FEATURE: CULTURAL EDUCATION
home activities in their early years including arts achieved higher NAPLAN reading and numeracy scores, equivalent to being 12 weeks of schooling ahead in reading and six weeks ahead in numeracy at age nine. UK research shows improvements to transferable and cognitive skills through studying the arts.
Studying the arts make children more employable
Studying the arts gives children an uplift to their education outcomes. It also makes them more employable, developing skills employers are asking for including communication, problem solving and teamwork. Scottish research found that secondary students who studied arts subjects were more likely to get a job and to stay in employment after leaving school.
Studying the arts improves the employability of students across the board. It also prepares them to move into growth industries for the UK. One of the big industrial success stories for the UK in this century has been our creative industries. Growing at one and a half times faster than the wider economy and fed by a talent pipeline of arts students, the creative industries accounts for 1 in every 14 jobs. And creative jobs are resistant to automation. Nesta research found that 87 per cent of highly creative workers are at low or no risk of automation, compared with 40 per cent of jobs in the UK workforce as a whole.
Improving health and wellbeing As well as improving the employability of students, studying the arts offers a protective effect on wellbeing. A Scottish study found that people who had participated in a creative or cultural activity were 38 per cent more likely to report good health compared to those who did not. Italian data shows that cultural access is the second most important determinant of wellbeing, above factors including occupation, age, income and education.
For many people visiting museums and galleries is an important leisure activity that gives them inspiration, joy and fulfilment. Arts activities like dance and drama have been shown to lower stress and improve resilience and confidence. Singing lowers cortisol levels. We know taking part in arts activities supports students’ self-
efficacy, making them more resilient and confident.
Across the board engaging in the arts and visiting museums and galleries as part of education has a positive effect on life outcomes for students, making them healthier, happier, more empathetic and more likely to do well in school and go to university, to get a job and to take part in our civic life.
Barriers to museum visiting are cost and time With all these positives why are less students visiting museums and galleries? We know that schools are not specifically choosing to deny their pupils an arts-rich education, so in 2021 Art Fund set out to find out what the barriers were and what support UK teachers needed to use museums and galleries more often in their teaching practice.
We gave 1,000 teachers a free National Art Pass membership for one year. Membership includes free or reduced-price admission to museums and galleries across the UK, the Art Map guidebook on using the Pass at over 800 places, a subscription to Art Quarterly magazine with exclusive features, and a subscription to Art in Your Inbox – a fortnightly email newsletter on the latest things to see across the UK. We wanted to find out if the Pass benefits would positively impact both teachers’ personal levels of inspiration and their practice. Participating teachers took part in surveys and research workshops exploring what wider support we could offer them in addition to the Pass. The research found the decline in visiting and studying the arts was due to a myriad of other demands that are crowding them out. When a visit to a museum or gallery requires more time than teachers have available to plan and the money to pay for transport is not in school or parents’ budgets, arts experiences are lost.
Teacher Art Pass increases use of museums and galleries in teaching
By offering teachers improved access to museums and galleries via the Teacher Art Pass, we found it increased their use of museums and galleries in their teaching. 85 per cent of teachers found TAP benefits useful to their teaching practice and 4 out of 5 teachers said it inspired their teaching.
© The Holburne Museum/Chris Lacey © Hydar Dewachi Art Fund 2022
Teachers told us they loved being the first to know about the latest things to see in museums via the Art Quarterly magazine, Art Map and Art in Your Inbox – all designed to communicate what members can enjoy visiting in museums across the UK.
In response to our research findings, this year we launched Teacher Art Pass, offering all the benefits of a National Art Pass at a highly subsidised price for teachers – from £25 a year. We believe Teacher Art Pass is a step towards supporting teachers and museums to be more connected. Throughout our 120 years the founding pillars of Art Fund have remained resolutely the same; including our determination to encourage as many people as possible to visit museums across the UK, to advocate for the work they do and their crucial role in society. This is why we have focused on how we can support teachers to make greater use of museums and galleries in their teaching and give their students greater exposure to the great collections across the UK. We aim to enrich the personal and professional lives of teachers, spark creativity and innovation in the classroom and positively influence the next generation.
Museums and galleries today are dynamic, collaborative, evolving places – they are driven by world-leading curatorial research, and museum professionals determined to reflect the changing world around us – in the art and objects they collect, the stories they tell, the perspectives they share. They inspire us, often surprise us, bring us solace and bring us together. They are for everyone. Every child should experience museums and galleries as part of their education and feel themselves owners and citizens within their spaces.
https://www.artfund.org/teacher-art-pass December 2023
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