Turning young people into cultural critics
I began Year Here in August 2018. Waving goodbye to Manchester’s £3.00 pints and torrential rain, I made the move down to London, filled with a mixture of excitement and mild anxiety. On learning that I was the youngest of my cohort, I immediately was struck by an overwhelming sense of imposter syndrome. “They must have let you in by mistake.” I kept telling myself, as I learnt of the rest of my cohort’s impressive backgrounds, careers and achievements. I began to question how, if at all, I was ever really going to make a difference, let alone start a business, during the 10 months that were to come.
My anxiety subsided slightly when I learnt that I would spend my 5-month Frontline placement working in the Sixth Form of an Academy School. Having finished university just months earlier, Sixth Form, A-Levels and education more generally, formed part of my not-so-distant past. So, that Saturday lunchtime, I headed to Oxford Street to do some last-minute shopping (clearly a rookie mistake!) 3 hours of hell later, I’d managed to buy a smart blazer and shoes and was ready for my 8am start on Monday morning…
Fast forward a month or so and I was finally getting used to, quite literally, being back at school. Gone were my days of mid-week trips to the pub with friends and late-night Netflix binges, now I was in bed by 10 and up at 6 every day. My role within the school was a Student Support Worker, put simply a mentor for the Sixth Formers. Each week, my assigned mentees would have up to an hour to chat with me individually about whatever was on their minds. This was a real privilege. I was able to build connections with students and develop trust. I could get to know the young people behind the school uniforms; I began to understand their personal lives, their hopes, fears, struggles, aspirations and anxieties. I saw how rare it was for them to be given the space to generally voice their opinions. Was this symptomatic of how young people fitted into the education system more generally? Are students solely recipients of information, rather than active participants? Regurgitators of curriculum, rather than vocal agents? Perhaps this was only the case within more ‘traditionally academic’ subjects, I thought.
After a month or two of placement, I decided to venture into the Drama and Art Departments, in search of some creativity. To my surprise, less than 10 students were studying A-Level Art and there were only 3 A-Level students taking drama, meaning that the subject was not going to be offered to Year 11s the following academic year. Sadly, this reflects the current state of affairs. While private schools continue to champion the arts (Eton has 3 theatres, one with a 400-person capacity!), creative subjects are often the first to be cut within cash-strapped state schools. The stats are pretty shocking; there are 1,700 fewer drama teachers in schools than in 2010, and the number of students taking creative GCSEs continues to drop. Cultural institutions are also reporting a decline in the number of educational visits from schools.
These cuts are not solely financially motivated but appear to reflect the government’s agenda to reinforce structural inequalities within the education system. The new English Baccalaureate will exclude arts subjects and ministers have said they want 90% of students taking this qualification by 2025. Therefore, those young people living in the most deprived areas, as well as those with lower attainment, will be the first to miss out on opportunities to study arts subject when the EBacc becomes compulsory. Basically, if you’re not encouraged, nor cannot afford to engage outside of school, you’re chances of setting foot in a museum, theatre or gallery are slim.
Working with the drama students, I discovered all three of them wanted to study the subject at university. But, on reading their personal statements, not one of them mentioned going to the theatre recently in their free time. I found a similar trend amongst art students and visiting galleries. I didn’t quite understand why. London has no shortage of world-class art and culture, and since moving to the capital, I’d taken advantage of the numerous schemes offering free, or heavily discounted, tickets to young people under 25.
I decided to unpick this problem further. Students told me that they didn’t feel comfortable visiting theatres and galleries outside of school; they found them intimidating spaces, assuming that specific knowledge was required to enter and be accepted there. They felt that theatres and galleries weren’t for ‘people like them’ and that they didn’t really belong there. Unaware of the existence of young people ticket schemes, they thought such spaces were expensive and reserved for the white, middle classes.
I saw an opportunity to try to advocate more generally for arts and culture in education. I wanted to design a programme that would expose students to cultural organisations, building their familiarity with, and confidence to navigate, these spaces. I wanted students to feel that they belonged to the cultural spaces that surrounded them. Yet, rather than simply assimilating them to traditional cultures, I wanted them to engage critically. If they didn’t feel welcome in a space, if they didn’t like what it offered, they should feel that they could say so.
I decided to take a small group to see a play. Yet rather than attending as drama students, I told them that they would be going as Critics. The following day, I would run a discussion workshop with them to unpick what they had seen, helping develop their curiosity and critical thinking skills. Each young person would then write a short personal review of the play to be published online. I hoped that elevating their status to critics would help them develop a sense of entitlement to the space, a feeling that they deserved to be there, along with raising their confidence to voice their opinions about the play.
The play told the story of a young woman and involvement in gang crime. It was intensely political and highly emotionally charged. The students were hooked, and their final reviews were passionate and punchy, relating to both their personal experiences and wider society.
“The play revolved around gang culture and, despite not being part of a gang myself, this related with me as I know people close to me who are…The play was completely different to anything else that I had seen in the theatre before, as you could tell from the audience that POT was targeted at young people rather than conforming to the stereotype that theatre is for older generations — even the actors were young!” wrote a Year 13 drama student.
Another Year 12 student noted: “When I say this theatre was packed, I mean it was PACKED. The audience actually spiked my interest as the majority of them were Black, while many others were Asian. Normally, when we go to watch plays with school, the theatre is filled with a bunch of Caucasian people who are at the peak of their age, so this was something different”
For some of them, it was one of the few times they had seen stories they related to, or characters they could identify with, translated on stage. I sensed an element of pride attached to their work; their reviews weren’t graded, there was no focus on spelling, or grammar, no goals to hit or targets to achieve, no homework or answers to re-write. Instead, I gave students the space to comment freely, creatively and subjectively.
This marked the start of Critics’ Club. Every fortnight, I would take a group of young critics on a cultural trip. The following day I would run discussion workshops and then publish their reviews online. The programme created real buzz in the Sixth Form; soon the sign-up sheet would be full within minutes and the group sizes grew, with new students joining each time. Critics’ Club wasn’t exclusively for art and drama students; instead, I worked with young people across all subjects. From Tate Modern to the Donmar Warehouse, the Saatchi Gallery to the Young Vic, groups of young critics stepped outside of their comfort zones to discover the array of arts and culture on offer across the city.
The programme offered students the chance to learn outside of the classroom, be creative, opinionated and bold, develop empathy and compassion for others and ultimately find their voices both verbally and in writing. “I’d never considered myself an “art person” before” writes one Year 12 student, “but since going [on the trip], I’ve realised that art is not just a certain type of style but can include pretty much anything.” It also offered the chance for students to discuss and question what art and theatre is, who it is for, who has access to it and why.
Since then, I’ve run Critics’ Club with 65 young people across 4 schools. So far, young critics have experienced 7 art exhibitions and 10 plays and written over 100 reviews. I love spending my time in theatres and galleries and I’ve been lucky enough to discover the sweet spot between running a business that ignites my passions, yet also delivers on social impact. Whilst London is undoubtedly a creative and culturally rich city, I feel that we must do more to ensure cultural spaces and communities are diverse, inclusive and accessible for all. As the arts and creativity continue to be squeezed out of our schools, Critics’ Club aims to fill this gap, breaking down the many, and often invisible, barriers that can prevent cultural engagement, to ensure that every child, no matter their background, can experience the social, emotional and educational benefits that engaging with the arts can bring.
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