A University of Winchester lecturer has been elected to the council of a national body which promotes art in education.
Lecturer in Digital Media Design in the Faculty of Education and Arts, Tina Scahill has been voted onto the council of the National Society for Education in Art and Design (NSEAD) because of the need for voices in the HE arena to be at the table with colleagues from primary, secondary and college level.
Tina, who is also a graphic designer and painter, fears that art is being marginalised in school curricula with many pupils receiving just a single one-hour art lesson per fortnight.
To redress this Tina incorporates drawing and other ‘analogue’ art methods in her teaching to help improve students’ visual literacy and creative thinking.
“I think of it as waking up the creative side of the brain,” said Tina. “Many creative people do not have an outlet these days because there’s no time given to art in the school timetable.”
Students who might think of “cut and paste” as computer terms are reacquainted with scissors, glue and a pile of magazines and asked to create a montage. Other old school artistic endeavours include lino printing and making models from card. Students are also encouraged to have sketchbook and to keep a “visual diary”.
“I think students really enjoy these sessions,” said Tina. “There’s always a lot of laughter when I ask them to sketch each other.
“Many don’t realise how much they had missed actually touching and interacting with materials.”
Tina said that creative thinking was a key to problem solving and was highly valued by employers.
According to the new Arts and Minds campaign, backed by the NSEAD, which aims to put creativity back at the heart of curriculum, 2.5 million people are employed across the creative industries in the UK and in 2022 this sector contributed £124.6 billion to the economy – more than life sciences, aerospace and the automotive sectors combined.
Prior to being elected to the NSEAD council, Tina acted as an observer for two years to the council, with no rights to vote but able to contribute to the conversations. During that time she joined the society’s research group working on Gender, Art and Transformative Education (GATE).
“It has changed my perceptions about art education,” said Tina.
Her published article, entitled Be Yourself, appeared in the January edition of NSEAD’s magazine, AD (pictured) which is a special focusing on the work of the GATE research group.
Tina’s new role in NSEAD aligns with other work taking place at the Faculty of Education and the Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences alongside the University of Winchester Academy Trust through an Arts Council funded project called Creativity Collaboratives.
The project established a network of schools across England focussed on developing and testing innovative approaches to teaching for creativity across the curriculum.
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