Unspoken

Unspoken
— drawing as social practice

The social structure of a classroom is much like a lot of contemporary life, one person in the know transmitting knowledge to a body of people. Whilst we all love a good broadcast it is a widely known amongst educators and beyond that this passive form of learning is not the most effective. Younger beings of our society need to enact, own, explore and emote their learnings, though limited resources, classroom boundaries and securities of norms often get in the way.

But if education is as much about learning how to learn, creating or finding individualised pathways (lines) to knowledge and between knowledges, then lets take those lines for a wander.

Pen, pencil, crayon, chalk, charcoal, pastel, paint, stick, stone to paper, card, post-its, scraps, cereal packets, walls, paving, sand, books, tablets, limbs … Explore, see what happens, let the materials lead you, go with the motions or draw what you recall, draw what you see ocularly or in your imagination. It’s not about it looking like or even being liked, it’s an event, or not. It’s bespoke to your speed, can be swift or sedate or anywhere in between. Big, small, wrap around, flat or flapping, crisp or scrappy. Draw something into being.

When having a conversation with a small group of 10 and 11 year olds reflecting on the activity we had done together during my 4 years of being their school artist in residence, they recalled the collective mantras of our project “you helped us see the spaces we see everyday differently” and “there is no right or wrong” etc.  Then one pupil jumped up stating “I know how to say it” and wrestledfrom his pocket a folded piece of paper flung it on the table “since making art with you I always have a drawing in my pocket and I think that says it all”. The precious paper remained unfolded upon the table speechless, as the chatter rose around it.

Drawing as a practice, as an activity, as motion, as time based media, as exercise, encompasses a whole host of valuable attributes. So draw more and draw often.

Practically it’s easy, informal, scalable, immediate, often affordable, not screen dependent, can fill any time span…

Personally it externalises thoughts and feelings, it’s grounding, it’s intimate, it’s a way of working through things, it unlocks things, its empowering, builds self-esteem, it’s self expressive, reflective and can be about anything, anyone, nothing or no one.

Politically it’s accessible, endlessly diverse, can act as prompt for conversations and thinking, a stealth like medium not to be underestimated.

But there is also another thing. It is a long established belief that when individuals act in groups they can often lose themselves as individuals, and for a long time I’ve been exploring this dynamic of the individual within the group. How can we work/ create/ operate together without losing oneself? How much does one need to be put on hold to assimilate into a collective?

So often I’ve found myself in group art sessions inviting drawing before talking and then allowing the drawings to become the prompts for discussion and sharing. Drawings are shared and reinforced collectively, applying and amplifying myriad of voices. The act of drawing becomes the groups shared behaviour and the drawings individual expressions. By positioning group sessions of drawings as a collective social practice, all together at the same time (though individually creating) such acts can become forms of relationship building, kinship. Making the act of drawing (together) this magical thing that reinforces a groups relationships whilst also giving space for individual expressions of different and differing thoughts, identities, stories and stances.

And so I end with a suggestion to as much as we understand drawing to be about both the object and the process that brings the object into being, let us also understand it/ them to court the additional dual definitions of draw. Draw to at once be about an extraction, to open, reveal (you know like a lottery ticket or curtains) whilst also private, personal and mine.

To at once draw out, to show and be seen, whilst also draw close.

So draw more and draw often and draw together.

— Unspoken was written as part of reflections on Schools of Tomorrow a long term artist in residency project with Nottingham Contemporary in which I worked with two primary schools from 2019 – 2023. With thanks to all teachers who welcomed me into their teaching spaces ( specially Ms Whiting who always took discarded drawings home for her wormery)  and the pupils who generous thoughtfulness.