It may not be that obvious, but education and in particular Creative Learning is a major part of what Art of Protest does. We see it as central to our offering in creating a better engaged, more connected and culturally literate society. For Art of Protest, finding voice and upskilling communities is essential foundation work which builds talent opportunity pipelines and creates capability. This type of engagement underpins our ideas for creating impactful public art and manifesting great places for us to live, work and visit. It is very much front and centre of what we do.

Sadly, there’s no shortage of news coverage about the state of crisis in our schools – record levels of non-attendance are becoming an accepted norm, young people are suffering from a mental health epidemic, and the need for special education needs (SEND) provisions are significantly increasing every year. (ONS figures reveal that pupils in England requiring SEND support have increased by 19% since 2016 with currently 1.6 million pupils requiring support).

It is crystal clear that children from low socio-economic backgrounds, single-parent families or looked-after children (LAC) are most like to lose out as a consequence of this crisis: lower educational attainment, poorer social mobility, less access to quality employment, higher rates of juvenile crime – but hasn’t this always been the case?

The truth is that large sections of young people have always been short-changed by the education system. If you happen to be blessed/cursed with any form of diverse learning faculties or needs, you will likely have struggled to fit in or flourish in the mainstream school system. These days, the problem is only becoming worse. Decades of anti-teaching, obsessions with exam results and a preoccupation with Science Technology Engineering and Maths (STEM) have ended up with a ‘one-size fits all’ approach to education. This has increasingly become an exasperating and expanding problem year after year – it’s become a bit like trying to fix the Starship Enterprise with a ratchet spanner.

Guess what? People aren’t just programmable entities – they are complex, nuanced, interesting creatures with unique needs and multiple developmental growth pathways. We all learn at our own pace and in our idiosyncratic ways. Education has simply come down to whether any one of us is capable of acting it out before we start acting up. The majority of us can and do very well (or at least okay) in the mainstream education system – but a sizeable minority (up to 25%) can find themselves struggling, frustrated, marginalised, stigmatised or even ultimately excluded. And the vast majority (i.e. those not choosing a path towards University) are left somewhat bereft and under-prepared for the career and job market ahead of them.

So what are the solutions for this predicament? No doubt, with the forthcoming general election, this topic will be one of the political footballs to be kicked around the playground without any meaningful or sustained action to resolve the underlying problems - whichever political party becomes successful in winning our votes. Against the backdrop of the climate crisis, financial crisis, cost of living crisis, health and social care crisis, transport & infrastructure crisis – why would anyone have the political will to care about a minority of young people who don’t fit the STEM learning, university attending norms of our conveyor-belt education system? We do!

At Art of Protest, we are not doom-mongers. We are creative minds who believe there is always a solution – as long as you are prepared to roll your sleeves up, apply your imagination and DO SOMETHING! What our team does to combat this crisis lies in the delivery of our Creative Learning curriculum to schools of all shapes, sizes, types and locations.

The core of our Creative Learning curriculum is focused on building human skills relating to creative thinking and artistic expression. These real-world skills that are not academically reliant are all played through the lens of street art with a Creative Learning Workshop offering to provide guided and individual support to each student we engage with. We cover many of the skills that we know are missing from the current educational system, and that we equally know are vital to the success, both short and long-term, of a young person living in a modern world.

Some of these skills include:

How to problem-solve
How to have an idea
How to communicate your idea
How to express yourself
How to work through an idea as a team

We currently make our Creative Learning Workshops available to schools to support mainstream education curriculum areas within PHSE education and we are particularly interested in providing supplementary courses for SEND and EHC plans.

Our courses are ideal for building rapport, confidence, esteem and self-expression – critical facilities which are often in short supply amongst young people who have suffered knock-backs in mainstream education.

Not only are our courses beneficial in terms of human skills, but they are also valuable in delivering practical skills like translating designs from 2D to 3D, working at scale, and technical considerations for working with materials and surfaces – all bread and butter matters for your average street artist, but offering a highly visual and spatial set of learning dimensions for young people to engage and explore. The importance of using street art as our vehicle is the curiosity and enthusiasm that we see young people engage with, providing a highly motivating and exciting factor to evoke young minds.

We believe that special education requires special measures. It’s as simple as that. These opportunities shouldn’t be out of the reach of the many who could be future contributors to our fantastic creative economy - rather than sidelined on the hard shoulder of life. Not only that, but we use our model of approach to openthe door to possibility and ultimately to innovate the young thinkers of today, allowing them to use the takeaways we provide them in a multitude of routes, starting from within their classroom walls through to their first entry-level job, all the way down to their chosen career or life-path.

So, we ask you…

Are you an educationalist who understands how important it is to provide our SEND students with alternative measures to mainstream education?
Are you a parent whose child is struggling with the current education system and not thriving in their school environment? Maybe you struggled with SEN yourself back in the day?
Are you a successful business person or entrepreneur who has succeeded DESPITE the limitations you were served up in your education days?
Or are you someone who just believes we need to address the obsession with STEM with a re-balancing of educational priorities to include more creative learning opportunities?

If you would like to know more about how Art of Protest’s mission to tackle the poor approaches to and ultimately lack of hands-on creative learning head-on – and particularly if you think you can help or join forces to add more firepower to this cause – then please share your story in the comments and reach out to connect with us.

Get in touch!

We won’t be able to conquer this alone, but we will try if we have to!

A Crisis in Education - Who Cares?