VIEWS & OPINION
Equipping pupils with “The Superpower of Looking” Comment by KATIE LEONARD, head of learning at Art UK
Every single day, 4.7 billion photos are captured. On WhatsApp alone, we share another 6.9 billion images daily. Our world is dominated by pictures, digital imagery and art. This constant and colossal tide of being surrounded by media and things to look at, heightens the need to sharpen our skills to become more visually literate.
Particularly in a new era of social media and AI, young people need to understand that images don’t always reflect reality and can affect the way we feel. Instead, it is important to open our eyes, absorb what is in front of us, and learn to interpret, analyse and advocate for what is really there.
For more than 17 years, I have dedicated my work to arts and cultural education. I have witnessed the power of art transforming lives, uniting communities and widening perspectives. From time to time, I have also encountered sceptics who might perceive arts and culture as secondary to other areas of education, or perhaps only as a hobby or past-time. But in this media-saturated landscape, it is clear that the ability to analyse what we really see in the world around us has never been more important.
We are now at a pivotal crossroads. It is imperative we move forward in a direction that will both safeguard our children and equip them with the essential lifelong skills to comprehend and critically interpret the world around them. That route to empowering our children starts with giving them access to cultural capital and strengthening their visual literacy through arts education.
Research consistently substantiates the ample benefits engaging with art and visual imagery brings. The Inquiry into the State of Art and Design teaching in Early Years Foundation Stage, Primary and Secondary Education, found art and design education is strongly associated with a positive sense of wellbeing. It stimulates creativity, critical thinking and emotional expression, providing an essential outlet for self-discovery and personal growth. As educators, we have a profound responsibility to equip pupils with the tools they need to not only decipher the world around them but also to harness the positive potential of learning to enhance their lives.
However, the pace of change in the national curriculum has often lagged behind the rapid evolution of the skills and knowledge really needed to thrive in today’s society. This, coupled with the arts and cultural education sometimes being regarded as an ‘optional extra’, presents a very stark future for a subject which, arguably, is integral to a child’s overall development and wellbeing.
Every child, regardless of their background or their postcode, deserves the skills needed to navigate this fast-evolving media landscape. Failing to be responsive to changes outside our classroom, and the number of visuals we are exposed to, would
September 2023 be a failure to the children we teach.
At Art UK, we recognise that curriculum development requires time, careful consideration and scrutiny. Yet, we are acutely aware of the urgency for us to equip pupils with the life skills they need. To fill this gap, it’s important to provide resources and avenues for teachers to empower their pupils to champion the role of the visual arts and media in a way that drives a paradigm shift in education – as well as the means to make art an integral part of children’s lives.
We often make a judgement based on first impressions or take things at face value. However, it is important to look beyond the surface and analyse what else is there. This provides us with greater visual intelligence and a knowledge base that can be used in all sorts of ways, both in and beyond the classroom. One example of this is art historian, Amy Herman, who worked with the New York City Police Department to look at and analyse paintings and works of art at the New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art, with the intention of enhancing their observation, perception and communication skills. By considering things like composition, light, colour and space, she encouraged them to look deeper at the paintings and search for things that might ordinarily be missed. She wasn’t trying to teach them to be better police officers, but to increase the effectiveness of what they saw, and what they should look for. The result? Their crime solving rates went up.
It is this same analysis and interpretation that we need to inspire pupils to explore. Through short films, open questioning and a wide variety of art and media, teachers and pupils can discuss and debate what they see, what it means and how it can be applied to real world scenarios.
Both Yale and Imperial College have now embedded visual literacy within their curricula, recognising it as an essential life skill that strengthens critical thinking, improves attention to detail and expands the brain’s capacity for memory. It is Art UK’s vision to widen access to visual literacy education far beyond the world’s top academic institutions. We call it The Superpower of Looking. Through specially designed lesson resources, training videos and support materials, primary schools can help pupils critically evaluate media content, strengthen memory capacity and develop critical thinking skills; all of which support learning across other subject areas like English, maths and science. Beyond producing impressive and transferable classroom outcomes, this engagement also has a positive impact on pupils in relation to increasing interest in visiting galleries and museums and exploring art and culture.
In the duration of reading this article, another 11 million photos have been taken and 92 per cent of those images will have been captured with a smartphone. Our landscape is continually changing yet the integral nature of art and the benefits it provides remains. It’s time to recognise that visual literacy is an essential life skill. We must unleash the full potential of art education to show pupils how to see beyond the surface, interrogate sources and navigate the digital world around them with total confidence. It’s time to equip pupils with their very own superpower to look, analyse and advocate.
www.education-today.co.uk 21
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