Category: creative arts

  • Getting students drawing can help belonging and mental health

    Getting students drawing can help belonging and mental health

    Empowering students to develop a creative skillset in response to curriculum-based tasks facilitates experimentation and exploration.

    Increasing creativity supports problem-solving and innovation in a range of academic disciplines. Developing these skills, students acknowledge improvements in their mental health and wellbeing. At De Montfort University, our drawing centre gives students opportunities to develop drawing skills, not only to improve visual communication, but to enhance creativity more broadly.

    Our students say that this ability to design and create improves their confidence to become more imaginative in their studies, developing a confidence that transcends beyond the ability to be creative, enabling more holistic engagement in studies and the wider university experience.

    A centre for creativity

    The drawing centre – part of the central Library and Student Services directorate – offers an inclusive studio environment in which students are supported in a non-assessed way to develop individualised approaches to the creative process.

    Many students first enter the drawing centre thanks to timetabled sessions aligned to curriculum content, others bravely wander in to see what’s happening, and some come along as a supportive friend but soon find themselves engaged and wanting more. Located at the very heart of our Leicester campus, the centre is visible from outside – its interior attracts many to come in and embrace creative development, in an environment designed to support wellbeing.

    The centre is led by experienced arts teacher Chris Wright, who recognised the decline in student confidence and associated mental health and sought to address it. Knowing the importance of a students’ ability to engage creatively, to explore creativity in a nurturing, non-judgemental environment, Chris championed the establishment of a space to develop creative design thinking, doing this to facilitate preparedness for study from a place of perceived mental safety.

    A starting point for the centre was research indicating that mainstream education appears to marginalise art and design subjects in favour of STEM disciplines – a point which echoed Chris’s 20 years of experience teaching arts disciplines, where he witnessed a diminishing focus on craft, experimentation, and creativity, leading to a decline in critical thinking and the negative impacts of this on the student experience.

    Realising the need to develop student confidence in drawing and mark-making, the drawing centre was established in 2018 to provide bespoke support to a small selection of courses at our university. It has grown to become a core part of university activity with provision for multi-modalities of learning for all four faculties, engaging over 2,600 student visits each academic year.

    Confidence

    Many providers seek to understand and support incoming students during that key period of transition into higher education.

    As part of our approach, we invite new students to engage in a self-evaluation exercise. Findings have indicated that high proportions of students start their higher education journey with little or no confidence in visual expression (the ability to express oneself through visual media), visual literacy (the ability to work with visual media), and visualisation (the ability to think in a visual way). The drawing centre aims to address this, based on the principles that with support and in the right environment all students have creativity that should be developed. We offer the chance to develop drawing, visual and creative skills to students who clearly recognise alignment between creativity and their academic studies, as well as to those who don’t.

    Through non-assessed creative activity, exploration and play, students are challenged to explore stimuli and tasks in different ways. They are taught about physical and visual representation, examining how changes in design approaches can impact processes and outputs. Doing this in a “fun” environment, students also share their experiences, often exploring and expressing deeper concepts than purely the physical medium in which they are working or in response to the task set.

    Echoing the mental health benefits of playful approaches to learning, students develop confidence in their creative abilities and recognise the impact of this on their studies. Chris’s student self-evaluation research identifies where visual acuity confidence is lacking and allows for a bespoke curriculum to be designed with course teams to meet student needs. Extracurricular sessions encourage students’ confidence, alongside coaching for staff to embed creative play within assessed activity.

    Power of community

    Some 96 per cent of drawing centre users recognise this as an important learning community, acknowledging creative skill development, and beyond that, resilience. Students feel more confident in approaching academic studies, using the skills developed through creative exploration, adapting these approaches for use in their disciplines. The non-assessed approach is considered non-judgmental, the learning environment is recognised as one in which students develop a toolbox of skills for use in any task and preparing them for lifelong learning.

    Community building within student cohorts supports the development of a sense of belonging, and is considered an increasingly important factor in a student’s sense of wellbeing within the learning environment. Belonging impacts the student experience and attainment, therefore providing students with a physical space in which they feel safe and supported to creatively explore delivers positive benefits beyond the development of creative skills.

    An ongoing process

    We hope to shine a light on the power of developing creativity during study, particularly to improve mental health and support engagement with study. The drawing centre is an experiential learning environment, one that invites the exploration and empowers a community. Students are encouraged to use creative enquiry, informing criticality within their studies.

    We encourage others to consider student support from a creative perspective. Practical guides outline approaches to student belonging, recognising the ways in which this can be approached and benefits it brings. From our experience, creative exercises and opportunities to explore in a non-assessed environment at the heart of campus enable students to develop confidence and lifelong learning skills.

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  • Working-class students feel alienated from their creative arts degrees – here’s how to help

    Working-class students feel alienated from their creative arts degrees – here’s how to help

    Social class inclusivity is a problem in UK higher education.

    Research demonstrates that working-class students report being less likely to apply to university than their middle-class peers – and when working class people do enter higher education they may face discrimination and social exclusion. This is exacerbated in creative arts subjects.

    We interviewed students currently studying creative arts subjects at a Russell Group university to hear more about their experiences of social class inclusivity. Speaking to ten undergraduate and eight postgraduate students studying a range of creative fields including music, drama and film, we found that working-class students find it difficult to attend class, are disadvantaged in terms of accessing the cultural resources needed to succeed on their course, and feel excluded from social life on campus.

    Economic disadvantage presents a considerable barrier to students completing arts subjects at university. To be inclusive, university staff may have to adjust teaching and learning. We would like to make the case for those working in higher education to consider what classed assumptions are made about students in our institutions and accordingly reassess our expectations of those studying the creative arts.

    Many of the disadvantages or challenges that working-class students face are connected to wider structural inequalities that are deeply entrenched in our society. At the same time, there are still meaningful interventions that staff can make to support working-class students. We suggest four ways in which university staff can make their practice more inclusive to working-class students.

    Discuss working-class stories as present and live

    Universities are middle-class spaces. In creative arts subjects, students often make work referring to their class identity. This can be at odds in institutions where middle-class experience is the “norm”.

    Class diversity must be present within teaching. More working-class mentorship and role models would help students to feel like they belonged at university – including visiting working-class creatives. Our participants also advocated for contemporary working-class experience in the curriculum, in academic texts, and in the artworks discussed.

    Staff must maintain a supportive and safe space when discussing issues pertaining to social class. Staff should also recognise that not everyone wants to talk about their background or experience. Additionally, staff must be aware of social class-based stereotyping that might exist in other students’ creative work, and be prepared to intervene when necessary if (often unintended) prejudices around work, class, accent, or lifestyle emerge.

    Adapt teaching to the multiple demands on working-class students’ time

    More and more students are undertaking part-time work alongside their studies. It is difficult to devise our curricula for only those students who can commit all their time to studying, when significant numbers are balancing their studies with multiple part-time, temporary and precarious jobs, or with care responsibilities.

    Working-class and carer students may be commuting considerable distances to engage with their studies. This is creating a two-tier system of engagement, and many of the students we interviewed felt that teaching and learning on their courses was not flexible enough to support their participation. The same issues are present when students try to engage in extracurricular and cultural activities.

    Working-class students asked for more online resources and access to course materials immediately at the start of modules, alongside concerns over early starts and late finishes and travel costs. They wanted permission to speak to staff about part-time work without feeling like they were “doing something wrong” or not taking their studies seriously. The normalisation of working alongside studying is something that staff may have to accept and work with, rather than try to push against.

    Early intervention is important

    The early stages of the student’s degree are a key time when social class difference and disadvantage is felt, with high levels of anxiety around finance and budgeting in comparison to more affluent peers.

    Working-class students asked for the university to provide information to support their transition into economic independence. Examples include advice on budgeting, lists of free resources, inexpensive alternatives and free access to cultural resources.

    Peer support plays a huge role in the transition to higher education. Working-class peer support groups and mentorship are as significant interventions to help.

    Adjust assumptions and reassess expectations

    University staff can make a difference to the experience of working-class students through simple adjustments of the assumptions we make.

    Interviewees believed staff made assumptions about what creative arts students should know, or the kind of experiences they should have had prior to university. These assumptions corresponded with a more middle-class experience, for example knowledge of university life, or access to (and the ability to afford) cultural resources or engagement with extra-curricular activities. Participants were particularly frustrated by assumptions from staff that students could afford to pay for learning resources not available in the library.

    Extra work is also needed to ensure that working-class or other marginalised students feel comfortable and entitled to ask for help from staff.

    Because many students now must work alongside studying, students may have less time to complete their work outside of class. Stronger steers on the amount of time to complete activities and prioritisation of reading, and the removal of blame for those struggling to balance time constraints of working whilst studying can all be effective.

    Working-class creatives

    Class inclusivity means students feel like they belong on their course, alongside having the financial security to take the time and space to study.

    This is particularly important in the creative arts because the more time and space students have to engage with their course or with extracurricular activities like arts societies, the more working-class stories will be represented in the creative work they make. Creative arts subjects must better support working-class students to engage fully with their studies – and not to be disadvantaged by financial pressure, lack of resource, or through feeling like they don’t belong on their course.

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  • Curtain call on traditional time-intensive drama training

    Curtain call on traditional time-intensive drama training

    Recent closures of renowned actor training courses, including the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School’s undergraduate provision and the abrupt collapse of the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts, have laid bare a crisis in drama training. This isn’t only about funding shortfalls; it’s about the very structures and traditions of training, which risk shutting out those able to succeed.

    The financial strain on institutions is undeniable. The historical freeze in undergraduate tuition fees and the high-intensity delivery required in drama and other forms of intensive arts training like dance and music education have made traditional models almost unsustainable. Specialist institutions, unable to cross-subsidise, have stretched themselves to the limit – expanding course offerings, increasing intakes, internationalisation and growing postgraduate provision, where costs can be better covered. Meanwhile, government support through welcome specialist funding streams such as Institution Specific Funding have proven insufficient to address the root challenges.

    These efforts, while necessary, have unintended consequences. Over-speedy expansion creates great challenges for the quality of the learning experience, while institutional survival strategies rarely address the deeper, systemic issues at play. The question is not just how to survive in this increasingly precarious environment, but how to rethink the system entirely.

    The hidden barrier of time poverty

    The financial barriers to entering drama training are well-documented, but there is a more insidious form of exclusion that demands urgent attention: time-poverty.

    As highlighted in a recent Unipol and HEPI report, the average cost of student rent in London now exceeds the maximum maintenance loan, leaving students struggling to make ends meet. This financial reality forces many to take on part-time work, but the intensive nature of traditional actor training – 30-40 hours a week, often with irregular schedules – leaves little room for paid employment. The result? Only those who can afford not to work can afford to train.

    Traditional training models require high levels of physical presence and stamina. While these methods have been celebrated for their rigour, they exclude those with caring responsibilities, disabilities requiring time flexibility, or the need to support themselves financially. This isn’t just a financial issue – it’s a fundamental inequity in how time is valued in training.

    Addressing time-poverty isn’t about making marginal adjustments; it requires a paradigm shift. Drama schools must reimagine training models to prioritise accessibility and sustainability without compromising quality. Flexible delivery methods, guaranteed non-contact periods for work or rest, and rethinking the necessity of long, traditional schedules are all potential starting points. If we are to be equitable in the way almost all drama schools claim as a value, we must redesign what “intensity” in training means for excellent students who do not arrive with the economic means required. The current system is exclusionary.

    Some institutions are already leading the way. Identity School and Access All Areas have successfully adapted their training processes to accommodate a broader range of students. The Collective Acting Studio excels at balancing time pressures with rigorous training, redefining how intensity can be delivered. These organisations boast impressive alumni who are actively working successfully in the industry. Notably, Sally Ann Gritton, Principal of Mountview, emphasises in her book, The Independent Actor, that long, gruelling days are neither effective nor beneficial for students. These examples prove that change isn’t just possible – it’s essential if we want the arts to become more inclusive.

    Why it matters

    The stakes couldn’t be higher. The creative industries contribute over £100 billion to the UK economy annually, with drama training forming the backbone of the talent pipeline. Rose Bruford College alumna like Jessica Gunning, who recently won Emmy and Golden Globe awards, or Sara Huxley, whose work on Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office catalysed governmental action, exemplify the global impact of British arts education.

    However, the arts are more than an economic driver – they shape how we see ourselves, societal narratives, build empathy, and are key in defining our cultural identity. If access to training is restricted to the privileged, the stories we tell become narrower and less representative. Equity in the arts is not just an educational issue; it is a societal imperative.

    Nearly a decade ago, calls for greater class diversity in the arts sparked important conversations. In 2016, a report from the London School of Economics revealed that only 27 per cent of actors came from working-class backgrounds. While this discussion was absorbed into the broader issue of societal inequality, solutions remained vague and largely limited to the idea of increased funding. Today, with budgets tighter than ever, this approach feels increasingly out of reach.

    In recent years, established actors, including household names like Julie Walters and Christopher Eccleston have voiced concerns that they would no longer be able to afford the cost of training. Their warnings highlight a system where financial barriers stifle talent, despite the well-meaning calls for bursaries and other competitive financial support. The result? A cycle where potential is lost, and the arts grow less accessible.

    We need bold leadership across the sector. Institutions must collaborate to share best practice, experiment with alternative training models, and advocate for systemic support. There are innovative models, and we must deal with the friction preventing them from spreading. Policymakers and trainers must recognise that funding is only one part of the equation; addressing time-poverty is critical to ensuring a truly inclusive arts education.

    The arts are at their best when they reflect the richness of society. It’s time to move beyond tradition and reimagine drama training for a new generation—one where potential, not privilege, determines success.

    Anyone interested in being part of this conversation is welcome to contact the authors directly.

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