Maintaining and protecting an anti-racist art teaching practice

Miriam Gold

'The Canon is not a fixed thing. It can't be. It should adapt and respond to conversation and context, seeking to widen perspectives rather than lock them down in perpetuity. Second, the canon is really an unattainable ideal, the best I can offer is my canon.'

(Jeffrey Boakye, I heard what you said. 2022)

We have a moral duty to show our students art as a world that reflects and celebrates a diverse society.

Common Barriers to teaching more representational art lessons

1 - You will be the most inexperienced member of the department. How do they see you?

2 - Teachers are set in their ways. They are working hard in an undervalued and underpaid profession. They have been through Covid years and ay have an eye on retirement.

(or they may be open to change but nor to more work. They want to be anti-racist but don't or 'can't' do the work.

3 - Lack of theoretical understanding. No unconscious bias training due to funds/ lack of SLT support etc

4 - Unwillingness to change SoWs 'This is how we've always done it', 'good results happen when we look at Richard Deacon' or resourcing 'no space to make clay/ money for x'.

5 - Lack of Lived experience of racism. Never interrogated their privilege. Hasn't occurred to them that they have. moral imperative. They see their teaching as taking place in a vacuum.

Example problems

Barrier One

You may feel frustrated and have ideas you wish to try. You will see examples of practice that you find problematic. You want to make your mark. You may find it hard to speak up and challenge the established order in your department out of respect/shyness/deference to your HoD. Your relationship with your HoD is vital in terms of your progression.

Responses:

- Ask for advice, identify them from the outset as the one with the authority, rather than challenging their authority.

- Do the work for them. Do not come with giving more work, but do the work in your own time and come back and present this to them.

- Make it clear what type of teacher you would like to be. Identify your own specialisms.

- You need time to understand the micropolitics of the department and wider school.

- Get the hang of the role and the lessons first. (Don't do anything controversial for the first term or so.)

- Offer to write the lesson or scheme of work. Even just a starter activity.

- Look outside your department, is there a cross-curricular opportunity?

Barrier Two

This breeds tired and stale SoWs that do not reflect contemporary society or art practice and stop students loving the subject. Look at KS4 uptake amongst boys/global majority students at your school.

Responses:

- Collaborate with other schools, see how they are doing/adapting schemes of work. This is especially true for schools in the local area that will have similar representations of students.

- Show how you can be an asset by going to the exhibitions that they can't. Come in with suggestions from the show you went to over the weekend that inspired you.

- Make it positive rather than using negative language so you are not undermining their work.

- Find a documentary or a clip you can use as a starter, Make your argument bitesized and accessible.

Barrier Three

If we don't understand our context we cannot move forward. If we have no theoretical understanding, we cannot develop and fight the hostile environment of twin problems and systemic racism and of devaluing art. Failing to engage with galleries and social media in all forms means missing out on spotting newer artists and examples of good practice, teaching evenings, events, etc.

Responses:

- Recognise that everyone is on a journey with anti-racism

- Engage with galleries, media/social media and look far and wide in contemporary practitioners.

- Model a dynamic teaching practice of your own.

Barrier Four

If we have monolithic never-changing schemes of work, it is bring for student and teacher alike. Further, it perpetuates the idea of an art canon that is exclusive and untouchable member's club with all the societal and educational problems associated with this.

'To me a canon is just a word for something people are too lazy to change.'

(Jeffrey Boakye, 2022)

Responses:

- Empty a cupboard for them. Clear a shelf for a new set of sculptures, then offer to do your workshop on... etc. Do the work for them.

- FInd the inheritors, Who is making work inspired by these older examples? Who is the artist that quotes them as an inspiration in an interview?

- If you absolutely cannot change a SoW, put in a starter, a homework, something with an outcome that is recordable, ie a drawing for their sketchbook, something to show what you have done.

Barrier Five

Children do not only exist between 8:30am and 3pm. They bring to school their and their families' experiences of racism and privilege. If school operates in some kind of vacuum during that time it will be inauthentic and untrustworthy to the child. Ladson-Billings talks of the cultural mismatch and suggests we move to a culturally responsive pedagogy.

Responses:

- Monolithic exclusive canon that shuts down space for racism, and therefore does not recognise the reality of an unequal society and the trauma this creates through generations. From personal experience this also silences teachers.

(Deborah Roberts, Don't pee on my head and tell me its raining (Fish). 2017) (More information at: https://gallerygurls.net/art-convos/2018/2/24/in-conversation-with-deborah-roberts-iconic-art-for-young-black-and-brown-girls )

Freelands foundation - https://freelandsfoundation.co.uk/

Group work scenarios:

During a department history meeting and discussion around new projects, a colleague remarks 'They looked at Chris Ofili during Black History month so we ticked that box.'

- Give the colleague the benefit of the doubt to approach sensitively, to give the space to realise that they said something racist and give them time to correct themselves.

- At best its lazy and at worst its racist, tokenistic and dismissive.

- Call them out professionally.

Black History needs to be something that is built into the continued curriculum, not only one day.

You are due to be observed by a member of SLT as a part of your first placement. The lesson is introducing year eight students to the life and work of Niki de Saint Phalle, a French Artist who made exaggerated female forms she called 'Nanas', a French slang word that is a pejorative term for a womam, like 'bird'. In your research you discover she was sexually abused by her father and physically abused by her mother. What do you do?

- In regards to the abuse, its important to acknowledge this, but to approach it with sensitivity.

- Be aware of the audience and lived experiences of the students. You don't have to be specific in terms of a traumatic home life, but it is important to acknowledge its influence on the artists work.

- The real problem here is asking students to create works that reflect and produce negative derogative representations of women. the work 'Nanas' may be significant to the artist as it may come with nuance from their lived experience, but it is a harmful thing to include into conversations with unknowing students.