Held by a Thread: What's the Value of Art in Schools?

By Anna Cutler

What was your experience of art in school? Was it all doilies, cheap paint, and crusty brushes? Or was it better than that but you still wondered why it seemed to be the runt of the educational litter. In this humorous, engaging, and thought-provoking book, Anna Cutler, a leading figure in art education, takes you on a journey through her personal experiences and reflections on the value of art in schools. By the end you’ll come to realise that the stakes are surprisingly high for the social, emotional, and intellectual development of our children. It is an impassioned plea to nourish, within and beyond schools, the one resource that will never run out: the human capacity to create.
“Engagingly informal and on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, this wise and witty book can be absorbed quite effortlessly in one sitting. It leaves you with the sense that you’ve enjoyed one-on-one tuition from the favourite teacher you never had.” Dr Shane Kinghorn, Manchester Metropolitan University.
“I learned a great deal reading this book and laughed in all the right places. It is a powerful, persuasive ‘Call to Arts’.” Andrew McGuinness, author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9781035847846

Anna Cutler

Anna Cutler was the inaugural Director of Learning and Research at Tate (galleries). She now works as a consultant and coach in Margate, where she has lived with her family for the last 20 years. Anna has published many academic works. This is her first foray into writing about her personal and professional experiences in art and education.

Book preview

About the Author

Anna Cutler was the inaugural Director of Learning and Research at Tate (galleries). She now works as a consultant and coach in Margate, where she has lived with her family for the last 20 years. Anna has published many academic works. This is her first foray into writing about her personal and professional experiences in art and education.

Dedication

For my dad, Robin Cutler.

Copyright Information ©

Anna Cutler 2024

The right of Anna Cutler to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035847822 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035847846 (ePub e-book)

ISBN 9781035847839 (Audiobook)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

There are numerous people who were involved in this book coming to life. The many children over the years who have educated me, the colleagues who have inspired and helped me, and the friends that kindly read versions of this book along the way. Thank you all. I want to give particular thanks to Becky Swain, Andrew Brewerton, Andrew McGuinness, Shane Kinghorn and Alice Walton for their thoughtful comments and eagle eyes. To Susannah Goulding for her persistence in making sure I got this published and Tom Avery who gave lots of helpful advice. A thanks to Eric Booth for his enduring support and great provocations over the years. And always thanks and love to Iain, Kathryn, and Sam, who have lived through the writing and watched many of the stories in the book happen in real time. Iain, my additional gratitude for going the extra miles you have taken, as well as for the numerous cups of tea, coffee and vital encouragement. Lastly, a very special thanks to Rebecca Hunter, who has been my critical friend in this project, from the very beginning.

Foreword

I was lucky enough to attend an excellent private school (in U.S. parlance, that means an expensive school not funded by the government) because my mother was a teacher and administrator there, and so her kids could attend for free. My elementary school day ended two or three hours before her workday ended, and the school’s art teacher allowed me to spend those hours in the art room. I was allowed to use any supplies, as long as I cleaned up impeccably (which I always did, because I had a minor crush on the art teacher).

My precious unsupervised hours in that room, amid the smell of paint, the earthy tang of the clay, and sickly-sweet whiff of the glue pots, were the first great incubator for my imagination. My artmaking was tentative and literal; I made maps of ancient Greek battles and drew World War II soldiers and baseball heroes. The quality of my work was pretty bad, but those hours in that room were an invaluable haven. I spent my weekday afternoons marinated in possibility, experimentation, and aesthetic choice. I proceeded to spend my subsequent six decades as a professional freelancer—finding my way, following my curiosity, and making brave choices, just as I had in the art room. Imagining and making stuff I cared about became the way I organized my life.

Making stuff one cares about. That’s the term I have used for decades to describe the core act of power in arts education—the lifelong hunger to make things you care about, to develop the courage to complete them and give them a life in the world…and, based on the world’s response, to refine them, make them better, and continue experimenting. Over time, we learn what the world cares about and what it needs, and we start making things that make a difference in family, community, and professional contexts.

Arts education needs champions who see its full power, beyond its obligatory peripheral place in Western schooling. Anna Cutler is one of our foremost champions. Held by a Thread is her distillation of a lifetime of experience—two lifetimes, actually, since her father’s teaching career is a major storyline in the book. She sets out the conditions that make true arts engagement possible, and she celebrates the usually overlooked understory of the learning, the skill development, and the human development that make arts education essential in every school and for every child.

Yes, there is buzz and blather these days about creativity in schooling, but it remains a low priority, and the arts are an even lower priority in the way schools run, despite the huge contribution to creative development they can make. Anna sees the arts as the supercharged opportunity for creative learning. She celebrates the distinctive contribution of arts learning to intellectual development: building interpretive abilities, forming observational faculties, creating symbolic meaning, and navigating contingency. She sees that as young children work in creating art—regardless of form or medium—they gain practice in holding attention on a sphere of action or range of space. In doing so, they take in the fundamental elements or building blocks of the world around them. They gain inner vision…in which thought is being explored and the capacity for seeing the whole and the part/s is exercised. She celebrates the critical thinking involved in a good art classroom.

Reading this beautiful and thoughtful book, I found myself thinking how resonant Anna’s vision is with an argument Howard Gardner made early in his career. Clearly, she is a spirit-mate of Gardner, who said a rounded arts education requires substantive learning in four roles—the creator, the performer, the audience, and the critic. Each role challenges a different but complementary skill set. How grossly imbalanced these roles are, in most arts education—even in schools where there is sufficient arts education to provide real skill development of any kind!

Anna shines her appreciative light not only on the creative and intellectual development of young people, but also on the powerful role arts learning plays in their emotional and social development. At a time when research shows that young people are suffering unprecedented levels of anxiety, depression, loneliness, and alienation, the ancient antidote of the arts is ready to serve, if given the opportunity in school life. Anna reminds us, too, of the physical development inherent in arts education: the fine motor skills, the larger motor skills, and the sheer physicality of working with materials,