28th October 2024
I was first introduced to Jess Thom through her comedy when she appeared on the Russell Howard show, and so I was excited to see her appear on the roster for visiting artists this term. I’ve made notes on the discussion between Jess and Anna – the author of Held by a Thread, but I have also noted down a lot of my own thoughts and feelings on the discussion too (text not in a bullet point). I think this is the most engaged I have ever felt by a visiting artist lecture, as I've never felt so heard in regards to the education system. I ordered Held by a Thread immediately, and also shared the talk with my mum who is Chair of Governors at a local primary school.
First met at Tate through Jess’ project We Forgot the Lot
Got stuck in lift together when opening new wing at Tate Modern and missed all the speeches
Anna was Head of Learning at Tate, with Jess’ Tourette’s the more noticeable she was (made noises or loud movements) the more unwelcome she felt creating invisible barriers
With We Forgot the Lot the idea was throwing those rules out the window about the way we look at art and saying we need children and young people with Tourette’s to come and help them imagine how to “be” in these spaces, working with 11 artists and 300 children to take up space in Tate in a “loud and uncompromising way”
Anna was very supportive of this project and different bodies/minds/ideas engaging with art in a very different way, which comes across in her book Held by a Thread
Most of Anna’s written work has been academic, and where part of her work has always involved talking to children and young people, she realised several years ago that it seemed impossible for art to be being taught in schools or doing anything creative and so she felt a sense of responsibility to open up that conversation as it had only been happening in a “really tiny place” – that being places like London galleries – which isn’t accessible to everyone, people like families that don’t ask questions that then promote that engagement with artwork to children
As a child I was privileged enough to be taken to art galleries while on holiday with my family, and trips to the Lowry Museum, and because of my keen engagement with art signed up for half-term art projects that allowed me to engage with other children with just as much interest on a new technique. Then because of my continued engagement as a teenager and an adult but able to do my own research as to what exhibitions were upcoming, this has meant my sister, at 14 years younger, has grown up with an even wider engagement with the art would and surrounded by more discussions of art between myself and my parents prompting her to create her own thoughts on a subject and share them. When discussing a negative review on my work her response was “he probably doesn’t know what art is Ashton, I bet he went to some posh private art school in the 1890s where he didn’t see people making art about gender because there weren’t transgender people about and so he doesn’t like what’s different, and doesn’t know good art when he sees it” – probably one of the nicest things she’s said to me in her nearly 12 years of life, so be warned art critics you will face her wrath! – on a serious note, I think it’s great that she’s had so much engagement with art that she feels free to comment on it and the fact that other people will have very narrow views of what is and isn’t allowed in the art world and what makes good art, and that her art world will be one of the widest yet and will continue to grow.
Anna’s dad was a primary school teacher and enjoyed engaging with new techniques with the pupils, doing his best to make sure the art projects were accessible for all through hours of preparation making sure the children would also be able to follow the steps in the task
Project involving showing a link between home and school, class discussions happened, and materials chosen by all except one, who watched what other people did with interest without making plans himself despite saying he did, child was late to school and struggled socially making Anna’s dad worry
Day came for the exhibition where the children would present their projects, when he came into the classroom, he found the boy already there and seated at his desk, which he had moved to the centre of the room opposite the teacher’s desk, and a singular strand of grey wool had been suspended between the two – connecting home to school – which intrigued the other children so much it led to most of the morning spent with them connecting their desks to each other’s
You can picture this moment in your head, it’s emotional to think about, and I’m sure many artists like myself can remember having a teacher that inspired their love of art so much that they wanted to make it a career, and how easily they could have also connected a string of thread between themselves and that teacher because their impact meant that much to them – and hearing the first few pages of this book led me to buy it myself.
Alex discusses the difference between being taught something and being taught something in a way that made you understand it and connect with it and apply it in your life, as opposed to just knowing it
Book was written in a conversational way, asking questions so that the reader could respond and insert themselves into the book – much I the same way art does, it asks questions that we as viewers are left answering in a way that engages and inspires us
Spoke with someone who did a project with 12 year olds recently making collages and when given those blunt primary school scissors and magazines they didn’t know what to do
I had to take a minute at this point in the lecture to process this fact, that these children had never used scissors before and couldn’t figure out how to make them work, which as Anne said with those primary school ones that takes a particular skill. But honestly, I find it really saddening. Growing up I had a whole floor-level kitchen cupboard dedicated as my “making cupboard” that I could dive into whenever I wanted, I had paint and dad’s old work shirts as aprons and newspaper to put over the kitchen table that I understood what to do with and I could just get cracking whenever I wanted. There were scissors in there and old magazines and making collages and birthday cards myself for family members was the norm from 2. This isn’t something that was costly, so not a monetary privilege, but a privilege in the way that my mum took the time to show me the positives of engaging with and creating my own art as a way to express myself, and one I believe every child should have access to as it just involves time and care. I was always known as a “womble” much like my grandad in that I would then be constantly collecting and saving things for my making cupboard for later use. Where now we have a recycling draw that gets constantly emptied as my sister isn’t a hands-on maker like I was, back then there wasn’t recycling in the same way and so it was my making cupboard or the bin. Jars and cartons, boxes of all shapes and sizes, shiny interesting wrappers and ribbons, interesting cardboard with patterns on that were used in packaging my toys, all saved for future projects. When that was your upbringing, it’s hard to imagine that there are children the same age as my sister, in this country, that don’t know how to use scissors.
Jess’ experiences in education were mixed, and where other children were doing the actual learning, it was “Jess you just draw a picture in the corner” – rather than utilise her creativity and using imagery to explain things and help her understand she was written off
Jess is a play worker by profession and uses adventure play often, child-led spaces that aren’t precious, shows the different way creativity can exist, interest in how they utilise the in-between spaces to play not just the designated spaces
Creativity was often a way of trying to work out a world which often didn’t feel like she fitted – lessons that she didn’t go to where she got to do extra art, that was seen as a positive at the time but now looks back on it and can see that it was a way of keeping her quiet
In high school I did extra art in some of year 10 and all of year 11, where my mental health was closely monitored by the pastoral team and where I had been taking further science as a GCSE option despite not enjoying it, it was then decided I wouldn’t do the exam and so I could spend that time in art. Then at college I would spend free periods in the art room sitting in on the other art classes to have extra learning time, and in second year where I had dropped down to just doing art and psychology, I spent the extra time with the year below class and joined in on their discussions but made my own work amongst them. For me it wasn’t a way of keeping me quiet, if anything it was the opposite, keeping me accounted for and present and alive, which I very much appreciate later in life.
GCSE art being first time Jess felt successful at something and was treated so, and this then started to translate across other areas of learning, breakthrough being at revision point realising all she had to do was remember stuff but not necessarily understand it and felt cheated that that hadn’t been explained sooner and did way better than anyone expected, stayed on and did A-Level art and went to art school
Realised can find her own solutions to the barriers and difficulties she was experiencing, would record lessons and listen back while walking the dog, learnt through experimentation what worked despite never being given permission to experiment with learning
Anna was really ill and missed the 2 years of school just before O-Levels (GCSE) and also realised just had to remember things, that because she could read and write she could do that, no one was accepting of her being ill and that became a burden rather than creating conditions that made things more accessible to her
School has become an assessment rather than learning – if you’re not being assessed on it, why by learning it?
Book kept as short as possible, 20,000 words so 2 ½ - 3 hours and can be read in one go or short bits on the bus, accessible in a chatty way with jokes was emotional. Dad died over the summer as well and the book is really all about the fact that he really cared about children and ways of teaching them, his aim being to “widen their horizons and let them see what they could do” left teaching in 1985/86 when they replaced the kids cricket stuff (and the girls also did cricket) with filing cabinets, and that was what education had become
Grown up with the imprint of her dad on how you want to value children, that they have a value right now and not in 15 years when they earn money – they are enriching and exciting and funny now
That you must be “super brilliantly clear with a child”, it’s not about “dumbing down, being simple, it’s about making things much more complex and much clearer”
There’s a way of thinking about disability called the social model of disability, that says:
“it’s normal for bodies and minds to work in different ways, and some people have specific conditions or impairments and others not. But what makes someone a disabled person is the lived experience of those barriers in the world because of the failure to think about and consider that diversity of body and mind in the way that we structure society.”
Jess was taught about this for 10 years before she really understood and suddenly connected with it, and it changed everything for her: how she thought about herself, her expectations of the world around her. It radically transformed everything, and that was because she connected with it and felt it, not because she was taught it, knowing it was her idea to enact in the world
Often decisions about who gets to connect with incredible ideas and ways of thinking are made by gatekeepers, like not writing in a specific form, and access to ideas is something Jess is most excited to change in the world as it can be so powerful and transformative
“Art is never singular. It occupies its space with greater thought: its context, its politics.”
Would like government to give permissions to schools to have a bit more experimentation and be free to be more creative. Less of a sense of fear in schools and in educations generally. Less assessment. Would like teachers to be re-professionalised and for us to respect their understandings. Many businesses these days aren’t interested in qualifications they’re interested in your social, emotional, and intellectual engagement and creativity. S o all the stuff we’re not doing in schools, we’re paying for afterwards in some way, shape or form.
Free to Learn by Peter Grey, an alternative to mainstream education where the children teach themselves and learn from themselves, and the teachers are guiders – much like adventure playground – yet these children get the same jobs as those who go to schools, the difference being that they are happier people
How would you amend the role of emotions in the classroom?
What Anna has tried to do in the book, the arts are a subject that both invite and require you to be emotional. Teacher that she spoke to said they had to get rid of the arts, but then they realised the children were much happier when they do the arts, so they are now paying for an outside organisation to come in and do arts with the kids – which is insane
When children are bored and unable to express themselves, people don’t know how to manage that. We don’t allow that opportunity for play and experimentation, the things we know develop empathy and our extended emotions. You make it, prompt it, receive it and share it.
What do you think the role of the education system is? Because at the moment, what the education system does is create hierarchies with the best child and the best grade and the worst child with the worst grade.
Jess: “What education should be is about nurturing and knowing and helping someone get to know themselves and get to know their strengths, get to know the things that they enjoy, the things that they learn. I’ve seen that happen in lots of classrooms … playgrounds … and in art galleries. I just wish that was something that was happening more reliably, and that is about where you place your value. If you’re placing your value on young people’s well-being and on them knowing themselves, on them feeling confident. It doesn’t matter to me how well someone does in a particular task, it’s about them understanding their strengths and feelings. Very quickly in a hierarchical system, if you’re not at the top, you internalise that and it damages you, and if you are I think you probably experience that as pressure and a fear of failure. I wish schools were better at talking about failure and supporting young people to experience getting things wrong because we need to get things wrong if we’re going to learn.”
I had to type out Jess’ whole response to this question as I found it so relevant. I’ve been at the top and experienced that immense pressure and fear of failure and succumbed to it pretty much every time and did not feel any support from the education system through that. I can’t take exams; I suffer from severe anxiety every time and so I fail. GCSEs I was set 1 as I had been throughout school, and based on in-class assessments of answering questions I was considered a top student, but the pressure of GCSEs meant several Ds, despite being predicted mostly As the only A I got was Maths where the answer was in front of me if I read and understood the question, I wasn’t having to grasp facts and figures out of my brain that I couldn’t remember with the stress. Then come college and I got a D in AS Maths though because I had a panic attack in the exam, and I was told that despite being the highest achieving student throughout the year, and when in-class non-pressured assessment results were written on the board I was in the top 3 every single time, that if I couldn’t take exam pressure than there was no point in continuing to teach me because I would only fail the A-Level, and so I was forced to drop it. This left me with Art and Psychology, which I also got a D in with the exam pressure, and in the same situation of my academic performance throughout the year that teacher said they wanted me to continue because it wasn’t that I didn’t understand what I was being taught and so he would continue to teach me, and to this day psychology does still play a huge part in the themes that underpin my practice. In the end I got a U in the exam, I understood every bit of information I was taught that year, but the system failed to create a way to assess me that I could manage. Because of my experiences in the education system, I really struggle with feeling that I’m not ‘up there’ academically, and of being seen as a failure and let go from my chosen field essentially. I wasn’t taught that it’s okay to fail, especially when it’s failing in a system and situation that was not designed with your neuro-divergent brain in mind, and that failure does not then define your capability.
Anna: “One of the most powerful things you can do in the classroom is to say the word ‘we’ and not ‘I’ and ‘you’, it changes the whole way that the conversation gets had in that space … We need to take off this really tight leash of what’s acceptable and what’s right and be a little more disruptive but also a little more generous. To say yes a bit more, to give people a bit of leeway, to let people have the extra 5 minutes, to not be cross with everybody, to no be telling people off all the time.”
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