Artist Bob And Roberta Smith Invites Students To Create Artwork Exploring Themes Of Peace
14-18 NOW and artist Bob and Roberta Smith OBE RA invite 16-18 year-old students across the UK to take part in Make Art Not War, responding to the provocation “What does peace mean to you?”
Launching on 5 November, students are invited to make their own creative work across any media, including writing, art, design, photography, theatre and film. Among the resources is a gallery of short films by artists from across the 14-18 NOW programme, including Jeremy Deller, Rachel Whiteread and Yinka Shonibare MBE. These give insight into each artist’s commission for 14-18 NOW, their creative habits and their own reflection on the question raised by Bob and Roberta Smith.
Make Art Not War has been created to encourage young people to develop and nurture essential creative skills that are fundamental to wider learning and are matched to future social and economic demands. Creative learning in the UK charts its beginnings back to 1918 and the shifts that occurred in education in response to the inhumanity of the First World War. The end of the war marked the start of the Child Art Movement, a holistic and arts-rich approach to learning championed by educationalists of the time. According to the World Economic Forum, by 2020 creativity will be in the top 3 most important skills alongside complex problem solving and critical thinking.
As the 14-18 NOW arts programme for the First World War centenary comes to a close, Make Art Not War invites young people to create new work inspired by the art and artists commissioned by 14-18 NOW. The project also reinforces the importance of creativity in education and offers students the opportunity to take inspiration from world-class artists and the value of their own creative process.
Jenny Waldman, Director of 14-18 NOW, said:
“14-18 NOW has commissioned leading artists from around the world to create new works for the First World War Centenary. Now we invite the next generation to respond creatively to the Armistice and the possibility of Peace. The arts are a powerful catalyst for young people’s engagement with the world, and millions of young people have seen or participated in 14-18 NOW projects. Now we ask students to take the lead and create their own work with high quality resources designed to develop essential creative skills.”
The programme is devised with leading academic Professor Bill Lucas and the former CEO of Creative & Cultural Skills Pauline Tambling CBE. It offers brand new curriculum resources designed specifically for assessment within A Level English, Art & Design and Geography. A bespoke artist mentoring programme rolls out this autumn across the Leadership Colleges of the National Skills Academy Creative and Cultural, and targeted curriculum materials are designed for inclusion in UAL Awarding Body Diplomas, A Levels and the Extended Project Qualification, enabling over 50,000 students as the programme unfolds.
Lead artist Bob and Roberta Smith commented:
“For me, creativity is a fundamental life skill and art is a force for change. Make Art Not War is about fuelling young people across the country to find confidence in their voice, to be bold, to be original and to express their ideas and opinions. I think peace is a process that requires all our imaginations. Our project aims to inspire a new generation of young people to ‘get involved’ in building a better world.”
Make Art Not War contributing artists
- Jeremy Deller
- Anna Meredith
- Daljit Nagra
- Katrina Palmer
- Marc Rees
- Yinka Shonibare MBE
- Rachel Whiteread
Make Art Now War Programme Details: UAL Awarding Body, the UK’s leading provider of the Diploma in Art & Design will roll out Make Art Not War as a ‘live brief’ from 5th November 2018 as a study option to its 44,000 students across 213 schools and colleges.
With lead partner, Creative & Cultural Skills, 1,000 students from 11 Lead FE colleges will work for a term with a 14-18 NOW artist mentor.
Over 100 sixth form college teachers will be invited to take part in a 14-18 NOW Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) development day in February 2019.
About Creative & Cultural Skills: An independent charity and licensed Sector Skills Council that champions non-traditional processions routes into the and through the workforce. It delivers activities for young people though the National Skills Academy network and promotes careers advice, guidance and apprenticeships.
For Make Art Not War, each of the leadership colleges is working with an artist mentor for the duration of the programme: Barking and Dagenham College, Belfast Metropolitan College, Buckinghamshire College Group, Cardiff and Vale College, Gateshead College, Glasgow City College, Havering College, Lewisham and Southwark College, New College Swindon, North West Regional College, Derry, Wolverhampton FE College
The programme is delighted to be collaborating with the UAL Awarding Body and the Sixth Form Colleges Association.
About 14-18 NOW: A programme of extraordinary arts experiences connecting people with the First World War, as part of the UK’s official centenary commemorations. It commissions new work by leading contemporary artists across all art forms; the programme has included over 200 artists from 35 countries, taking place in 160 locations across the UK. Over 30 million people have experienced a project so far, including 7.5 million children and young people. 16.7 million people took part in LIGHTS OUT in 2014, and 63% of the population were aware of Jeremy Deller’s, ‘We’re here because we’re here’. The UK tour of the poppy sculptures by artist Paul Cummins and designer Tom Piper has been seen by over 4 million people to date. 14-18 NOW has won many awards for its work, including the National Lottery Heritage Award, 2017. 2018 is the final season, marking 100 years since the end of the First World War and includes PROCESSIONS marking the centenary of some UK women winning the right to vote, and Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old. 14-18 NOW is supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England, by the DCMS with additional funding from The Backstage Trust, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Clore Duffield Foundation, NatWest and support from individuals.
About Bob and Roberta Smith: Bob and Roberta Smith OBE RA, is a leading contemporary artist, writer, author, musician, and art education advocate. Known for this ‘slogan art’ he is also associate professor at Sir John Cass Department of Art. He considers art as a human right and has long believed in the place of creativity and art in education. He was a lead artist for the 14-18 NOW commission in 2014, Lights Out and is the lead artist for Make Art Not War.
About Professor Bill Lucas: Bill Lucas is Director of the Centre for Real-World Learning and Professor of Learning at the University of Winchester. Bill is an international adviser to the Mitchell Foundation in Melbourne, a patron of the Pegasus Theatre in Oxford and a member of the LEGO Foundation’s advisory board. In 2017 he was appointed to be the co-chair of the new PISA 2021 test of Creative Thinking, which will be based on his acclaimed five-dimensional model for creativity.
Bill is an authority on creativity, lifelong learning and educational leadership. A prolific writer, Bill has authored more than eighty books and many research reports. His latest books, written with Ellen Spencer, are Developing Tenacity: Creating learners who persevere in the face of difficulty and Teaching Creative Thinking: developing learners who generate ideas and can think critically. His acclaimed book, Educating Ruby: what our children really need to learn, written with Guy Claxton, asks challenging questions about the future direction of education.
About Pauline Tambling CBE: Pauline taught in primary and secondary schools in London and Essex before joining the Royal Opera House as Opera Education Officer in 1983. From 1998-2007 she held five senior roles at Arts Council England, the development and funding body for the arts in England. Pauline set up the National Skills Academy for Creative & Cultural in 2008/9 and was responsible for building The Backstage Centre at High House Production Park in Purfleet, Essex, which opened in 2012. Pauline was until recently Chief Executive of Creative & Cultural Skills and was awarded a CBE, Order of the British Empire for services to Education and Training in the Cultural Sector, in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, 2014.
Central to Pauline’s career has been her interest in how young people from all social backgrounds engage with the arts and culture either as participants or as workers, particularly through apprenticeships. She has been involved as a trustee or governor with arts and education organisations including Shakespeare Schools Festival, the Clore Cultural Leadership Programme, University Creative Arts, Shape Arts (Chair), Drama UK, the Da Vinci School for Creative Enterprise (Chair), High House Production Park and is currently a trustee of The Roundhouse.
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