muf signal that ownership of space belongs toteachers, not just children.The artists have become empowering agentsas opposed to catalytic agents, recognising teachers as active subjects withdesires, preferences, tastes, choice and agency - not merely appreciativereceptacles of wondrous experiences.Here, the artists have offeredconceptual tools for staff to use and wield in their own favour, not simplythe cudgels of absent-technique which they all too frequently hit themselvesover the head with. um continued to extend their model of empowermentby giving work back to the school for further provocation:

the document that muf produced went to theThinkTank and theThinkTank actually were in charge of making the decision about what wewere going to concentrate on in schools so they had the document;read it and then, as a group, we decided to focus on the space issueand that led to things like the yellow ribbons; the proposals for the newentrance and to further work on the playgrounds…. I think it wasprobably the very first time that they’d been actually asked theiropinions about things.(CP Co-ordinator, BeechTree Primary School)

In this school,muf have amongst many other outcomes, changed theperception of teachers of teaching. They offered new perspectives, skills,tools, vocabulary and questions and worked with the creative imperativesof teachers and children, not in contradiction to them.

Concluding remarks

Two lovers kissing amongst the scream of midnight -Two lovers missing the tranquility of solitude -Getting a cab and travelling on buses -Reading the graffiti about slashed seat affairs -I sayThat's Entertainment,That's Entertainment.(That’s Entertainment,Weller, 1980)

Artists coming into a school enter a context in which their presence -whilst benignly intended - stimulate a range of responses from theenthusiasts whose motivation is about raising the profile of the arts inthe school, through to suspicion as a consequence of a culture of scrutiny,evaluation and judgement. Knowingly or unknowingly, artist become therhetorical cloak for government policy which professes on the surface tobe about re-skilling but which frequently masks a deep per seated distrustof the identity and purpose of the teacher; a distrust which presents itselfas the an agenda of re-skilling but perhaps is more closely aligned to anotion of de-skilling, deprofessionalisation and technisicing.

However, perhaps a reskilling process can produce the unexpected outcomeof generating pockets of resistance to other governmental policy agendas- the CP programme doesn’t just reskill teachers with techniques, it moreimportantly allows for - perhaps inadvertently - for teacher to reconfigureor rediscover their critical thinking capacities : from a stance of compliant,submissive, passive aggressive acceptance of control policy initiative, the‘reskilling’ agenda of the workforce produces a counter reaction in theemergence of a resistant, questioning and active agent for local policydevelopment; sustainability in this unexpected outcome is perhaps theflowering of pockets of critical resistance which can lighten the heavysoil of curriculum, timetable and school improvement agendas.

References

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Burns Owens Partnership (2006) Study of the Impact of Creative Partnerships ontheCultural and Creative Economy Report of Findings London: Creative Partnerships.

Butler, J. (1990) GenderTrouble NewYork Routledge

Day, C., Kington,A., Stobart, G. and Sammons P. (2006)The personal andprofessional selves of teachers: stable and unstable identities, British EducationalResearch Journal,Vol. 32 (4). pp: 601–16.

Deitz,H. and Schwartz,A., (1952)That’s Entertainment,Metro Goldwyn Mayor

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php,a accessed 21 May, 2006 19.33hrsGMT

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Fielding,M. (2000)The Person Centred School. FORUM,Vol. 42 (2). pp. 51-54.

Griffiths M.,Woolf F, (2005) Report on Creative Partnerships NottinghamAction Research,NottinghamTrent University

Gauntlett, D. (2007) Creative Explorations: New approaches to identities andaudiences. London: Routledge.

Griffiths M., andWoolf F. (2008) Report on Creative Partnerships NottinghamActionResearch,NottinghamTrent University British Educational Research JournalVol. 34

Hall, C. andThomson, P. (2007) Creative Partnerships? Cultural policy and inclusivearts practice in one primary school British Educational Research JournalVol. 33,No.3, pp315 - 329.

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Jeffrey, B. andWoods, P. (1996) Feeling deprofessionalised: the social constructionof emotions during an OFSTED inspection. Cambridge Journal of Education,Vol. 26 (3). pp. 325-43.

Ledgard,A. (2003)What are the Essential Ingredients of a Creative Partnershipbetween anArtist and aTeacher? London:Animated.

Luke,A. (2006) Editorial Introduction:Why Pedagogies? Pedagogies:AnInternational Journal.Vol. 1 (1). pp1-6.

Mazzei, L.A. (2007) Inhabited Silence in Qualitative Research:putting poststructural theory to work NewYork: Peter Lang

McRobbie,A. (2002) ClubsTo Companies: Notes OnThe Decline Of PoliticalCulture In Speeded Up CreativeWorlds. Cultural Studies,Vol. 16 (4) pp.516 - 531.

Peck, J. (2005) Struggling with the Creative Class. International Journal of Urbanand Regional Research,Vol. 29 (4). pp 740-770.

Pringle, E. (2002)We did stir things up: the role of artists in sites for learning.London:Arts Council of England

Saunders, L. (2004) Grounding the democratic imagination: Developing therelationship between research and policy in education. London: Institute ofEducation,University of London.

Simon, B. (1981)Why no pedagogy in England? In: B. Simon &W.Taylor, eds.,Education in the eighties: the central issues. London: Batsford.

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WhenHerbertmet Ken:Understandingthe 100Languangesof Creativity

This paper suggests a series of hypotheticalconversations between educationalists who havebeen engaged with developing arts and culturaleducation and creativity in our schools and aimsto establish what impact this may have had inour classrooms.The purpose of this virtualconversation is to look through gaps in theliterature, to read between the lines of the officialdocumentation and attempt to divine the humandilemmas and personalities which forged thosetwo key documents - and in doing so, to identifythe other, hidden influences which have shapedthe terrain of creativity discourses. I have donethis by interviewing many members of the twocommittees and by listening - or reading -about the voices that were in their headswhen they deliberated about the prospectsof “all our futures”.

Page 40 / Paper 5

English in Education/Research Journalfor the National Association for theTeaching of English, 2007,Vol 41 No.2.

The quasi-apocalyptic views that Robinson has expressed over the last25 years are not new and his is not the voice of the lone prophet in thewilderness. Robinson himself is an echo of earlier voices in the Englisheducation system broadcasting much the same message of the need toredress the place of arts education within the curriculum. For example,at the conference held by the Joint Council for Education throughArtin 1957,HJ Blackham concluded:

We believe that neither the contribution of the arts to general education,nor the place of general education in the national life has yet been properlyrecognised, and we want to form a body of enlightened opinion drawn fromall walks of life which will bring general public opinion to share ourconviction and see our vision of the role of the arts in general and therole of general education in the life of our industrial mass society(Blackham,1957: 62)

The Gulbenkian report refered back to this conference, insisting that‘It is all the more poignant… that this is a struggle in which we are now,even more pressingly, engaged 20 years on’ (Robinson,1982, p17). Now, afurther 25 years on from that report, it is telling that variations on the sametheme are being heard from arts educators not just within the UK butaround the world.

There is no disguising the fear that is driving this debate: the fearof non-achievement on the world economic stage; the fear of childrenbeing excluded from their place in a democratic society; the fear of thedominance of a schooling regime which privileges the acquisition ofnarrow, instrumental skills over the nurturing of all the whole humanbeing.The debate has been conducted within a political context in whichpublic services – including education - are redirected from a cultureof service to a culture of scrutiny, characterised by performativity.Performativity is defined by Lyotard as a technology, a culture and a modeof regulation, or a system of 'terror' that employs judgments, comparisonsand displays as means of control, attrition and change. (Lyotard, 1984).

So - how might artists and teachers working in education inoculatethemselves against this virus of performativity, whose DNA strands arecomposed of the language codes of target setting, outputs,managerialcontrol, unitary learning,monologic learning and risk avoidance - theemotional response to which is the generation of fear which,has beenspreading through the body of education since the early 1950s?

One starting point might be the remembrance of our histories, thevalorisation of narrative and the acknowledgement that we have beenhere before. Subjective memory might prove a worthwhile adversaryof performativity or, at least, provide a site for resistance.

Telling the stories

Let us bring our thinkers on creativity and culture together in an imagined- yet very real - space of the Bonnington Hotel in Belgravia, London.

Here’s what the website says of the Bonnington Hotel:The Bonnington Hotel in Bloomsbury was opened in 1911 by LordStrathcona and is located in the heart of London's attractions. For today’sbusiness and leisure traveller, we offer 247 en suite rooms including 32recently opened executive rooms and suites. Our extensive facilities include14 newly refurbished conference rooms, 4 elevators, 1 restaurant , 1 bar areaas well as internet cafe and fitness room spread over 8 floors.

Traveller Ramon Lambert said in his on line review:The service at the hotel was very kind, the room was perfect and the breakfastvery good. I would rate Bonnington with 4.5 points out of five.

What would have induced me to score the hotel more highly, had I stayedthere, would have been an on-line review of the Bonnington Hotel whichrecognised it as a place for catalysing significant developments in creativity,arts and cultural education in the UK.

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Brief background

TheArts in Schools: Principles, practice and provision was publishedby the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 1982; it was followed some17 years later by All Our Futures Creativity, Culture and Education,published by NACCCE, the NationalAdvisory Committee on Creativeand Cultural Education. Both documents can trace their heritage toHalf Our Future, a report of the CentralAdvisory Council for Education(England) published in 1963 and chaired by John Newsom, which, in itsturn pays homage to the work of Herbert Read and his 1957 conferencereport for the Joint Council for Education throughArt,Humanity,Technology and Education.

In setting out their argument to reposition arts education (in 1982)and creativity and cultural education (in 1999) in the curriculum, thedocuments argue from the position that as we live in unprecedentedtimes, with unprecedented challenges, it is essential that educational policymakers and practitioners look to a future which commits to the centrality ofarts or creative education in the development of school cultures and curricula.

In the Gulbenkian report, these ‘unprecedented challenges’ revolve aroundpatterns of employment, the relationship between education and societyand the nature of cultural change in Britain.These changes are heightenedby various ‘threats’ of ‘falling school rolls, cuts in public expenditure andsome of the demands of educational accountability’ (Robinson, 1982, p3)and are characterised in a language of despair: ‘actual provision for thearts in schools, so far from getting better, is facing serious deterioration’(ibid, p6); ‘nationally, the situation is bleak and becoming bleaker’ (ibid, p7).

All Our Futures, published by NACCCE in 1999 and chaired by KenRobinson, starts in a similar tone. ‘Education faces challenges that arewithout precedent’ (Robinson, 1999, p5) which it repeats, (‘Educationthroughout the world faces unprecedented challenges: technological,social, and personal.’) (ibid, p7) and then elaborates upon: ‘the benefitsof success are enormous and the costs of inaction profound’. (ibid, p15).From its first pages, the report argues that the need for creative educationis predominantly economically driven:

In 1997, the Government published itsWhite Paper Excellence in Schools.It described education as a vital investment in ‘human capital’ for thetwenty-first century. It argued that one of the problems in education is thelow expectations of young people’s abilities and that it is essential to raisemorale, motivation and self esteem in schools.The main focus of theWhitePaper was on raising standards in literacy and numeracy. But this will notbe enough to meet the challenges that face education, and theWhite Paperrecognised this… It emphasised the urgent need to unlock the potential ofevery young person and argued that Britain’s economic prosperity and socialcohesion depend on this.This report argues that a national strategy forcreative and cultural education is essential to that process. (ibid, p5)

Robinson has continued to communicate this message of unprecedentedchange in education and the link to economic well being.At a key noteaddress to an international conference inHolland, for example,he expressedhis view that the debates on creativity and the relationship of arts within thecurriculum had a global significance: ’the truth is that every educationalsystem represented at this conference, every education system everywhere,is facing a revolution.’ (Robinson, 2002).

Welcome to the Bonnington Hotel Belgravia

Up in the loft, competing teams of hotel architects argue vociferouslyabout design: form, function, aesthetics, values,money - the air is bluewith competing prints for the refurbishment of the hotel.Architects Descartes Spinoza wave a modernist plan, based upon theperfectabllism of the human enterprise, at the hotel managers and showhow progress can be engineered to a desirable end.The firmWordsworthSchiller, on the other hand, conjure up a romantic blueprint and attemptto take a match to the work of Descartes team, setting the loft alight for afew brief minutes until the fire extinguishers are set off and reduce thearchitectural drawings to soaking, smouldering, burnt fragments ofplans and visions.

In the kitchen, one old chef,Vail Motter, is cooking up recipes forThe School Drama in England leafing through Caldwell Cook’s 1917cook book,The PlayWay, possibly one of the first English text bookson the roots of drama in education. In the dining room, JohnHodgson,writer of the seminal text book Improvisation, plays with his breakfast,pretending it’s a train set.

Upstairs, Ken Robinson, a young PhD student, dishevelled and with awild staring look in his eyes - a stare, troubled by his visions of the futureand the lack of sleep he’s getting on account of his adventures down inChelsea at the Royal CourtYouthTheatre - is in a small bedroom and sits,hunched on the side of his bed banging hard on the portable typewriterwhich is perched on his lap.

Dear Diary. The inhabitants of Room 1959 just can’t keep it down.All this fuss between drama and theatre in schools. Self expression orvocational training, individual development or cultural identity, theyjust can’t make their minds up.

Cut to:

One of the as yet unreburbished conference rooms, Room 1959, is hostingan aggrieved collection of drama teachers, theatre specialists, fledglingtheatre in education activists, writers and politicians. Peter Slade writerof Child Drama, at the forefront of the schism between drama and theatresteps out into the corridor to get some fresh air, away from the intensearguments which stem from around the water jugs. Echoing down thecorridors he hears:

drama is about promoting children’s self expression, about enhancingtheir ability for self discovery, not mere training for jobs in the theatre!

But when you say it’s about developing an individual, what kind of individual do you mean? An empathetic, aware one presumably, who’swell behaved?

Theatre’s not just about the individual - its also about developing asense of cultural identity, not just an individual in abstract - this romanceof the individual - pah!

Over in the infirmary, JohnAllen,HMI for drama - soon to be a memberof the Gulbenkian committee which producedTheArts in Schools over20 years later - administers elastoplasts and bandages to the walkingwounded in an attempt to heal the wounds which have surfaced fromthe deep ideological split which is being witnessed downstairs in theunrefurbished conference room.

Dissolve back to Ken:

They’re not even sure how much is going on, where it’s going on, who’sdoing it, why and how.Whether its been going on since the Greeks or isthe next best thing since Sputnik.They’ll be fighting it out in the corridorsnext if they’re not careful.This alleged difference in schools between dramaand theatre is misconceived - it’s selling kids and their teachers short.I know it’s part of this continuing syndrome of separating feeling fromthinking but it gets on my nerves.

He opens the drawer of his bedside cabinet and next to Gideon’s Bible hefinds a dusty copy of Half Our Future -A report for the central advisorycouncil for Education by JohnNewsomwhich he picks up and leafs through.The cabinet nearly topples over at this point so he hurriedly replaces thebook,making a mental note of its title in the process.

There’s a knock on his door. It’s a party up from the University downthe road - Lynne McGregor and MaggieTate from Room 1977 ready fora good night out, complete with whistles, blowers, party hats and kazoos.They open a bottle of gin, leave a bundle of paperwork on Ken’s bed - thedraft of LearningThroughDrama for the Schools Council DramaTeachingProjects - and asks if wants to accompany them to see the latestArnoldSchwarzenegger film, Pumping Iron. They have a bit of a thing aboutbody builders it seems.

Ken stares at the paperwork and reluctantly lets Lynne and Maggiego their own way.He has a lot of writing to catch up on.

Dear Diary. Its about time someone did a survey. Better be me I suppose.

A Call toArms: Room 1982, Bonnington Hotel

A charabanc from the Gulbenkian Foundation draws up outside the hotel.Peter Brinson, Gulbenkian group leader, lets his enthusiastic bunch offthe coach, some of whom wander from the main group once in a while -their talk is rich with the excitement of children, young people, the arts,schools, education. Barking out instructions, he ticks them off his list witha flourish as they enter the hotel.

Peter Brinson - ex-tank commander. Fought against Rommel as desert rat.Author of Ballet for All. Royal Ballet. Inveigled Peter Newsom, EO ofthe Inner London Education Authority to prepare a report about arts inschools. A pre-emptive strike on the political agenda. Gulbenkian fundit.Don’t write it art form by art from - locks it into a structure that is alreadyknown, people will read their own chapters - which they’ll then findwanting.We’re on a barrel roll - going in two directions simultaneously.Wonderful stuff. Don’t need to talk about definitions - or what arts is.Can discuss it without defining it. We can talk about this without sayingwhat we’re talking about.That’ll keep the buggers on their toes.

Whilst the group radiates warmth and mutual affection, outside the coachthe air is chilly. JohnAllen peers nervously out of the bus, looking up atthe sky for signs of inclement weather. In the foyer,Marjorie Glynne Evansof Middlesex Polytechnic and John Stephens of ILEA have struck up aninformal musical ensemble with their pal, John Paynter, away on a longweekend fromYork. Together they compose music for cutlery, hotelfurniture and wine glasses and perform to an appreciative, gatheringaudience who are wowed by their ingenuity, technical skill andcompositional awareness.

Once the coach has unpacked, the tour guides steer the Gulbenkian partyto Room 1982 - another partially refurbished conference room.The groupscribes - Peter Brinson, DavidAspin and JohnAllen - collect suggestionsand ideas from the coach party and passing hotel guests who pop their headaround the door to see what all the noise is about.

The energy is good humoured but not uncritical - waves of opinion washaround Room 1982 about the style of their book / manuscript - should itbe for future academics? For current politicians? For the guests in thehotel lobby who could do with some guidance on how to find their wayaround this hotel?They agree to allocate tasks as necessary and also onthe need for one clear authorial voice.When Ken Robinson wanders infrom the corridor looking for the trouble makers of Room 1959, who stillcan’t keep the noise down, they hand him the portable type writer.

1This particular approach would not have been possible without the support of contributors fromboth the Gulbenkian and NACCCE committees who gave their time, interest and support. In par-ticular I would like to thank Professor DavidAspin,Marjorie Glynne Jones, John Stevens, Profes-sor Lewis Minkin, Lindsey Fryer, Professor Susan Greenfield, DameTamsyn Imison, Clive Jones,Sir Claus Moser, Professor Helen Storey and Sir Ken Robinson, for their generosity and time.

Rejoice was the rallying cry for years to come after the events of 15April,1982 - but whether this was to rejoice in the conquest of the FalklandsMalvinas, the future formulation of a National Curriculum and the optionalstatus the arts had in it, or the rise and rise of OfSTED and its self confessed‘too naïve, too idealistic, too gullible English teacher’ Chief Inspector(Woodhead, 2002) - depended on which side of the megaphone youwere standing on.

Fast Forward…

Rolling up to the Bonnington, the NACCCE coach pulls in smoothly,noiselessly opens its front passenger door and a dazzling collection ofpeople spill out into the street: Dawn French, Lenny Henry, ProfessorSusan Greenfield, Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Claus Moser, Professor KenRobinson: the education cognoscenti, from all walks of life - media, arts,universities, business. Autograph hunters gather on the pavements onthe look out for their favourite celebrity.

The last member of the group walks in alone, dumps his bulging suitcase,manuscripts packed in tightly.He signs his name, avoids the lift and setsoff up the stairs to his room on the 9th floor. Professor Lewis Minkin hasarrived.Helen Storey meets him on the way down; he shares some thoughtsabout death with her in the stair well and continues his lone journey upthe hotel stairs.

Lewis enters the refurbished conference room to find it has been decoratedin the style of a court room.He joins the other 18members of the NACCCEcommittee and the Gulbenkian group.They are joined in the public galleryby other longer standing residents of the hotel - Johann Pesatlozzi stareshard around the court room, taking in all around him; Friederich Froebelcomes bearing gifts for the jury but has to leave them outside in the corridor;MariaMontessori follows,muttering ‘education of the senses then educationof the intellect’ under her breath.An irascible Johan Fichte, swearing andcursing, tries to make his way to the centre of the court but is firmly heldback by Bertrand Russell who banishes him to the back benches of thehotel court room. In the dock is seated Ken Robinson, surrounded byvolumes of his and others’ life work.To his left sits the judge, Sir HerbertRead; to his right sits the jury: hotel gardeners, porters, cooks and variousancillary staff, all listening to the prosecuting barrister, who is in full flow:

Members of the jury, I put it to you that the work of the NACCCE committeewas misconceived and subsequently ignored.This was the work of a valiantand well intentioned individual who subsequently spun a career for himselfas the Robinson Road Show, intent on travelling the globe to extol the featuresof his own thoughts and opinions about creativity. Your worship, I suggestthat committee members felt marginalised, that what they said didn’t fitinto what civil servants wanted; that they were the unwitting recipients ofa governmental process, arising from a political view which knew that if itwanted to bury something - in this case, the call for enhanced creative andcultural education in our schools - that they simply need set up a committeeand ask them to write a report about it. It was a recipe for inaction.

The defence lawyer leaps to her feet.Objection your honour. A committee of this calibre would have seenthrough that tactic within the first few minutes of walking through thehotel doors.Whilst we know that the announcement of the process camesomewhat out of the blue,,it was welcomed: it was clear that the twoSecretaries of State wanted to be responsive to claims that the curriculumwas being narrowed and that teachers were turning into technicians.The Rt Hon. Blunkett was particularly frustrated at the long shadowof the national curriculum - and this work was an attempt to offsetthis pressure.

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There’s suddenly a flurry of activity downstairs in the hotel lobby.Lord Gowrie,Minister for theArts, has iwandered in off the streets,claiming to be looking for somewhere to sleep - his £30,000 per yearsalary is proving impossible to live on in London and he needs somewhereto put his head down.He’s directed up to Room 1982 and spends anagreeable time with the Gulbenkian party. In return for letting him hangaround them for a few years, he agrees to take their work to the House ofLords so that his mates canmutter a few important words about the state ofschools these days, how standards are slipping, how people are increasinglyilliterate and that something has to be done about it forgodssake.

The party set about their task with renewed enthusiasm and bunkerthemselves into room 1982, not leaving it until their task is complete.An exhausted Ken Robinson emerges into the daylight on 15April andtakes a taxi to the House of Lords to hand over the manuscript to LordGowrie. Driving up to parliament is more difficult than usual though.The paparazzi are out in force, all of Gowrie’s mates are queuing to getinto the House of Lords.A couple of black limousines with tinted windowsjump the queue of their lordships and Ken gets a glimpse of MargaretThatcher applying her lipstick and rouge in the backseat of a limo.Over on theThames, a battleship is loading up with young, fresh facedrecruits, many of whom have just left school, dispirited, disengaged butwho’ve flocked to London from the cotton towns of Lancashire, the miningvillages ofYorkshire and the car showrooms of theWest Midlands in orderto get a bit of action, to get a bit of meaning back in their life ‘down south’- by which they don’t mean the wine bars of Clapham Common but theswell and gun smoke smell of the SouthAtlantic.

Within the next 20 minutes - because that’s all it takes - the House of Lordshear about how theTask Force has been sent down to the FalklandsMalvinasto regain our sovereign territory - an adventure which will eventually resultin 255 British and 649Argentinean deaths. The House is packed to itsgunnels - and after hearing about how war has been declared on the SouthAtlantic, they settle back to hear the reflections of the Gulbenkian partyin its report,TheArts in Schools - Principles, practice and provision.

Ken wends his way back to Room 1982 and relates the story.The coachparty agree that the presentation of the report to a full House is a seminalmoment in the history of arts education - but can’t agree whether its seminalbecause it will be sidelined and forgotten in the light of the war, or seminalbecause it will be remembered and acted upon in the light of the war.One way or another they can agree that theThatcher governmenthad a significant role in the development of arts education in England,although they are unclear as to whether this is by accident or design.

John Stephens speaks to some waiting, tetchy reporters outside the Hotel:Thanks for attending this press call today. We’re from a mixed background, specialists from all arts disciplines and educationalists who’vegiven up our time for this work.We believe there’s a social imperativeunderlying the work of arts educationalists - and consequently a clearpolitical agenda. Let’s say from the start that there’s an artist inside everyone.Full stop, non-negotiable…

Yes, we know there’s need for basic skills in our schools - we’re not talkingabout a carefree, laissez faire attitude to children’s development here youknow - listening skills are important to everyone not just musicians youknow… did you hear that at the back?

Look, the point of all this is about the arts in our schools OK? And we’reat the beginning of this potentially huge development in creativity in ourschools so just give us a bit of time and space and we’ll show you what wemean. Creativity?What do we mean by creativity?Well, that’s obviousisn’t it? Rejoice! Next!

The prosecutor blinks.A Canute like attempt I would suggest my Lord. With the time scale beingso short, and everybody being so busy the fact is that some things becamevery difficult and only a few of the members helped with the writing of thereport.This wasn’t a committee: it was more like a collection of dazzlingpeople, with only five and six of them at any one time contributing andwith many of whom hardly turning up at all.

The defence is irritated.Objection your honour - this is irrelevant - in the final analysis everyonetotally approved of everything that went in.

The prosecutor looks over his spectacles down his nose at the defence.Everyone? Including Professor Lewis Minkin?

The defence looks momentarily uncomfortable.

That was a very interesting relationship and not something to be made anissue of. Professor Robinson had to sift through so much evidence.The finalreport needed a clear voice.They couldn’t all have written it, it would havebeen nonsensical. Besides, they all saw drafts of the report and knew that amajor source was Lewis Minkin who provided an original definition ofcreativity and much of the theoretical work on creativity and its links withculture - the intellectual muscle if you like. The fact is, it was a multifacetedgroup, and made a big effort to go beyond the standard classroom curriculumand to think outside the box; it was composed of very interesting peoplewho looked beyond the 3 Rs. But it was known all along that it was onething to be multicreative – it was another to know what to do about it andhow to reach out. This was the ghost in the machine if you like.

The prosecutor returns to his papers.My learned colleague is correct in that the major issue is not who wrote itbut how the language of creativity was contested and understood by thecommittee’s members.This contest was apparent when some membersbrought in un-thought through assumptions that it was all about thearts or a return to the values of pre-1980s education - which it wasn’t.The group as a whole had difficulty in connecting to the debates aboutstandards or demonstrating a respect for the National Literacy Strategyor showing a willingness to build upon it.This reflected an elephant inthe room if you like - the beast of poor standards and an unwillingness toacknowledge that many children had received a raw deal from schools beforethe 1980s.

Sir Herbert Read raises an eyebrow.Ghost in the machine? Elephant in the room? Smacks of airy fairy,emotional, strategy dreaming on a whim and a prayer - not an objective,rational way of determining policy. Hardly a way in which to proceed is it?

He winks at the defence barrister.The prosecutor takes a deep breath.Quite so my Lord.My point here is that the need to see creativity as widerthan arts practice, coupling as it did the scientific and artistic claims onthe concept, contributed to a tendency to replace the word ‘art’ with ‘creativity’in the debates: which itself led to the diffuseness of the report.Whilst it istrue that there were eminently respected scientists present there was still astrong arts bias in the team which meant that there wasn’t a specific languageof understanding creativity which was common to and used by all membersof the committee.There was only one common word - creativity - and oneword does not a language make.

The danger is that because it was not more specific about what creativitymeant, the committee found itself having to deal with questions about thewhole of life, when what it needed to do was ask questions about education.It needed to ask questions about schools, curriculum and teaching methods- these had to be its central tasks. Its lack of specificity meant that it tried tobe all things to all people and it lost focus.The result was a report withhundreds of non-prioritised recommendations – so it was not particularlyhelpful to government or to curriculum formulation.No one recommendationis more important than another; everything relates to everything else.What were the actions for ministers?Where were the three things that weremore important than the other 160?

It was, as I’ve said before, a recipe for inaction. As a government report, itdied on its feet the day it was released. In summing up, I put it to you thatthe legacy of All Our Futures was nothing more than a means for peopleto consider, reflect upon and discuss creativity in education - and that ithas had no impact on schools, on children, on teachers, on the very heartof our educational project.

At this point, the members of the public gallery express their dismayloudly and leave their benches. Some attempt to knock down the wallsof the recently refurbished conference room.One draws on the walls fungus-like filament threads out of a glorious garden landscape, others postnotes and pictures of significant moments and phenomena - the smallgarden city of Creative Partnerships; new curriculum drives with titles suchas Energy: Auditing natural energy flow of teenage girls and their teacher to createa perfect working week; Eye and I - space to explore authentic human emotion;Wonderland:When chemistry, design and culture collide; Creative lab; Ideas thatcan change the world. Another staples the QCA scheme of work – Creativity: findit promote it to the wall; another sellotapes the Creativity and Learningprogramme of the National College of School Leadership next to it.

Someone graffitis the word ‘literacy’ on a wall and some-one else scrawls‘creative’ over the top of it. Some-one else scribbles above it:what do wewant?And and we want it now under it. Someone draws a story boardentitled The Priesthood of theTeachers in which a group of adults who dragtheir knuckles along the floor (labelledAOTS - adults other than teachers)are welcomed into a cartoon school by teachers whose favourite armchairsare burning in a school playground. At this point Ken Robinson leapsfrom the dock, throws open the conference doors and ushers inArnoldSchwarzenegger, Governor of California,muscles gleaming in the weaksummer sunshine, waving two large cheques above his head, both writtenout to ‘the children of California: theirArts Education entitlement.’One, stamped with CAPITAL INVESTMENT across it, is for $500m;the other, stamped with REVENUE across it, is for $100m per annum.

But what gathers most interest - from judge, jury and barristers alike -is the graphic representation of the destroyed school building;moribunddue to lack of use, lack of interest - and lack of people.A title is printedneatly underneath:what’s left in the ground when our memory fails us.

Visions of the Future: how Sir Herbert Read might have summed up

Over the city of Cologne, where once we left the bones of eleven thousandmartyred virgins, our air force on Sunday morning dropped about thesame number of bombs. I listened half consciously to the sound that reachedme here - to the twittering of birds and the voices of children playing in thegarden and tried to realise the meaning of these distant events.On the plainsof the Ukraine two immense armies had fought to a temporary standstilland counted their killed and wounded. In Libya hundreds of armouredvehicles, a triumph of human skill,manned by technicians carefully educatedfor constructive work, churned through the dust and torrid heat in a furyof mutual destruction.(Read, 1957)

Elsewhere,H. Caldwell Cook, author of The PlayWay wrote in 1915:Many thoughtful people claim to discern a conflict of principle in this warand they are much to be envied their belief. The issue is very complex, butit is certain at any rate that the war, with all the sacrifice it involves and allthe nobility it has awakened, is being considered by those who rule our rulersas a commercial transaction on a consummate scale. It is the biggest dealon record... A social revolution of some kind will be necessary in Englandafter the declaration of peace on the continent; for even supposing somefair principle is established by force of arms, it has still to be wrought intoa living practice by right education and good government. For many of usthe greater war is yet to come.(Caldwell Cook, 1917: ix)

2 These projects have been developed by the Helen Storey Foundation in collaboration with Cre-ative Partnerships and other partners.

Forme however, if the charge against you can only be built upon the premisethat all you have done is encouraged people to think and reflect - then thisis an admirable outcome. If we are able to preserve in our children thevividness of their sensations, an education through - what I unapologeticallyhave called, now call and will continue to call ‘art’ - then we might succeedin relating action to feeling, and our reality to our ideals.Your work, andthat of your colleagues, in contributing to this refinement of thinking,to the refinement of feeling and the refinement of action, should standproudly alongside the work of other contributors who have graced thishotel over the years. For that, I judge you are guilty as charged.

However, I have one caveat to leave you with today: the language of themilitary leads us to ignore the particular implications of the arts in creativity.It becomes increasingly important now to have a more specific discourseabout how different arts function within education.We must step backfrom the pedagogy of cultural and creative education, back further fromthe pedagogy of arts education and revisit more specifically the pedagogiesof drama,music, dance, poetry, visual arts, film, photography educationif we are to counteract the language of the military and the culture ofperformativity. Idealism would then no longer be an escape from reality:it would be a simple human response to reality.

References

Aspin, D.N., Chapman J.D., andWilkinson,V.R. (1994)Quality Schooling: a pragmatic approach to some current problems, topics and issues. London: Cassell.

Blackham,H.J. (1957)Education as the Humanisation of Man in Joint Councilfor EducationThroughArt Conference Report. London.

Brinson, P. and Crisp, C., (1970)Ballet for All London:Macmillan.

Caldwell Cook,H. (1917)The PlayWay London:William Heinemann.

Creative Partnerships (2002)Creative Lab:A collaboration between Creative Partnerships London South and the Helen Storey FoundationLondon: Creative Partnerships,Arts Council of England

Dimic, Z., (2003)The Problem Of Education In Fichte's Philosophy Philosophy, Sociology and PsychologyVol. 2, No 10,2003, pp. 777 - 788 FACTA UNIVERSITATIS

Fielding,M. (2001)Target setting, policy pathology and student perspectives: Learning to labour in new timesTaking EducationReally Seriously: FourYears’ Hard Labour (ed. Fielding,M.) London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Guilford, J. (1950)Creativity,American Psychologist 5: 444 54 Problem-solving atWork. London: Gower.

Hodgson, J., and Richards, E. (1966)Improvisation London:Methuen.

Lyotard, J.F. (1984)The postmodern condition : a report on knowledge translation from the French by Geoff Benningtonand Brian Massumi Imprint Manchester :Manchester University Press.

Mcgregor, L., Tate,M. and Robinson, K, (1977)LearningThrough Drama; the Schools Council DramaTeaching Project (10 - 16)London:Heinemann Educational Books.

Newsom, J.H. (1963 )Half Our Future - A report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England) Departmentof Education and Science London:Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.

Paynter, J., (2000)Making progress with composing B.J.Music Ed. 17:1, 5 - 31.

Paynter, J., (2002)Music in the school curriculum: why bother? B.J.Music Ed. 19:3, 215 - 226.

QCA (2001)Creativity; Find it Promote it http://www.ncaction.org.uk/creativity/index.htm

Read,H. (1957)Humanity,Technology and EducationJoint Council for EducationThroughArt Conference Report, London.

Read,H. (1958)EducationThrough Art London: Faber and Faber.

Robinson, K. ed (1982)The Arts in Schools London: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

NationalAdvisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (1999)All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education (Ed. Robinson, K.) DfES/ DCMS.

Robinson K. (2001)Out of Our Minds: learning to be creative Chichester: Capstone Publishing.

Robinson, K. (2002)Education Policy and in-School Cultural Education in Europe Conference Proceedings,A Must or a-muse:Arts and Culture in Education: Policy and Practice in Europe.

Slade, P. (1956)Child Play: its importance for human development London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Slade, P. (1958)An Introduction to Child Drama London:University of London Press.

Stoppard,T., (1975)Travesties London: Faber and Faber.

White, J., Black P., Ogborn, J., Crick, B., Porter,A.,Hornsey,A.,Aspin, D., Lawton, D., (1981)No,Minister: a critique of the D.E.S. paper ‘The School curriculum’ BedfordWay Papers,University of London Institute of Education.

Woodhead, C. (2002) ClassWar:The State of British Education London: Little, Brown Books.

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Wemight in the light of today’s proceedings ask ourselves how co-incidentalis it that the presentation of the Gulbenkian report to the House of Lordswas on precisely the day that the invasion of the Falklands Malvinas wasdeclared?That the 1950s motivation for stimulating creativity inAmericanschools, and the prominence of the work of J. P. Guilford stemmed fromthe Russians being the first nation to put a human being into space?That one of the fashionable initiatives in school management is the‘collaborative’ - the verb leading to this concept having been used todescribe traitors in war - which led to them being shot. That our dailylanguage of Local education authorities - and arts bodies for that matter -is riddled with the language of ‘officers’ and ‘inspectors’ to describe staffroles?Are these yet more signals of the technology, the culture, the systemof 'terror' that employs judgments, comparisons and displays as means ofcontrol, attrition and change?

We continue to live in unprecedented times with unprecedented challengesand need to remind ourselves of the importance of sensation in an agewhich practices brutalities and recommends ideals.

Professor Robinson, you have a long and industrious career in the field ofarts education - andmore latterly in something you call creative and culturaleducation.The charge against you is that your legacy fromAll Our Futuresis nothingmore than ameans to consider and discuss creativity in educationwhich has no place in the very heart of our educational project.

The role ofAspire Trust

The Board of Directors has substantial expertise in schoolleadership, cultural development and the development andsupport of creative businesses. Its members are Steve Peach(Head teacher, the Oldershaw School),Tom Howarth(Retired head teacher), JohnAirs (Education Dramaspecialist),DonWilliamson (Educational Services Consultant,Wirral LEA), Carol Filson (ArtsAdministrator) and KevinJebson (Social Enterprise developer).

For further information about the company and its plansfor the future please contact:

Wirral Office: Liverpool Office:The Oldershaw School ToxtethTVValkyrie Road 36Windsor StWallasey CH45 4RJ Liverpool L8 1XE

Telephone: 0151 639 9231 (Wirral) /0151 709 1138 (Liverpool)

Email: nowen.aspire@btconnect.com

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Linda Nelson, Derek Pinney and thechildren, staff and families of Centenary Primary Schoolfor supporting this project.

There are three key strands to ourbusiness’s strategic development:

Educational Research and Evaluation focussingparticularly on: educational research and evaluationin both formal and informal settings; arts basedresearch; ethical research in which researchparticipants are consulted and involved in theprocess rather than ‘being done to’;

Learning and CPD, working on programmesacross all educational phases, from EarlyYears toHigher Education; programmes in which arts andcreative practice is the main vehicle for learning,change and transformation;

Production and Event Management; especiallyproducing our own work independently or inpartnership with other cultural organisationssuch as arts organisations, schools or othercreative agencies.

The Team

TheAspireTrust’s Director, Dr. Nick Owen, has worked ata senior level in a variety of education and voluntary sectorsettings. Completing his PhD inArts Education at theUniversity of Hull in 2008 with a unique scholarship fromCreative Partnerships Hull, his role in theTrust is to developan arts and infrastructure capacity building programmewhich has utilised a range of cultural development projectsengaging many different communities: children in earlyyears settings; teenagers in community music and theatreprojects; and intergenerational projects with senior citizensin sheltered housing centres.This has involved workingclosely with many local authorities and other regionaland national agencies and charities engaged in promotingyouth arts such as theArts Council,Youth Music, the PaulHamlyn Foundation,Creative Partnerships and the NationalAssociation forWriters in Education.

Page 48 / About Aspire

Published by theAspireTrust Press:Liverpool andWallasey: 2009

Price: £12.50

ISBN: 978-0-9561423-0-6

Designed by: www.bobbyandsophie.co.uk

Page 50 / Credits

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