BERA Creativities SIG Co-convenors: Associate Professor Kerry Chappell, Dr Jo Trowsdale & Dr Victoria Kinsella are delighted to announce that the Anna Craft Prize for 2020 has been awarded to Jane Murray, Rebecca Aberton, David Meechan, Caroline Smith, Catherine Spankie, Darren Smith, Anna Carter and Kate Noble collaborating from University of Northampton, The National Gallery, The Fitzwilliam Museum and Northampton Primary Academy Trust, for their paper: From ‘What does gallery mean?’ to ‘Art galleries, I love them!’:Children’s views of ‘culture’ introduced to their primary curriculum.

The abstract of the winning paper is below:

From ‘What does gallery mean?’ to ‘Art galleries, I love them!’:Children’s views of ‘culture’ introduced to their primary curriculum.

This paper reports on a study that elicited the views of over three hundred primary children in one multi-academy trust (MAT) about their experiences of the Take One Picture (TOP) art education programme in England in 2018-2019. During this TOP programme, the MAT teachers and children visited The National Gallery, where gallery staff provided professional development to teachers who then planned and implemented a programme of learning for children which included opportunities to explore and develop creativity.  Alongside, an intrinsic case study investigated beliefs and attitudes of participating children aged 8-9 years and their teachers concerning TOP and its effects on teachers’ professional development and children’s outcomes in art, writing and non-cognitive skills acquisition. This paper focuses on findings from participating children in the national context of declining arts specialists in primary schools, changes in the OFSTED inspection framework, and a new emphasis on cultural capital, alongside a local context of deprivation and low levels of achievement at OFSTED inspections.

British Educational Research Association guidelines (2018) framed the ethical conduct of the present study which was approved by the ethics committee in the study HEI. The children’s views were sought about the effects of TOP on their learning in pre-intervention questionnaires (n=328) and post-intervention questionnaires (n=319). Analysis featured descriptive statistics, ‘wordles’ and a drawing test. Findings included indications that children believed TOP impacted positively on their outcomes in art (NSEAD, 2019) and in writing, specifically vocabulary enrichment, creative writing and non-fiction critique, in the context of a broad, rich and rigorous curriculum based on knowledge and skills development, as well as their acquisition of non-cognitive skills and knowledge and understanding of art and an art gallery: features of ‘the immanent structure of the social world’, or cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986:46).  Amongst other findings, children’s views about writing shifted towards valuing writing intrinsically as a creative process. Following TOP, children’s descriptions of a painting featured 14% more Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary than previously (McKeown, Beck, Omanson and Pople, 1985; Hirsch, 2013). Additionally, 68% more children said they had visited an art gallery, 15% more children identified three items found in an art gallery and 30% more of the children’s drawings of a gallery featured enhanced detail, indicating increased interest, awareness and knowledge after TOP. It may be argued then, that results indicate children believed the Take One Picture programme gave them access to cultural capital despite the unequal society they inhabit.

A special commendation has also been awarded to Nikki Fairchild, Carol Taylor, Neil Carey, Mirka Koro, Angelo Benozzo and Constanse Elmenhorst collaborating from University of Portsmouth, University of Bath, Manchester Metropolitan University, Arizona State University, University of Valle d’Aosta and Fjordvangen Kindergarten. This recognises the innovative nature of their alternative session: Against Methodolatry: A Materialist, Post-Qualitative Invocation of Speaking in Tongues, which develops thinking and practice in the field.

We are an international group of six researchers who are working with posthumanist, new material feminist and post-qualitative research practices oriented to doing qualitative research differently. Since 2016, we have been working together to find creative ways of disrupting normative, bureaucratic, business-as-usual modes of knowledge production, both in article writing and in academic conference spaces (see Benozzo et al., 2019; Taylor et al., 2019). Our experimental interventions and material research-creation practices seek to undiscipline qualitative research. We have conceptualised academic conferences as material-discursive spaces – as spaces of the ‘AcademicConferenceMachine’ – which, as structured, neoliberal, organizational spaces, run the risk of becoming so regulating, normalizing and standardizing that they might lose the possibility to produce different knowledge and to produce knowledge differently (Benozzo, et al. 2019, p. 89). Our work goes beyond straightforward critique of these spaces to produce new forms of academic knowledge production about conferencing. In working towards creative, alternative modes of recognition and contestation for scholars, we propose the need for a significant departure from normative conference practices. We are currently co-composing a book ‘Knowledge Production in the Material Turn: Disturbing Conferences and Composing Events’ to be published in 2021.