Serpentine Offsite Education Programme 2016—18 Final

Serpentine Final Research Offsite Education and Programme Evaluation Report 2016—18 Volume 2 Dr Anton Franks & Professor Pat Thomson Case Studies with Louisa Penfold & Essay Centre for Research in Arts, Creativity and Literacies https://cracl.net/ School of Education, University of Nottingham 2 The authors would like to express sincere thanks to the Serpentine i Galleries, particularly Education Curator, Alex Thorp, Assistant Education ii Contents Curators, Ben Messih and Jemma Egan; to the children, parents and staff of the Portman Early Childhood Centre, and in particular Jo White, 4————— Introduction the Head of the Centre; to commissioned artists Albert Potrony, Adelita 6—————Themes and references emerging from case studies Husni‑Bey, Bahbak Hashemi‑Nezhad, Adam J B Walker and Emma 7————‑—City and neighbourhood McGarry and Jasleen Kaur on Changing Play projects; artists Adam 8—————Migrations and movements James and James Harper, staff and students from Gateway Academy 9—————Children, Young People and Schooling on the Moving Up project; artists Barby Asante and Teresa Cisneros 1 1 — — — ‑ —— Teaching and Learning and students and staff from Westminster Academy on the Youth 1 2 — —— — — Curation, dialogue and mediation Forum project. 1 3 — — — —— Arts and Participation 1 5 — — — ‑ —— Extended Case Studies 1 6 — — — ‑ —— Albert Potrony, ‘Play as Radical Practice’, May 2016–July 2018 2 8 — — — —— Bahbak Hashemi‑Nezhad, ‘On What Grounds’, February 2017–October 2018 3 4 — — — —— Emma McGarry & Adam J B Walker, ‘Special Rights’, May 2017–November 2018 3 8 — — — —— Adelita Husni‑Bey, October 2017–present 5 2 — — — —— Jasleen Kaur, January 2018–present 6 6 — — — —— Adam James ‘Here is the Place’, Moving Up, May 2016–June 2018 7 8 — — — —— Barby Asante & Teresa Cisneros, Youth Forum, October 2016–April 2017 9 2 — — — —— Essay: Curation, care and carefulness: the art of education curation 1 0 1 — — ——— References Serpentine Offsite Education Programme 2016‑18 Final Research and Evaluation Report Case Studies & Essay Volume 2 4 Introduction 5 In the first volume of the final research and the case studies are presented as analytical evaluation report on the Serpentine Education narratives that are descriptive in which analysis Programme, curated by the education team, we is embedded. Our intention is to convey to the presented an executive summary that set out reader something more detailed of the flavour of findings, contexts and synoptic descriptions each of the commissioned projects and some of individual projects observed, along with of the outcomes that we observed. While this is recommendations for sustainability and future unusual for an evaluation report it seems to us the steps. This is the second volume of the research most accurate way of reporting what we saw and and evaluation report in which a series of extended participated in. While it might have been possible ethnographic case studies are presented. to reduce these cases to lists of bullet points, our Prefacing the case studies is a section outlining view was, and remains, that the practices of the themes, drawing on references to literature. work should be made as visible as possible. In keeping with the ethnographic approach to This section of the report concludes with research and evaluation outlined above, a short essay on care and curation. Serpentine Offsite Education Programme 2016‑18 Final Research and Evaluation Report Case Studies & Essay Volume 2 6 Themes and references 7 City and neighbourhood emerging from case studies ‘Rights to the city’ is a core theme that runs through Serpentine Galleries’ community‑based education programme. Walls in the city are clearly literal entities, encircling, containing and perhaps constraining. But they are metaphorical, too, representing barriers that have social and cultural faces. Centred in and around the Church Street locality, the education programme engages with its culturally and ethnically diverse population through children and young people. There is a strong desire to treat people in the community as collaborators, involving them in making decisions about the places and spaces in which they work and live. In this way, the programme is concerned with people’s access to resources, cultural and material, alongside individual, social and cultural development. Education curators draw some inspiration and impetus for commissioning artists to work on projects with children and young people from engaging with the writing of Colin Ward. In his book, The Child in the City, first published in the late 1970s, Ward was interested ‘The City as a Resource’, writing that the ‘city itself is an environmental education’—‘learning through the city’, ‘about the city’, and crucially learning as children’s agency to ‘use the city’, ‘to control … or to change the city’ (Ward, 152). Supporting a view of children’s agency, he quotes the headteacher Chris Rosling on children’s ‘realisation that they can actively play a part in shaping their surroundings, that what they say about where and how they live will be listened to and that the key to their future lies in their own awareness’ (159). In an afterword to a later edition of The Child in the City in 1990, Ward wrote presciently and critically of the ‘demoralisation of the public education industry’ which he asserts has ‘nothing to do with the needs of children’, and of the effects of parental poverty which altogether may mean that city children will be likely to ‘make less use of the urban environment than their predecessors’ (Ward, 190). Nearly 30 years later in parts of London such as the Church Street locality where the population experiences reduced socio‑economic conditions and restricted opportunities for political representation, Ward’s prophesy appears to have increased validity. Ward went on to ask, ‘Are there redeeming features in other aspects of city children’s lives?’, and answers his own question with the assertion that ‘There is some reason to assume that today’s city children make less use of the urban environment than their predecessors’ (1990, 190). The work of Bahbak Hashemi‑Nezhad in 2017 was a positive illustration of how work on Changing Play engages directly with issues of rights to the city. Questions guiding his project—‘Where are the spaces for children in the city?’ and ‘What are the physical and imaginative qualities of a play space?’—led him to explore a bare and rather arid open area at the base of a tower‑block with children. The work was demonstrably driven by a desire to open up the resources of the city to a group of nursery children, and the desire of many staff at the Portman Centre to understand how the resources of place might support the children’s Serpentine Offsite Education Programme 2016‑18 Final Research and Evaluation Report Case Studies & Essay Volume 2 play and learning. Ongoing at the time of writing, Sam Curtis is similarly 8 interested in taking a small group of children, some of whom have special 9 Children, Young People and Schooling educational needs and disabilities (SEND), out of the nursery to explore the resources of the city. His questions focus on what child‑led walks can reveal of their experiences and their relationship to the city, what can be The education team’s aspiration is for continuity and development and learned from listening to the children in rethinking the city, and how walks to encourage and support co‑research with community groups. It is through the city can help thinking about how children manage risks. Both through developing and sustaining relationships with schools that a way Bahbak’s and Sam’s work can be seen to want to open up children’s into working with the wider community could be realised. The idea was to sense of agency and autonomy in relation urban environments. begin by building networks locally and from this base to build nationally by developing resources with children, young people, parents and educators alongside artists that can be published online and in hard‑copy formats. The education team acknowledged that this it would be Migrations and movements challenging because of the time required to build up networks. The Serpentine develops a programme, but it was not for the Serpentine Galleries to develop proposals for arts projects, but for commissioned Given current conditions of ‘austerity’ and strictures that have been artists to co‑develop them after spending time in the specific context, in place since 2010, the work of the Serpentine Offsite Education having conversations with people, and building familiarity with the Programme is pressing. This is particularly evident in an area of London community and its values. A main idea behind curating arts projects in in which people, children and young people of immigrant families the community with members of the community having a say and input, disproportionately experience first‑hand the effects of austerity policies steering direction of the work, is to work with children and young people in terms of access to employment, housing, education, arts and cultural and to promote changes they would like to see. Change is brought about resources. It is a view supported by recent work by social geographers in Alex Thorp’s view by engaging collectively and actively in devising Doreen Massey (2007) and Danny Dorling (2015) who draw on evidence research questions and programmes, involving staff, parents and wider demonstrating an increasing tendency toward reduced access to the members of the community, alongside the artists, in reflections on the resources of London for people on lower incomes and from diverse course of projects and the changes that participants and collaborators minority groups. This is despite evidence that the very social, cultural and want to bring about. In this way, research processes leading to change economic diversity of the city represented in localities such as the Church are seen as intrinsic to the arts projects run by the Serpentine’s education Street area have made major contributions to its vibrancy.

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