V&A Blog

In June 2011 John Lyon’s Charity awarded the V&A a grant of £20,000 pa for three years towards their DesignLab programme for schools.  DesignLab was launched in 2008 to coincide with the opening of the V&A’s new Sackler Centre, a purpose built, state of the art education centre, to which the Charity also contributed.    It is aimed specifically at Design & Technology students aged 11-19 and offers access to facilities and aims to inspire them by highlighting potential careers within the creative industries and how to access the necessary qualifications to pursue them. 

Despite the popularity of DesignLab, the V&A Education Team noticed that participation amongst schools based in the Charity’s beneficial area was poor; only 3 out of 28 schools were from JLC boroughs in the 2010 Autumn Term.  The current grant from the Charity was therefore awarded for the purpose of increasing participation amongst schools in our boroughs.  The V&A has employed a Project Coordinator, Pippa Joiner, who will spend the first six months of the project researching schools in the beneficial area and developing strategies to encourage and assist schools to sign up and to ensure that the DesignLab programme adequately accommodates the needs of schools.

During this process, Pippa will be describing her experiences and the development of the programme in a blog on the Charity’s website.  She will describe every step of the process from researching suitable schools to the methodology of marketing the project within a specific geographical area.  She will track what has been successful and what was more difficult. 

The blog is intended to be interactive and provide the opportunity for you to comment on the work that Pippa is doing, suggest alternative methods that may have worked for you in the past and to learn from the work that the V&A are doing.  We would encourage as many arts education practitioners and teachers as possible to use the blog as a learning forum to share ideas and examples of best practice. 

We look forward to your comments.   

 

Fifth Blog Entry - Thursday, 9 February 2012

It has been fantastic to receive so many comments on this Blog and for you to share your advice and experience with me. Here are some of my responses:

In regards to questionnaires, I initially thought that this might provide a path to open dialogue with schools. However, as this proved more difficult than anticipated, it was decided to focus on the key objective: that of getting schools involved in the core programme. So far I have been able to consult with 9 departments on initial visits to schools.
Whilst it has been difficult to draw any conclusions from having a small sample size, meeting face to face with teachers has provided in-depth insights. I hope to build up more responses as I continue to visit schools and meet more teachers. We recently ran a CPD event where I was able to talk to some of the teachers. As Alec Haylor suggested, this created a good informal atmosphere in which to discuss ideas.

I had initially hoped that schools who were not engaging with DesignLab would give some insight into the barriers they face. From the consultations so far, and my own prior experience as a teacher, ‘cost’ and ‘cover’ seem to be key factors. With support from John Lyon’s Charity the issue of cost has been dramatically reduced - yet many schools are not yet taking advantage of the workshops. A handful of schools have expressed an interest in the project and I have been quick to respond to them. It is also my hope that I will be able to reach schools who have not yet expressed an interest in DesignLab. I hope that by finding as many different avenues to reach schools as possible they will see how DesignLab can support their students. I am keen to visit as many networking events and meetings as possible and would welcome suggestions of any upcoming events.

I am keen to gain the support of Headteachers for the DesignLab initiative. I do appreciate, however, that this may not be an easy task as Headteachers are extremely busy. I have been trying to attend a network meeting for Headteachers which is proving difficult – if there is any advice on this it would be much appreciated.

It was great to have suggestions to reach trainee teachers. In fact, I gave a presentation at the Institute of Education (IOE) last night to a group of Art & Design trainee teachers and their mentors which had a positive reception. I hope that it will be possible to build on the relationship with the IOE to work more closely with trainee teachers in the future.

Thank you again for all your ideas and sharing your success. I look forward to hearing more of your comments and suggestions!

Would you like to comment on this Blog Entry

 

Fourth Blog Entry - February 2012

Thanks to everyone who has posted comments on the blog so far. It’s great to get different people’s ideas and advice.

Since the last post I have developed a new strategy of engaging with schools: they will be offered events as a package. Upon booking a half price workshop schools can receive a free outreach workshop and CPD session. This is a fantastic offer for schools and will hopefully provide extra incentives to engage with the DesignLab programme.

I have just finalised an exciting programme of events for teachers, including talks by designers, practical workshops and exclusive previews of forthcoming exhibitions and gallery openings. I have also been meeting a number of designers to give talks in schools. All sessions have been based on key themes in the DesignLab workshops and aim to extend and develop engagement with the core programme. A leaflet is currently being designed and will be sent to schools shortly.

Another idea we would like to pursue is using the V&A as a hub for different D&T departments within and between the different boroughs. We are working with the D&T Association to arrange the first of these events next month.

I delivered a teachers event for Brentside High School, Ealing at the end of January. This was a tailored session based on Postmodernist design. Teachers enjoyed talks by our curators and had the chance to make their own postmodern jewellery pieces. The evaluation for this was excellent and the school will be booking workshops.  In this case, offering a tailor-made workshop was a good ‘hook’ for engaging schools.

However, tailor-made events could perhaps carry the risk of distracting from the

core programme instead of promoting it. With this in mind a programme of CPD events for the year was created, all specifically relating to the core DesignLab programme. Organising all these events will be a lot of work but it is very exciting and will hopefully attract many teachers. We would love it if anyone reading the blog could help promote the new CPD programme and package to their networks and contacts. We would be happy to email you full details.