Most people know me for my work with NSEAD and generally being a bit of an activist for our subject, but I am also part of inSEA- International Society for Education through Art. InSEA comes under the umbrella of UNESCO and is truly international, with members in 69 countries. Last summer I took up my place (as one of three representatives from Europe) on the World Council, and have been very busy since then. http://insea.org/ Meetings online can be interesting too- becasue at times the time differences don't work out in my favour so I've had to do one online meeting in my dressing gown at 2am in the morning.
Pre-school, Zagreb, Croatia
Being a part of the national TEA Thinking Expression and Action Drawing CPD and later Sketchbook Circle, has allowed me to push my interest in collaboration out there into the world of art education. This also inspires the work I have done with InSEA this year- pulling together a Manifesto for Art and Design education (see below) was a huge job, although it might not look like that! I had to consult with and share documents with people all over the world and edit everything into one succinct document which can easily be translated, and which is already on the way to being available in many languages. I am very interested in manifestos and their role in art education and will be running a workshop on this at the 2018 InSEA European Congress in Helsinki next month.
Workshop using recycled materials, Lagos, Nigeria.
The other collaborative project has been to get art educators to send in photos of their art education 'spaces' from across the globe, to celebrate the UNESCO International Arts Week at the end of May. Ironically, the UK is one of the few countries that doesn't celebrate this, so I have am ambition to make sure that we do this nationally in 2019. Ambition is always a good thing! We are collecting all the images uploaded after May 18th, to share in a film, a slide show, a PDF, which can be downloaded. It will also be shown at the forthcoming InSEA Conferences, the European Congress in Helsinki (June), the Greek Art Teacher Symposium in July, and in other future events. The images can be found via Twitter and Instagram under hashtag moreartnotless and in a photo album on the InSEA Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/groups/InSEAOfficial/ and the range of places, people, creative spaces is fascinating. The poster is here and so is the project outline, in different languages; http://insea.org/advocacy/intl_arts_ed_week
At the Middle East and African InSEA Congress in Cairo (April) , I was approached by a delegate who wanted to hear all about Sketchbook Circle and is keen to exhibit some of the imagery from the books at a gallery in Missouri. I have not had time to follow this up yet- but I will. Sharing and collaborating is a way to make our subject help heal a very fractured world through creativity and art education. I love what I do.
