Maurice Barrett was the first Art Adviser I ever met. Recently I attended a celebration of his work as an educator and was reminded of how important his influence had been. Even before I had met him he had played a key role in shaping my professional thinking. This was through the publication of his book about Curriculum Design in 1979. (I was going to write about Maurice and his work but I find that this is as much about me, or rather ‘us’ art advisers as it is about Maurice.)
Maurice is 84 now and he STILL works for two days a week as an artist in residence in Beal School. Maurice is pictured right, in school with education colleagues. Still working as an artist in a school is typical of Maurice. He was Art Adviser in Redbridge for twenty six years, and throughout that time he insisted on working one day a week as an art teacher in a school. His work and ideas were, therefore, always grounded in his consistent first hand experience of classrooms, children and teachers. This gave his work as an adviser a credibility, realism and authority which was, and still is, hugely impressive.
Listening to Maurice and his colleagues I was reminded of the philosophy of that generation of advisers, who worked alongside teachers, influencing and shaping practice by example, debate and encouragement. Clive Wright (Art Adviser. Bucks) always said that ‘good advisers left no footprints’. Later the National Curriculum and inspection changed the role of adviser.
In the avalanche of advice, guidance and statute that has directed, informed and occasionally illuminated art education in recent years it is salutory to remember that in 1979 there really wasn’t anything published which made sense of what art teachers did apart from the ‘O’ level syllabus and Elliot Eisner’s ‘Educating Artistic Vision’ (which was American). For me, as a young art teacher, Maurice’s book was a revelation. It suddenly made sense of what I was doing in the classroom and established key principles of art education which informed the rest of my career.
In 1979 I was Chief Moderator of CSE art examinations and begining to realise that our assessment practice was little more than professional intuition loosely underpinned by a common vocabulary. It occured to me that we really ought to have something better – criteria perhaps. So I arranged a training day for moderators and invited Maurice to come and speak. I think it must have been the first training day I ever organised. We did develop some criteria, or at least we developed a common conceptual framework which defined the range of outcomes that were to be assessed and how these might be recognised. As a result of this work I was invited to join a national working party to develop ‘Grade Related Criteria’ this work was subsequently to be taken up by the National Curriculum and in one form or another has survived through all the manifestations since. So there is a direct causal link between Maurice’s book and the ideas developed through his discussions with teachers in Redbridge and much that has happened since. To be frank I had forgotten how much of my core thinking was shaped by this book. Maurice had written about curriculum design, I was searching for a way of rationalising assessment practice. It made sense to align curriculum input with assessment outcome. Now this is self evident, and the Expert Panel for the National Curriculum Review makes much of this: it wasn’t always so.
There are many aspects of Maurice’s book which are important, but one is particularly significant for me. This is the principle that in art education there can be different models of practice, or emphasis, each equally valid, and it is for the teacher to make a choice according to his own experience and the needs of pupils. This complicates assessment as it requires flexibility in weighting different components. Of course, as spreadsheets and numbers became all pervading in assessment it has been harder to resist the evolution of a single ideal profile of desired skills, knowledge and understanding in a fixed proportion to each other – which invariably fits only a limited percentage of real students.
I have worked with QCA on the national curriculum, levels, GCE and GCSE exams for fifteen years. The important thing for me was never really in getting the definitions and wording exactly right, but in shaping and presenting a broad conceptual framework within which teachers and pupils could make their own choices. At the end QCDA was working hard to move away from the rigid patterns of inane assessment that had been developed by many schools. However, it is a shame that in all the wordsmithing and publishing we lost sight of the wood for the trees. But perhaps, with the review of the national curriculum, we are returning to this and art teachers will again be able to come together to share and develop their own curriculum patterns-which is what Maurice and the teachers of Redbridge (and elsewhere) were doing in the 1970′s. But it is less clear how these interschool networks might be developed and supported and whether assessment will ever allow for diversity.
Maurice is an artist in residence at the age of 84. He brings to that role a conception of an artist in residence which was developed years ago and then virtually lost in the funding frenzy of Creative Partnerships. It is not about skills workshops and artists as surrogate teachers, or ‘art workers’. It presents an artist, who is not a teacher, but someone who makes work and allows students and teachers to peep over their shoulder while they do so, asking questions and observing the creative process as work evolves and develops. This provides insight into the messy, untidy, risky business of making art which enriches and empowers students in their own making. In my experience the most important thing an artist has ever given is permission to play, to take risks, through the example of their own personal professional practice. In the risk averse, heavily policed, accountable environment teachers inhabit today this is even more important.
I heard the other day that children should write blogs because it helps them reflect on their experience. Writing this has had a similar function. Meeting Maurice again reminded me of what has been important to me and how ideas are not developed in isolation but by communities which talk and share. It is also good to pay tribute to Maurice, his practice and his book which has informed my thinking (and of other advisers) – and which has also fed into much that is still done in most art lessons everyday.
