Article For LinkedIn

Throughout my years of being a student, my favourite subject has always been art. Although I have academic qualities, my creative side always takes over, loving every art class since nursery to my degree. This is what made me want to be an art teacher, a job where I can teach other children to enjoy it just as much as me. As I am looking further into this dream, it's looking like it will be just that.... A dream.

The creative industry is now, collectively, the highest earner for the Uk, bringing billions to the economy every year, but the educational system seems to be overlooking this. Schools all around the country are following an old-aged tradition of focusing on academic studies and overlooking the importance of the arts.

Art has been acknowledged as a huge importance to the development of children from a young age, encouraging confidence, independence, creativity, to think out of the box and challenge constraints. Not only has art helped the development of children as they grow but is a great way to help mental issues, which is an issue growing year by year.

The times have changed so much within the last 100 years, culturally, socially, and technically, although the educational system seems to have stuck in the past in some areas. The creative industries are used for everything we use in our day-to-day lives like, advertising, packaging, newspapers, magazines, books, film , music etc. Without these things, our lives would be drastically different. So why does Britain overlook the importance of this subject in our schools?

I recently went to a class on how to get into teaching after finishing my degree, and it was here where it was more evident to me, the lack of enthusiasm there is for art in secondary education. As we were informed about the ins and outs of getting into the profession, he a produced a bursary list of all the PGCE courses. I knew Maths, Science and English would be at the top of the list, but I was shocked to find that art wasn't even on the list at all. Obviously bursaries do help when thinking about going into further education, but this was not why I was shocked, it was the total disregard of art as a subject.

I have spoke to quite a few people within the educational system, all of whom have given me advice of putting off teaching until the current curriculum has changed, all acknowledging that art courses in secondary education aren't a priority.

This being the subject that I have loved since a small child, it is upsetting to me why it has not been given more credit as important to child's studies. My worry is that my passion to be an art passion to be an art teacher, will in fact be a dream in the current state of education, but only drives me more to want to change this.

"Picasso once said that all children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. I believe passionately that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. We are educated out of it." - Ken Robinson.

LinkedIn - Teaching

After the PPP session we had today, i've been on LinkedIn to have a look at groups that i would like to join, i didn't get very far with paper illustration groups although i requested to join quite a few teaching groups, both secondary and primary.

The Primary school teacher forum has accepted me in their group, this means i have a lot of potential contacts that i can make within the members.

I would like to speak to john about it though, as because i have been accepted in to this group, which looks like it only has primary school teachers and i wouldn't want to annoy them all by asking questions when i'm not even a teacher.

First Response

I have just received my first response from an illustrator. I really liked her work and was surprised when she got back to me only after a few hours of sending her a message on LinkedIn. She is busy to answer any questions of mine for a few weeks as she is busy with work although she will be very happy to speak with me and answer any questions i have, she was also really pleased that i liked her work. 

I'm really excited to speak with her, ive spoke to john, my tutor, and he said to leave it about 3 weeks so in the meantime i am going to go over some questions that i would like to ask her.

Riddle me this

After making a few contacts, i keep thinking my first message i send could be seen as a bit boring when contacting creatives, because i would like to catch someones eye if they're getting loads of messages.

As with creatives you can be a bit more informal i was thinking of sending them a riddle for them to guess as my opening message.

I would like to use a riddle about paper as that is their medium of choice.

Plenty of Sheets
But no bed in sight
It can cut you
But it doesn't bite

What am i?

Paper Illustrators on LinkedIn

Looking on LinkedIn, i started looking for paper cut illustrators, i want to be a teacher and i will be contacting them for information on their experiences and how they got in to their jobs etc. but i want to use paper cut illustration within my practice in my final year so i thought i could contact paper illustrators and ask advice and tips to help gain useful skills.

I tried contacting a few illustrators that i liked the look of, especially one who did paper sculptures. I have yet to ask for permission to use their names on my blog yet so i have scribbled out their name, but these are the messages i sent.

LinkedIn

Ive just created my LinkedIn account so i can start networking with other people in education. I think i am going to add a picture so when i am contacting people there will be a face to a name so it seems a bit more personal.

I have got one issue with some of the accounts, which i am going to bring up with my tutor as it may be an account setting. But as you can see below, you cannot view their profile etc.

But i made my first contact, with no reply as of yet (although that was only a few minutes ago), to a secondary school art teacher. I am going to use this message as a template to take to my tutor to see if the message to her was ok. There is only limited characters allowed to send an initial message, so i tried to explain who i am and why i was contacted whilst being professional. 

My PPP

I found John, one of my tutors, and told him my concerns about making contacts with practitioners and that i would like to be a teacher. We actually ended up chatting for 2 hours, he was really helpful. He told me that i should make an account on LinkedIn and contact people who are art teachers at the level of study i want to teach. He actually showed me on his account how i can search and contact these people, i found this really helpful, especially as it will relate to what i want to do.

He also mentioned that i should start contacting people about doing placements, although a placement would be better after january when my dissertation is due in, making contacts now and speaking to schools about how i would start to apply would be really helpful.

Overall, i am really happy with the advice i got from John, he is involved quite a lot with education within schools and is always trying to get art more recognised as an important topic within schools.

PPP Briefing

In the briefing for PPP we were told what we will be expecting to do for the module throughout the year. It seems pretty straight forward this year, with it having the least number of credits out of the modules. They were saying how important it is this year that we gain contacts within the creative business to help us for when we leave university. 

I have struggled with some of PPP before, not because of the work load etc. but with the fact that i want to be a teacher when i leave the degree and not an illustrator, freelancer etc. So making contacts with practitioners seems quite useless being that it wont help me when i leave.

I am going to speak to John or Patrick about this so i can use PPP as a useful module for what i would like to do when i leave.

Meet & Greet

Our first day back at uni we had to do a meet and greet with the level 4&5's, we did a mega crit, showing what work we did over summer. We were asked to take photos of the piece of work we liked best. It was really difficult to choose one as everyone was so good. But one of the level 5's work caught my eye quite a lot as i actually thought it was the work of someone from level 6. His name was Wilf as I introduced myself when i found out his work, and i told him to talk to Ian from my course as they were doing similar work and thought it would be nice if they met.

I chose this piece of work out of all he had done as it was actually done on glass and i thought it was just really good, i was surprised when it wasnt ian from my course as they had done similar work which i had seen on facebook previously and i was really impressed.