so we're joined today by WEA tutor Dr Abbie Cairns and Abbie is going to be
0:05
discussing arts based adult community learning in the UK and the positive impact that that has on well-being. This
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is the first time that Abbie has delivered a member lecture for us but she's run many popular WEA
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courses in the past and is a fantastic advocate for WEA and arts-based adult community learning so welcome Abbie we're
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delighted to have you with us this evening. Wonderful thank you so much and thank you for having me. I'm going to share my
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screen with you all. I'm going to talk for about 40 45 minutes and hopefully
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leave plenty of time for any questions that anyone has so yeah please do pop
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them in the chat and it's always really interesting to hear from other people's perspectives as well so if you've
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experienced adult art education as a learner or as an a fellow tutor I'm always keen to hear how that has gone
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for you so I have called this well-being and adult community learning so straight
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to the point as was just said I am Abbie and I am here to present my very
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first members lecture. I'm very excited to be here to talk to you all so
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before I start just foreground it I guess with who I am and why I'm here
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so I identify as an artist a teacher and a researcher and I predominantly work in
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and research adult art education i also have recently started working in initial
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teacher training to hopefully train up the next lot of adult educators and I
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just love researching into adult ed because I feel like we're perhaps a little bit overlooked and of course with
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those cuts that were just mentioning we've just mentioned research is probably a very important thing to
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happen so that we can actually go and go you know this is the benefit this is what will happen if you take it away um
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I've been with WEA now since 2022 and it has just flown by I've had the
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pleasure of teaching in-person courses in Chelmsford and Colchester and I've
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also been doing quite a lot of online courses as well so hopefully if you're
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interested in the arts or creativity at all I may see some of you in other
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WEA spaces as we go through this
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um next year or so so this paper is part of a larger
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research project which I've been working on which interrogates the identity formation of artist teachers in adult
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community learning which I started in 2020 so that is when I started my PhD
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I've since finished it but I have carried on that research i was motivated to do this research uh because I am an
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artist teacher in adult community learning and I wanted to know why I've done
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that as a job why didn't I work in compulsory education or why did I teach at all why didn't I just focus on being
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an artist so that was a motivation behind my research and it has kept me motivated as I've got along and the
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thing that's kept me in adult ed is the learners so if any of you are my current learners I know I think I've got at
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least one of my current learners in the room thank you because you're you're what keeps me going essentially i love
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meeting people hearing their stories different perspectives on why they've come to a creative space as an adult
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some people have returned after years away some people have never engaged in anything creative before. I was also
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motivated by the lack of published research on the sector so I felt like I
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had the ability and skill to research and publish research so I wanted to use my voice to raise awareness of adult ed
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and artist teachers working in that sector and the adult learners learning within it so this presentation has a
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focus on how artists teachers and adult community learning deliver a culturally
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responsive education with art and design classrooms whether they be physical or virtual um to create a sense of
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belonging for adult learners and hopefully you'll see along the way I've
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added some quotes from artist teachers and also from some adult art learners as well just to really show that this
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experience goes beyond my experience and uh has a little bit more grounding across the UK as
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well so what are we going to look at this afternoon i'm going to um define
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some key terms for you some words that I've been saying already i'll outline those as used within my research going
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to share some key literature with you as well um I always joke in research that
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you're not necessarily allowed to have an original thought um particularly when I was doing my PhD everything had to be
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referenced so we go quite far back um in the literature but it is still all very
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important for what we're doing today and really set the foreground for adult ed as we know it um I'm going to talk to
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you a little bit about my methodology and methods used within the research so if anyone in the audience is
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particularly interested hopefully you can go off and replicate my study see if you find the same thing as me uh throw
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some more data into the mix for us um and this will be followed by my results and I'll end with a summary of the
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research um I'll also share with kind of what I'm doing now and what my kind of
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future research plans look like and then like I say I'm going to make sure I've got plenty of time for questions as well
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as we go through key terms then I've tried to
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just narrow this down to two um so these are how I've defined these two ter key
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terms within my research there are varying terms and definitions around but
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the first thing that I might make reference to is adult community learning i may accidentally just refer to it as
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ACL because I'm used to doing that um and this is the context in which my
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research is set so within my paper ACL
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is often understood as an educational provider offering community- based learning opportunities they might be
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delivered by local authorities or general further educational colleges um charities and other third sectors as
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well are popping up more and more um so what is an artist teacher then i refer
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to myself as one and my refer to my participants as them as well um an
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artist teachers are defined in many different ways and kind of globally so
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they're quite big in the USA um and in quite a lot of European countries they
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refer to this dual role as well um within my research I found that my
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participants didn't connect to any of the definitions that were already out there and that was mainly because those
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definitions were focused for compulsory educators so artist teachers working in like secondary education or perhaps more
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formal further education with 16 to 19 year olds so together we co-created a
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new definition so me and 17 artist teachers came up with what you can see on the screen there and we decided that
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we were professional artists and teachers and we decided we were dedicated to both of those things and
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that we had the competencies needed to work through art and adult community learning so those are my two key terms
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you can keep those in mind as we go through and it will just add a little bit of context for
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you i'm going to start by looking backwards because often that is how we get to where we are um so due to the
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limited published literature on ACL art classrooms and the role of artist
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teachers in promoting well-being within these this literature review draws more widely on the ACL sector so beyond just
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art and creative courses um and it also looks at other adult art classroom contexts outside of ACL so there is some
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research on here from uh the USA as well which we'll go into in a moment so what
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does it say so in 2013 the Department for Business Innovation and Skills surveyed adult
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learners in the UK interestingly there hasn't been a comparative study since
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then so well over a decade um findings from this survey suggested that well-being for these learners was linked
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to the social and community community aspects of the sector and that well-being was related to things such as
8:46
fun a sense of belonging and being able to build confidence um in 2020 the House
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of Commons researched on adult learner well-being and related this to belonging
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again so we start to see some recurring themes they reported that over half of
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adult learners who were experiencing anxiety and/or depression at the start
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of an ACL course no longer had these symptoms by the end of their course
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that's a pretty powerful statistic um these findings are underpinned by here
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comes the history Malcolm Nolles so a big writer on androgodi so the science
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of teaching adults um who in the adult learner a neglected species which I
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think is a great title for a book um states that adult learning classrooms provided a nonauthoritarian atmosphere
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which promotes a sense of well-being so it's quite nice when you see the published literature aligning with
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findings from you know half a decade ago um this is pertinent within the sector
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today as a recent parliamentary debate on adult learning and liflong learning
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um MP Flu Anderson suggested that lifelong learning should promote uh
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mental health and well-being in adult learners so this is what it should be
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doing so hopefully it is um to achieve this the teacher or the artist teacher
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in my case needs to create the proper conditions for learning in the classroom
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nolles outlines that the teacher must take responsibility for the classroom climate and should also become a
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participant learner so if you ever find yourself in one of my classes you will
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find me creating along with you um I can't help it because I'm an artist as
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well as a teacher but hopefully it motivates those in the room and helps you kind of see what is happening um so
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let's move to think about belonging in the adult art classroom then we heard on the previous slide the importance of
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this so Donnone who research whose research is focused on art therapy and
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art education for learners 50 plus suggested that engagement within the art
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classroom increases self-esteem due to the indirect therapeutic benefits art
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can have on the adult learner so again looking at those wider
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contexts and with adult ed we typically look at 19 plus so obviously 50 plus is
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um a more distinct sector of the adult learning population um additionally
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Leaport researches um and she looks at older adults responses to an art
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curriculum um and she looks at how creative activities that take place in
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the art classroom and the social aspects of community learning and she said that
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this helps improve self-esteem particularly through conversations about
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artwork so taking the focus off any direct issues and just letting people converse about what it is they're
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creating so in both of these instances it's the art and the design curriculum
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that learners are crediting and artist teachers are crediting for building a sense of belonging in their classrooms
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particularly within the communal aspects of curriculums which require the learner
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to talk requires the learners to talk to each other paige Etel who is a UK based
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researcher also suggests that in co-creating with the learners the artist teacher can become a participant learner
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paige suggested that radical critical pedagogy could be a way to challenge the
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pedagog this is always a really difficult one to say the pedagogicized identity of teacher and learner in the
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classroom to facilitate a sense of belonging for the art student in the art
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classroom additionally the role of the teacher and ACL is also paramount in ensuring the retention of adult learners
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null suggests that to do this those teaching in the sector might find that they go against assumptions and concepts
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of pedagogy um in such as by creating with learners
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um as this can reposition the artist teacher within the
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classroom and can help challenge the social structures of the classroom removing hierarchy as well
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so this is key within adult learning with nullles stating that adults attending classes for social or
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fellowship reasons within adult learning seek companionship pleasure and
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enjoyment um the second and third points here made by nullles were echoed by the
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research of the department for business innovation and skills survey back in 2013 which reported that adult learners
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equated fun in the classroom with a sense of belonging additionally null suggested that adult learners benefit
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from learning that is problem centered rather than curriculum centered acio in
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general has a focus on student centered learning i think WEA is a great example of that
14:10
um with the learners as the main actors in the classroom so having that autonomy to suggest what they might do next or
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how they might tackle a problem uh while this might also happen in other educational sectors the department for
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business innovation and skills highlight that this is a um a distinct feature of
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ACL with ACL often being considered as an alternative type of education that
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has the flexibility to meet the needs of any given group echoing this Leaport
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believes that it is unreasonable to expect everyone to follow a particular unit theme instead adult learners should
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be able to build on their own interests null suggests that this allows learners
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basic needs for safety belongingness love and respect to be met acl learners felt that it is the
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responsibility of the setting and the teacher to ensure this sense of belonging so as an artist teacher how
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can we make sure that your basic needs are being met and that the curriculum is student centered this can
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help this can be helped by identifying um educational needs of learners as well
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um and tools become important to help us differentiate
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learning for different learners which might be based on differing life experiences before they come to us in
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our art classrooms whereas in um compulsory education you
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may find that children are all taught in a similar way at a similar level in a similar sequence of
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events and suggests adults should be taught things they need to know based on their situations so you might have a
15:59
need to know how to do watercolor painting rather than acrylic painting um or a need to know how to draw a specific
16:05
thing rather than me just dictating what it is that we are going to be doing at any given moment um so additionally
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learners can assess if they will feel a sense of belonging with the course if accurate course titles and descriptions
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are provided so very important when we are putting our courses together that you know exactly what it is you're going
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to get when you walk through the door or you log into a Zoom call um for art and
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design courses this could be a clear course outline and a description of how
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that content will be delivered so for example if there will be demonstrations
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um powerpoints other resources that you can draw
16:50
upon so let's just focus back into the UK context for a moment so I done some
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searching was trying to find the most up-to-date information that I could and in 2024 the Department for Education uh
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revised its approach to adult education funding um initially there were plans to
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limit funding to courses directly linked to and to focus funding onto courses
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directly linked to employment outcomes um however after consultations and feedback from the sector the government
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acknowledged that a broader offer would benefit adult
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learners um as a result they reinstated funding for courses that supported wider
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outcomes including health and well-being family learning and community learning
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obviously we have now also heard about the 6% cut to adult ed as well so these
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things are ever changing um but it's always really interesting to see what is
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on the agenda and how we can respond to it to keep our uh art classes and
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communities thriving um so that is the literature and what is going on beyond
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uh me and my world going to zoom in a little bit now into my research and share some of this with you so this
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research took place within a larger second generation grounded theory study
18:19
into the identity formation of artist teachers and adult teacher learning and if you find that you have a spare few
18:25
days on your hands you can read that research um from the Norwich University of the Arts repository um but
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essentially grounded theory means that I talked to people on the ground and my research was done with a focus on the
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participants and then moved upwards rather than taking an approach where I
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looked down on a situation and try to figure it out um so the results from this research are not aiming to be
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widely general generalizable instead I'm hoping the research will resonate with
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others in similar contexts so other um sectors of adult learning
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um and other artist teachers essentially this research used semistructured
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interviews with 17 artist teachers from ACL contexts across the UK the resulting
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data was qualitative so lots of quotes um and personal experiences were used
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participation in the study was voluntary um and many of my participants stayed with me for the duration of my PhD
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because they felt as invested as I did to research this under appreciated and
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underfunded uh sector um and artist teachers were self- selecting as well so
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I put calls out on social media i emailed uh every adult education provider that I could find an email
19:52
address for and then I just kind of sat and waited for people to come to me additional data is used in this research
19:58
that I'm going to present to you today that didn't form any part of my PhD study and this comes from a sample of
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four adult art learners who I interviewed as part of the first artist
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teacher and adult community learning conference series which I host with the National Society for Education Art and
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Design so this is from 2023 our very first conference that we held the full
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interview is available publicly um at the at the address showing on the screen
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and if you're feeling particularly fancy and have a smartphone you can scan the QR code as well and it will take you to
20:35
the YouTube site where you can watch that in full
20:42
so in this section I'll outline data collected from interviews with those
20:47
artist teachers back in my PhD days and the adult art learners um relating to
20:54
adult art learners well-being in the ACL classroom throughout this presentation
21:00
you are going to see interview extracts that have been used to capture the real life experiences of participants in
21:09
their own language to provide insights into their assumptions and meanings
21:14
rather than me kind of putting words into their mouths i think it's often more powerful to hear it from the
21:21
participants themselves overall the participant data from the artist teachers and the adult
21:27
art learners in ACL showed congruence with the literature so everyone does
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seem to be on the same page and then hopefully we can think about what we can do with this kind of research and data
21:39
to help us protect our art adult community learning spaces and the well-being of adult art learners new and
21:47
you know potential uh to set the scene of ACL from the perspective of my
21:54
particip participants I will share with you the ways in which artist teachers represented here by the letters so
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artist teacher O artist teacher W for example and adult art learners their
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name just their names as I say the interview is publicly available when they have used their real names um have
22:13
and have consented for those to be used within the public realm um as we can see
22:19
there's lots of crossover particularly with enjoyable and positive being um
22:25
used by artist teachers and adult art learners uh these descriptors were
22:33
identified within the interview transcripts here we start to see some parallels
22:40
between the personal experiences of both teacher and learner
22:45
and with the published literature with null's delineerating enjoyment earlier
22:51
as a motivator for adults to join adult learning courses and the department for business innovation and skills
22:57
highlighting the importance of flexibility as
23:02
well so artist teachers and adult art learners also described the adult art
23:08
learner during the course of their interviews artist teachers and adult art learners alike outlined adult learners
23:16
as socially isolated and fragile uh with Kate sharing that she was a shell of a
23:21
person when she initially signed up for her art course and this was transformed by the
23:27
end of her art course um they also highlighted diverse demographics of adult learners and this came through
23:34
strongly with from the experiences of the artist teacher and the adult art
23:39
learner as well so what do the results say artist
23:46
teachers identified the importance of the community aspect of ACL to adult art learners feeling a sense of well-being
23:54
in the classroom artist teacher Haye Dylan writes that comm community the community aspect of
24:00
ACL classroom is as important as the art making leaport too recognized this in
24:08
her research that was shared earlier additionally Sam outlines that social reasons are the main motivator for adult
24:14
learners like herself to enroll onto an art course obviously from her perspective artist teacher P also
24:21
commented on this theme and described the art conversations which take place in the art classroom as the buzz of the
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community in the act of getting together learners are gathering socially which
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promotes that feeling of belonging um the importance of this to learners is highlighted in their feedback to artist
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teacher H making her belief in the importance of the community aspect of
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ACL
24:54
unquestionable artist teachers AB W and Zed stated that their ACL
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classrooms were student centered which allows for teaching to be reactive and
25:06
content to evolve with the learner's own interests artist teacher C provides an
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example of how when delivering a painting based art and design curriculum to adult learners in ACL she must be
25:19
responsive to the learner's wants relating to what learners need at that point in their adult learning journey
25:27
be it to learn how to color match to a photograph when painting or how to paint
25:33
facial features rather than being taught to paint in a certain order dictated by
25:39
curriculum and what they ought to know at each stage in doing so she does not teach all
25:47
of the learners to paint in the same way avoiding a curriculum centered classroom
25:52
instead artist teacher C encourages her learners to follow their own paths
25:58
allowing the learners to become the main actor in the classroom she reflects that she must be constantly aware of this and
26:06
to be conscious of her own assumptions of what learners want dawn's experience
26:12
of a student- centered curriculum helped her to broaden her perspective her
26:17
extract illustrates how the course fostered creativity and inspired new ways of
26:23
seeing and interacting with the
26:29
world artist teacher Y provides another example of the culturally responsive
26:35
nature of adult education and shows how this can positively impact the adult
26:41
learner's confidence a theme also noticed by artist teachers B H and
26:49
L artist teacher Y builds a sense of well-being by encouraging her adult
26:56
learners to work on personal projects based on their interests to build their
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confidence and by providing a nonauthoritarian atmosphere in the
27:07
classroom in doing so she meets one of the motivators for adult learners entering
27:13
adult learning additionally artist teacher H recognizes that the different
27:20
levels of experience that adult learners enter the ACL art classroom with can
27:26
impact their confidence and what they need from the course so you could have someone that's never picked up a pencil
27:32
next to someone that has been drawing for 50 60 years and you have to respond
27:38
to that in the moment and what that can do for confidence as
27:43
well in doing so she delivers her courses with a student centered approach
27:49
allowing her to be a flexible resource in the session so really drawing on own
27:55
skill sets to be able to give each learner what it is that they need um
28:02
providing some learners with in-depth feedback and treating others quite
28:07
gently so again deciding how much of that critical voice is needed how much
28:15
feed feed forward is needed as well because some learners may just be much
28:21
more interested in the conversations and social aspects and other learners may be really invested and interested in
28:27
developing those art skills and would benefit from in-depth feedback uh so
28:35
adult art learner Kate spoke around these themes also and the quote on
28:40
screen powerfully illustrates the role um in addressing
28:46
feelings of low confidence this quote speaks to the transformative power of
28:53
adult art education i'm not going to read all of the quotes out but I will read this one out i was a shell of a
28:59
person i think when I signed up to the course if I'm honest I didn't have any self-belief i didn't have any confidence
29:06
in myself or my abilities to do anything it made me doubt myself a lot the art
29:12
course did encourage me to believe in myself again and have some confidence in my abilities just being able to dip back
29:20
into that kind of childlike mentality I think is what really I needed so much at
29:26
the time i didn't even know how much I needed it so you can see that her
29:32
engagement in adult art education has had a profound impact on her entire life
29:37
not just her confidence with art but her confidence in the world as
29:45
well so as well as confidence adult art learners can overcome feelings of
29:51
loneliness in the adult art classroom um as observed by artist teachers B H L P
30:00
and V u this is positive as 70% of surveyed adult learners were motivated
30:06
to enroll on a course to increase um their well-being and resolving
30:11
loneliness is one way to do that as we saw in the business and innovations survey in
30:18
2013 this is tackled through the social elements of the course art acts as the
30:24
commonality amongst the learners and conversations about this bring them together this is something Allison was
30:31
specifically looking for in an adult art course um she just wanted to have a reason to
30:38
get together with other people that had a similar interest as her artist teacher P believes that this
30:45
is an important aspect of ACL and she believes that this has only recently been acknowledged within the
30:59
sector um so then artist teachers C O B and X acknowledged in their interviews
31:05
that they had the freedom and flexibility to move away from a curriculum centered delivery within
31:10
their ACL classrooms which allows for some of this
31:16
these conversations to take place and for our student centered learning to take place
31:23
but they did find that in providing accurate course titles and schedules that they can um allow possible adult
31:31
art learners to make an informed decision on the course and if it will aid their well-being so if it is a
31:38
painting course making that clear if it is a drawing course making that clear so they know exactly what it is that
31:43
they're signing up for this also shows that to some extent that
31:49
flexibility and modular learning with an adult education is happening in the UK
31:55
today so being able to dip in and out different aspects of art and design not
32:00
having to go through the whole remitt as you would in a curriculum centered
32:05
approach in compulsory education um additionally we have things like the small class sizes in ACL these
32:13
are quite notable often you may have just a handful of learners whereas in
32:18
comparison with compulsory education you may have you know 20 30 35 learners in a
32:25
room uh small class sizes might account for some of the flexibility that is
32:31
afforded much easier to adapt to the needs of 10 15 people than it is to
32:38
adapt to the needs of 30 people um artist teacher Y outlines an experience
32:43
of having between five and six learners in an ACL art class and artist teachers
32:49
EG and K also reported that they had small classes though they didn't specify
32:54
actual numbers nolles had observed at the time of his writing in
33:00
1984 the increased movement towards small groups within adult
33:05
learning so something that has been happening for a long time it was recognized by artist teachers E F H and
33:12
P that their learners tended to return to their art classes time and time again
33:19
reflecting high learner retention as well aiding in that sense of
33:26
belonging artist teacher K reported 100% retention on courses he delivered um it
33:32
could be inferred that if learners are remaining and returning they are experiencing a sense of belonging within
33:38
their classrooms tackling that loneliness that we mentioned earlier nolles relates this to Maslo and his
33:45
work on safety maslo suggests that experiences that present the learner
33:51
with safety increases the chances of learners returning to that experience
33:57
repeating it and savoring it uh this basic need is related to belongingness
34:02
and love adult art learner participants also expressed that they returned to art
34:09
education time and time again with Sam's interview extract highlighting this and
34:15
how adult art education has been part of her life throughout her adult life
34:20
stages and how this impacted how she engaged with adult education at
34:26
different times um such as the move from evening courses when she was raising her
34:31
family and working to day courses once she had stopped working
34:38
full-time the role of artist teachers important in the adult art classroom and
34:43
artist teachers A C and L also found themselves as active participants in the
34:50
art classroom artist teacher A believes that being active within the classroom is part of being an artist teacher
34:58
reflected in the work of Paige Etel and Thornton who both write an artist
35:03
teachers from a UK perspective um which shows artist teachers working in this way throughout different
35:09
educational sectors from compulsory education right up until higher education additionally Nulls believed
35:16
that all adult teachers should become participant learners dorne highlighted that her artist teacher showed what the
35:24
students could do rather than should do a subtle difference while Allison shared
35:30
that her artist teacher uh drew on their own creativity to inspire the activities
35:36
in the sessions the adult art learners experiences generally lined up with artist teacher experiences
35:43
artist teacher C um who also commented on this aspect of the role suggested that when being an active participant in
35:50
the classroom it is imperative to ensure that learners do not start to paint like you as the tutor we're not here to make
35:56
clones of ourselves we want you to become your own creatives while she is happy to work alongside learners she
36:03
avoids formal demonstrations artist teacher Ellie expressed similar concerns and wanted to use her outcomes
36:11
to show learners that they can shine in their own way she takes a non-threatening approach by putting the
36:17
focus on process rather than the final outcome so different techniques and ways
36:24
of doing things rather than let's replicate my artwork or let's replicate the work of something in an art gallery
36:33
uh while this presentation has predominantly focused on how adult art education goes some way to benefit adult
36:40
learners well-being there may also be some barriers to achieving this such as internal policies so artist teacher P
36:48
suggests that the rules put in place by management are not always uh conductive to the overall aims of adult education
36:55
and instead suggests they serve to exclude the learner such as rules around
37:00
learner lateness within the extract on the screen her use of forceful language
37:07
shows her conviction and her disagreement with management
37:12
um in instances like this the artist teacher and ACL might go against what is expected of them as artist P teacher P
37:21
has by removing posters that warn learners not to enter a room if they're
37:26
late she takes them down and hides them instead in allowing adult learners to
37:31
enter her classroom late she is taking responsibility for the classroom climate Anne is allowing learning to fit into
37:38
the larger patterns of life of her adult learners within the interview artist teacher P expands that adult learners
37:44
are often only late if life gets in the way if they had to let the decorator in or had to run the grandchildren to
37:51
school rather than because they're avoiding the class attendance is optional after all artist teachers AC
37:58
and I and L also referred to different things they do within their classrooms which goes against
38:04
expectations to promote a culturally responsive learning environment which can benefit learner well-being adult art
38:11
learners also shared barriers to accessing adult education and its benefits kate shared um that there was
38:18
an initial stress and worry to signing up to a course in the first instance and
38:24
while Allison noted that online learning during co 19 actually made her feel more
38:29
isolated so lots of things to consider there so we come to the conclusion the
38:36
published literature and the interview data from both artist teachers and adult art learners are congruent while the
38:43
literature reviewed the wider ACL sector and other types of adult art classrooms
38:49
the participant data illustrated the lived experiences of artists teachers and adult art learners in ACL six themes
38:56
were explored um so including the community and social dimensions of adult education the use of student centered
39:04
androogi developing a culturally responsive curriculum considerations of
39:10
adult learner mental health the impact of freedom and flexibility within the sector and finally the role of artist
39:17
teachers plus we also did just give a moment for the barriers because those are the things that we need to work
39:23
towards uh remedying as we go forward so what does my future research look like
39:30
uh I continue to research in further education I'm very pleased to have my
39:35
first book coming out later this year which will hopefully go some way to helping um artist teachers and other
39:42
adult and further education teachers have a handle on their jewel identities
39:48
and help us to continue to do the work that we do in our given vocations whether it be art hairdressing building
39:55
mechanics um this book is for them to help them be the best that they can in
40:01
their classrooms and to continue to support their adult learners regardless of what subject they are teaching in
40:08
thank you for listening i welcome any questions if you'd like to read more about my research I have got a link tree
40:15
which has got links to various uh papers podcasts and video recordings of previous presentations um and I also
40:22
have a website as well which you can pop on to which will tell you more about my research my art and my teaching but for
40:31
now thank you very much thank you Abbie that was really interesting and we do actually have some
40:37
other uh questions that have come in both from the chat and I think there was the option to add a question when you
40:43
signed up so we've had a few through through that as well so we had a
40:49
question from Norman um in the current climate of austerity and budget budgetary constraints or restraints
40:55
sorry um is there any pressure for organizations involved in adult learning in various forms to amalgamate more
41:01
formally especially if receiving financial support from governments um for example in Scotland it's a bit
41:08
broader the pressures are immense and I've seen in other providers a real push
41:14
towards accredited courses is um and trying to move away from kind of
41:20
non accredited leisure i'm not sure i know Scotland is slightly different so I'm
41:25
not sure what the picture is there but my personal experience has been a you
41:31
know a big cut particularly for creative subjects um and even actually languages
41:36
as well and a real push towards apprenticeships and um like yeah
41:43
accredited so upskilling can be incredibly difficult those courses are much longer they take much of a much
41:50
more dedication from a learner and if they already have a level one and level two qualification they're much more
41:56
expensive as well thank you um and we had a question from
42:03
Kathleen um she said "I attend a local authority art class and I find that most participants are female does this concur
42:09
with your research?" And I think I saw it in a later slide um but do you want to tell us a bit about that yeah so
42:15
generally speaking the uh published literature says that 80% of adult education is female um which doesn't
42:23
surprise me it's my lived experience i tend to have classes that are about 10 learners and I will be lucky if I have
42:31
one male or non-female identifying learner within my group um but there are
42:36
other you know demographics as well that are very strong so they tend to be white females um so I think it's really
42:43
difficult to get that diversity uh there's a great quote and I never remember who said it but it is that you
42:49
can't be what you can't see and interestingly the adult education and indeed the further education workforce
42:56
is all also predominantly white female so it might be that if we had more diversity in our tutors perhaps we would
43:02
start to see more more diversity in our learners as well interesting i think there's I mean it's it's in higher
43:09
education but I think there's a project running um is it cheat or I'm not sure if that's how it's pronounced um council
43:15
for higher education art and design I think um and that's I think looking at that very thing so perhaps it could be
43:20
broadened out to to further education as well potentially um and then we had uh a
43:26
comment from Jennifer uh artbased learning is essential for everyday
43:32
well-being not everyone is a computer tech wiz and I like nothing better than spending time with music being creative
43:37
with mind knitting and crochet um so it's nice to hear how people are putting
43:42
it into practice in their everyday life um and then a comment from from David as
43:48
well or it's got a question at the end as well um I have found locally that other enterprises have succeeded in
43:54
local community groups and I think that's due to the financial layer required by WEA that seen a tendency to
44:01
return to more local groups attracting artists to bid for classes with just a local premises fee um it seems that WEA
44:09
courses are more expensive and therefore not preferred is this a general experience
44:15
i don't know if it's a general experience from my perspective i
44:21
I tried over the summer to run independent art courses and it would have worked out to be incredibly
44:27
expensive um so I didn't because you got to hire the venue before you necessarily
44:33
have students enrolled on the course and then if you don't have enough you'll be running them at a loss so working for
44:40
somewhere like a WEA or a local authority takes a lot of that admin out of it from a teacher perspective
44:47
obviously we still get course cancellations if there are low learner enrolments but um you know I'm not the
44:53
one that's booked a building or set up all of the pages online that need to be
44:59
there so that's a really interesting one I do wonder what it'll be like i know venue hire is incredibly expensive is
45:06
only getting more and more expensive with um you know the rise in heating and all those sorts of things as well yeah
45:15
um so no I it seems really interesting i think there's been some research as well about almost like benefits to health as
45:21
well as um well-being you know physical health um it just feels like there's this um so much research to be done in
45:28
the area or maybe the research has been done already and it just isn't being widely broadcast or we're not putting it
45:34
into practice so just not being joined up because there is some really quite historic research that says like two
45:40
hours a week of art for older adults has massive benefits and it will also
45:47
reduces like the number of trips to GPS and you know it combats loneliness and
45:53
all of these positive things and I think if we just had a longer term goal or
45:58
just looked further into the future would invest in adult ed more than we do
46:03
i think a lot of what we do is panic so we have short-term goals um obviously at
46:09
the beginning of this government so we'll see what they do but four years isn't going to be long enough for them
46:14
to really do anything they'll need another term in office um and I don't think anyone expected the 6% budget cut
46:21
to adult ed either so we don't really know what is around the corner but yeah I think if we had longer foresight would
46:29
we would be putting plans in you know we used to have quite a lot of social prescribing in um the local authority so
46:37
GPS actually you know prescribing art courses or language courses or you know
46:42
whatever course it was going to be but giving them that instead of a prescription for you know drugs and I
46:49
would love to see where that goes i think it sounds amazing yeah um and we're very lucky to have
46:56
Chris on the call because he is behind our impact report and the um I mean all those sort of statistics that you were
47:02
talking about the fewer visits to the GPS and um combating loneliness and things are all if you read our impact
47:08
report it's incredible so I'm really looking forward to the next one that's coming out soon I'm sure Chris will probably come along and give us a talk
47:14
about that closer to the time so I think that's we don't have any more questions unless I've missed any that
47:20
have come through in the chat since we've been Oh no oh my goodness 11 messages oh dear right so per perhaps
47:26
you might be staying on a bit longer let's see um have I missed any let's uh
47:31
Oh this is lovely yes so we we it's made me want to sign up to courses to do with art although I'm not very arty do you
47:36
want to talk about maybe whether people feel they're arty or not and how that should impact whether or not you sign up for a course i mean if anything more of
47:44
more of a reason to to sign up um no I think art and creative courses are for everyone as one of my artist teacher
47:52
participants said it is often about the processes it's not about final outcomes it is about relaxing into it doing
47:59
something like colour mixing while it is a incredible skill base actually is also really relaxing just to see these colours
48:05
come together and emerge um on the page i'm currently midway through a creativity for calm course which I think
48:12
are relatively new for WEA um it's an 11week course so quite long and each
48:18
week we just do something different that is creative so perhaps if you haven't done something creative before and you
48:24
want to a creativity for calm might be a good place to start because we do lots of different creative things we've done
48:30
collage we've done some drawing um next week we're going to be doing mark making
48:36
to music um so it takes away kind of the pressure of like a final outcome but introduces you to lots of different
48:43
creativity ironically I mean I do a lot of drawing and painting courses because that seems to be what people want and we
48:50
we give the people what they want if there's one thing to take away from my presentation it's probably that and they
48:55
come in in the first week they go I can't draw i was like it's okay it's why you're here we'll figure it out um and just
49:03
getting people to really embrace you know yourself as a creative or an artist you don't need to be Picasso or David
49:10
Hockney or me you can just be whoever you are and that can be your drawing style and your painting style so yeah
49:16
I'd say dip your toe in you never know you might find a new hobby wonderful um
49:22
and then someone bemoaning um that that we don't have the WEA very actively in
49:27
Norfolk at the minute although I think you're based in East England and several of us on the call maybe we can
49:33
resurrect more more courses in in Norfolk and then we've got a comment uh
49:40
my son is an artist teacher and I've learned loads from him about the benefits for mental health and well-being and this talk has helped me
49:47
um and and Jillian says "Fascinating very academic presentation this has
49:53
helped me as I'm writing a research proposal at the minute um could you please put those links from the last
49:58
slide in the chat?" So is that possible are you able to grab them from the presentation just pop them oh we've got
50:04
ah Chris has already done it thank you Chris that's brilliant um and Jillian goes on to say "I volunteered at a
50:10
creative arts project last year for people who had lost children or pregnancies and the feedback from
50:16
participants was excellent." Um and D yeah also just commenting on
50:23
more interesting research um and uh looking for more local art courses
50:31
um so are there other ways to find art good recommendations for ways to find
50:36
art courses and and we'll make a note of that Yorkshire and Humber size and see what we can put together online courses
50:41
I suppose are an option as well but yeah I think it's definitely difficult
50:46
isn't it to know what's going on um if your local area has you know any local
50:52
magazines and things they're not they're often quite a good way to see what's happening i'm in Essex and we're very
50:58
lucky we've got very vibrant uh creative community Facebook groups as well you
51:03
know I'm I'm a part of all my local ones so I keep a keep an eye on things when they pop up if people are doing um you
51:10
know all sorts of things but it is just knowing where to look and I guess in your local areas that will be different
51:15
for all of you but yeah online if you don't mind um Zoom calls and I think online courses are a great way to bring
51:22
people together great well I think we've got through all the questions um and I'm just going to
51:29
launch a poll and then while I'm doing the poll I will let people know what's coming up next week so hopefully that
51:35
will work and um so for next week we have a talk about the mass observation
51:40
archive um so uh that is going to be the same
51:45
time next Thursday and it's going to be looking at the role um the mass mass observation project's role in capturing
51:52
the history of everyday life in Britain and looking at the mass observation archive um it's an invaluable tool for
51:59
social research across disciplines and anyone and everyone can contribute if they wish um we've got mass observation
52:05
day coming up i think it's the 12th of May um so not too far away and we might
52:11
see if we can put on some kind of event for members if people want to participate in that and all that's left
52:18
to do just say thank you so much Abbie for such an interesting presentation and sharing the news about how great it is
52:24
for us all to get more involved in art so hopefully we'll see lots um more enrolments in some of our courses and
52:31
um and also thank you very much to Chris for supporting on the call and thank you
52:37
to everybody for coming and joining us this evening it's been lovely to see you and hope you can come again next week
52:43
when we'll be hearing about the mass observation archive so thank you very much
