An article in the Herald details information about an Artist Teacher Taster Event on the 13th of March 2010

Artist Teacher Taster Event logo

Diarmuid McAuliffe, subject leader for art and design at the University of the West of Scotland school of education, says schools have tended to ban mobile phones, ignoring their potential for creativity. Meanwhile art teaching has been too hidebound and slow to take up the potential of a range of new media and electronic tools.

Art teachers should overcome their fear of risk-taking and schools should embrace mobile phones and other technology - Diarmuid McAuliffe

Mr McAuliffe, is co-ordinating the conference on Saturday week which will explore what the curriculum for excellence will mean for art teachers, and introduce a new qualification, the MEd Artist Teacher CPD course, to be run at the university from September.

The course, the only one of its kind in Scotland, will be delivered in partnership with Glasgow Museums and the National Society for Education in Art and Design (NSEAD). The event is designed as a taster for the new course.

Mr McAuliffe said that the examining and teaching of art was too dependent on templates, and under the new curriculum would have to do more to demonstrate that it could be challenging and relevant.

Photography is a subject which was difficult to teach 12 years ago, but now nearly every pupil has a mini camera stuffed in their school bag. Art teachers are well capable of making meaningful use of them - Diarmuid McAuliffe

He added that Scotland had been the last country in the UK to embrace film-based education but that the potential for art to enhance topics under a curriculum for excellence was huge. “It is the cross-curricular vehicle par excellence,” he said. Asked for examples of areas in which art teaching tended to be risk-averse, Mr McAuliffe highlighted use of mobile phones, and pupils’ common use of technologies such as Photoshop and YouTube. “Students have hand-held devices capable of making films, but they haven’t been embraced by the teaching profession, which has gone down the banning route. But children have not been educated to use them. If they were given the creative lead, I believe we would have less happy slapping and abuses.