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Bringing AI into art
educational classes from ages 1 to 11 and in Sixth Form. Between ages 11 and 16, students are taught in single-sex lessons.
At New Hall, we aim to educate the whole person: academically, creatively and socially, within a community that also nurtures the spiritual dimensions of human life. The art department is high performing and successful focusing on delivering a combination of technical skills and craft alongside conceptual and personal development.
Students are encouraged to reflect on and respond to the world around them, pursue personal creative pathways and confidently discuss and justify their creative decisions.
How do you think AI fits within art as a whole?
E
ducation Today speaks with Chris Lonsdale, Head of Art, Design and Technology at New Hall School in Essex.
Tell us about your school?
New Hall is a Catholic independent boarding and day school for girls and boys aged 1-19 with 1,400 students on roll. It is situated on the edge of Chelmsford, in Essex.
The school operates the highly successful ‘diamond model’, educating students in co-
Andy Warhol’s famous quote from 1963, ‘I think everybody should be a machine’, seems particularly pertinent against today’s ever- expanding backdrop of mechanical art making, and the tensions rising between many artists and the evolution of AI.
AI certainly has its place in art, but some creative industries are understandably wary of it - particularly in the field of screen-based jobs such as graphics, illustration, and various forms of animation, where cognitive labour is likely to be replaced, or at least diminished, within years.
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www.education-today.co.uk Students are aware of this as well.
What are the benefits of AI in the classroom? The way students interact with AI can be highly creative - and purposeful too.
At New Hall, AI is many things to many people. For art teachers, its benefits include administrative support, such as reviewing essay plans and structures, generating compositions in painterly styles to work from, summarising information about artists or movements, and even sourcing locations for photo shoots. For students, AI has helped remove some of the more administrative elements of the subject, consolidating research and reflection more efficiently whilst providing visual stimulus to help with planning and development. They can also use AI to create different versions of their own work or by adding additional details into primary- sourced photographs.
What are the challenges of AI in the art classroom?
Students are mindful that AI can take over many roles within the art industry, asking why they are learning something that may soon be managed by AI. This presents a challenge. After all, our students are astute at recognising when something we are teaching them is purposeful or bluster.
January 2026
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