The British Museum’s Artists-in-Schools Project

by ISLA ROSSER-OWEN

Against the backdrop of ongoing conflict in the Middle East coupled with an unfolding humanitarian disaster, portents of impending doom and clashing civilizations, and a new open season on Islam in the Media, it is easy to overlook the many positive initiatives seeking to bring people and ideas together, to cross real or imagined boundaries that many would have us believe are impassable.

One such venture is the British Museum’s “Artists-in-Schools” Project, launched in January 2006 by the Museum’s Arab World Education Programme, with the support and backing of the Karim Rida Said Foundation. A versatile and dynamic initiative, by placing artists from the Middle East into British schools to work with secondary school pupils, the Project seeks to counter misleading impressions of the Arab and Islamic worlds while at the same time enriching the lives of the pupils involved and giving them the opportunities to work with new artistic media and to express themselves in alternative ways.

As Nicholas Badcott, who heads the Arab World Education Programme and is Project Manager to Artists-in-Schools, has pointed out, it is events like the recent conflict in the Lebanon “that make the [Arab World Education] Programme relevant”, seeing it as a vehicle for getting beyond the usual images portrayed in the news and for challenging the negative information that is being fed. To convey the message that, “just because you wear a head-cloth doesn’t make you a terrorist”.

In terms of the Artists-in-Schools Project, Nicholas Bad-cott explains that many school teachers do not feel equipped to teach about the Arab World, but that through the medium of art they are given the opportunity to explore the topic without being scared of discussing it. He says, “Working through artists is a good, enjoyable way of [changing ideas], as it is not necessarily controversial, and it is a good route for exploring the subject as students enjoy art and give it high status”.

For artist-teacher Stephen Stapleton—Founder of Offscreen Education and Project Co-ordinator for Artists-in-Schools—the initiative is not just about what is going on in the Middle East, but also about the school children themselves. “We’re doing this to enrich the lives of young people”, he stresses. And, perhaps supporting his point, one student from South Camden Community School enthused that having the opportunity to work with British-Iraqi artist Satta Hashem had been not just “brilliant and fun”, but a “life-changing experience”.

Although the British Museum has conducted outreach work in schools before, the Artists-in-Schools Project is the second of its kind to come from the Arab World Education Programme, the basic aim of which is to improve understanding of the Arab World and Islam, particularly through use of the British Museum’s extensive collections, which range from the ancient—with significant Egyptian and Mesopotamian collections—to the contemporary, some of which were spectacularly displayed in their “Word Into Art” Exhibition.

So far Artists-in-Schools has been taken to seven London schools, working with children from a range of backgrounds, ages and abilities through a variety of themed projects. Many of the students came from underprivileged circumstances, a number of them refugees or asylum seekers. The programme introduced the children to skilled practitioners, themselves from a diversity of backgrounds and using a variety of media, and aimed to be flexible enough to tailor-make the individual projects to fit the needs of the schools and their students, and to make the work suitable to their respective curricula.

In an attempt to make the project-work more accessible and relevant, the assigned artists were asked to give more prominence to contemporary themes and developing art, and less to traditional aspects. No particular emphasis was placed on Islam, with the overall project seeking to portray the diversity of the Middle East. However, Nicholas Badcott also stressed the organic nature of the Project and the necessity of keeping the venture malleable as it needed to fulfil a number of people’s requirements. Specific subject matter was kept open, and left up to the artists, as well as the students themselves, to develop. This flexibility can be seen in the diverse themes and project-work that emerged from the different schools.

THE ARTISTS IN THE SCHOOLS

Phase One of the Project saw British-Iranian artist Maria Kheirkhah working with Year 9 students at Heston School, and, with the help of art teachers Rosanjeet Khalsa and Steve Hook, they explored the theme of maps and the Middle East by using the British Museum collections as inspiration. Also part of Phase One was British-Iraqi painter Sadiq Toma’s “My World” Project with GCSE students at Brentford School for Girls, which inspired a stunning and vibrant collection of posters and ceramic tiles, proudly displayed at a British Museum event in July celebrating the success of Artists-in-Schools so far.