Sarah Mayhew-Craddock sees hope for the future in an exhibition of teachers’ work

Inspiring and motivating young minds is no small feat, and dynamic teachers have made for compelling viewing as education has proven to be the source of great entertainment recently.

2011 saw the BAFTA Award-winning series Educating Essex take to our tv screens, with Educating Yorkshire hot on its heels.

The headmaster from the Dewsbury school that featured in Educating Yorkshire was not only keen to showcase a much-improved school, but also a much-improved Dewsbury. Since moving to Oxford several years ago I’ve heard horror stories about the poor standard of education offered by schools outside of the private sector across the county.

Combine this with governmental talk of overhauling the GCSE examination system and cutting out creative subjects, and my blood starts to run several degrees colder as I fear for the holistic development of young people, and the future of the creative industries in the UK as a whole, a fear echoed by Lord Puttnam, chairman of the Cultural Learning Alliance. He said: “If we fail to offer our young people the opportunity to participate in the arts and culture, then we fail to support them in becoming the leading thinkers, innovators, creative business and community leaders of the future.”

So how does one go about re-asserting the value of the arts in education as the danger that schools will, in practice, see a continued diminution of creative subjects lurks ever closer? How does one ensure that the crucial role of arts subjects in a modern education is recognised and that art subjects should be added to the STEM subjects, changing STEM to STEAM (STEM is a teaching philosophy that integrates Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths into all lessons)? Enter the talented, enterprising teachers participating in O3 Gallery’s current exhibition, Education Oxfordshire, taking place in the small gallery in the Oxford Castle Quarter until March 2.

Education Oxfordshire comprises of an inspirational cross-section of work by 14 teachers (from university lecturers to secondary school teachers) from across the county. Featuring everything from Nicola Belson’s bold and beautiful fashion design captured in photographic form, as if fresh from the pages of a fashion magazine, simultaneously showing off two applied arts disciplines (Belson is a course leader at Reading College), to the highly traditional and hugely accomplished water-colourist, John Somerscales (who teaches adult education classes at The Marlborough School in Woodstock).

Helen Statham, director of the O3 Gallery said: “This exhibition celebrates the important role that art teachers play in students’ creative development and offers the public an opportunity to view the artistic creations of some of our county’s finest art educators.” The breadth and brilliance of the work in this exhibition is nothing short of A*, and made all the more special for me by the inclusion of Alice Floyd’s limited edition silk-screen prints. Floyd graduated with an engineering degree and now teaches maths at King Alfred’s Academy in Wantage.

Putting the ‘A’ in STEAM, there are clear signs of a mathematical mind behind the stunningly complex images that she has created for this exhibition that energetically depict nature bursting out from between steely structures creating a visual harmony between industrial man-made and unharnessable natural forms.

Video Technical Specialist for the School of Arts at Oxford Brookes University, AD Pawley, combines the old artform of pin-hole photography with modern, digital technology, nature, and innovative artistic intervention. As early-morning light pours in through parted curtains, Pawley bridges science and nature, replicating the universal human experience of that bright, piercing burst of first waking light having attached false eyelashes to a digital camera set-up to take a long-exposure image in the pin-hole style. A brilliant, understated image.

Also manipulating technologies to great effect is Abingdon’s St Helen and St Katherine School teacher Hannah McCague, who exhibits a couple of animal-inspired drawings consisting of strong, yet delicate graphic designs that leave the viewer suspended in a two-dimensional space. Possessing reflections of international art forms and perhaps inspired by art history, Headington School teacher Kate Turnbull’s textile prints hang high on the wall and transport the viewer to the Orient with her sweeping strokes, bold yet delicate botanical detailing, elegant compositions, and confident palette.

Similarly, across the gallery, the Ashmolean Museum’s Gabriella Blakey exhibited a carefully crafted composition comprising of veneer on wood that is reminiscent of Japan ware or Japanese lacquerware. While the delight of this exhibition is the high quality of the range of multi-disciplinary works on display, the stand-out work, for me, comes in the shape of Sarah Britten-Jones’ sculptural altered ceramic hobbywear.

Providing an antithesis to the dominant storyline told by everyday domestic objects, Britten-Jones, of Oxford & Cherwell Valley College and Reading College, plays with authority, manipulating her visual material in this exhibition, in doing so altering the original, or intended meaning of the slightly sinister spooning garden gnomes and the desperate plea for help perfectly transferred (in a sugary-sweet Kirstie-Allsopp style) yet appearing at first glance like a bloody smear over the baby nursery wall-hanging.

Just as Educating Yorkshire is more than just a TV series, so Educating Oxfordshire is more than just an exhibition – it is a bold statement about the quality of arts education in Oxfordshire, and it’s a demonstration of exactly how to put the ‘A’ back into STEM.

Educating Oxfordshire – the county’s art teachers exhibition is at the
O3 Gallery in the Oxford Castle Quarter until Sunday, March 14.
Call 01865 246131, email info@o3gallery.co.uk or go to www.o3gallery.co.uk