A lot of the research I do is ethnographic and that means I generally get to participate in what’s going on – and I get to do a lot of interesting things. However, the TALE project isn’t an ethnography, and most of our data will come from interviews and observations, as well as a very large survey. This form of research can be a bit frustrating if you are used to being involved, as I found out recently.

When I observed art lessons at Rydens Enterprise School, I really wanted to join in. The year 7 class that I watched from a distance were beginning a new sequence of work around the theme of Remix. I watched Nicky Field, the teacher, introduce the topic with a definition and then show some slides of work by the artist Yee So Kyung – a contemporary Korean artist who works with shattered ceramics.

Nicky then handed each of the students a photocopy of a flower pot and a pair of scissors and invited them to remix the image into something else. This was a quick exercise to get the class to understand the potential in the idea of remixing. I understood that there would be more exercises like this in days to come: these would partially focus on skills development. But then students would all choose, design and execute their own remix project.

The flowerpot looked like a fun exercise and I found myself imagining what I would do with the image and the scissors if I had them in my hands. Fortunately, I didn’t dwell on this for long and got back to the task of listening and watching! But it was tempting.

Later that day I sat in on a Year 12 discussion. The group had begun to work around the topic Context. The week before the students had each been given a piece of paper with a description of a person – who they were, how old, where they came from, what their interest were. Each student then had to create a piece of work as if they were that imaginary person. Some of the students found this more difficult than others, particularly if their person was nothing like them. However, each of the students was in the process of producing something which sounded really interesting to me – and again I wanted to try this out for myself. It sounded like a productive challenge to think yourself not only into someone’s shoes but also their imagination and artistic practice.

I’m sure that I wouldn’t have been so interested in these topics if the visual art pedagogy used at Rydens wasn’t so open, and so inviting of ideas and imagination. The students I talked with certainly valued this as the way that art was taught in the school. Without exception they all talked of the importance of being able to have their own ideas, use their imaginations and the sense of achievement that comes from being responsible for your own thinking and making process.