The 'Design' in Art and Design

I was having lovely warm flashbacks there to Mick Waters' bigger picture purpose of learning, and so much of that applies to my one big idea today.

Some of you have heard me talk about this before, but is there more uniting us than dividing us? My plea is for balance, and for us to really work together as a community. We need to think about what happens if we allow one part of the equation to get out of kilter. I think that's what we’ve seen with design and technology with disastrous results

Design is still happening in the curriculum but it has gone to different places. We’ve seen a three-quarters drop in most GCSE entries for D&T. Art and design has held steady, but within the art and design suite of work we’ve seen a big rise in 3D design, graphics and textiles. So the appetite for design is like water: it will find a way. But the thing I really want to say this morning is that design can’t happen in just one part of the landscape, with one part of it out of balance.

This slide was put together by Ged Gast, who chairs our special interest group for design education. Ged is very passionate about the balance within our own subjects between art and design, and here he’s looking at the terminology, the language we share. I think there's everything there that I would hear in an art and design classroom. Is there anything there that you wouldn't hear in a D&T classroom?

We’re often asked to define the difference. Tony (Ryan) and I are often asked to say what’s different, justify why we should have two subjects in the curriculum with “design” in the title. We had this with the last curriculum review. Less so with this one in my experience, but there is still confusion at government level and in schools, I would suggest, about what the difference is and I think there is confusion in the community. It is very difficult to pitch an explanation of the difference, and often it's a lot more comfortable and productive to talk about what's the same.

I find it quite useful to look at the GCSE subject content we’re working with right now. I’m very aware that it’s changing, and I’m very involved in it but what I will say is that the curriculum assessment review principle of evolution revolution will evolve not erupt and so, what we see in the content today, that governs what happens in classrooms, ideas are going to follow through in art and design. There are people in this room who can tell you about D&T...

This push-pull between internal and external systems we talk about a lot within art and design, and we often use it when we talk about the differences. But when you do an analysis of the content and the aims it boils down to a few things like this- we may not agree but this is what I see- In art and design, we really talk about design as a discipline, it's quite high level for that content. In D&T by contrast there's a strong emphasis on action. In art and design ideas are explored personally and there's a lot of emphasis on images, artefacts, responses and expressions of scale and conversely D&T a foreground on decision making, project management and functional outcomes. These precious things are set in place to achieve ends.

I give you the iPhone as an example, I think we like to reach for Jony Ive as a role model, and he’s interesting because he led the team at Apple that they called the soul team. He studied industrial design at art school, and he did art and design at A level. So he’s a really good example of a designer who works across the continuum and has good understanding within the real-world design context.

When we look at the iPhone, it is the ultimate, and it's that combination of the soul - if you want to call it that, from the artist-designer, giving it sensory appeal, aesthetics and emotional connection. But that would not work if we didn't have system people, technical designers, who really look at hardware constraints, durability and the user interface. What’s special about the iPhone and Jony Ive’s leadership of the project is the two are in balance. Neither overpowers the other. If we can achieve that we have great design.

Are we achieving that in our schools, and are we going to achieve that in the future? I don’t believe we are, unless we work together. For me, we’ve got extremes of that continuum in two subject areas, and right at the extremes we are not seeing that balance happening. So, D&T classrooms are not diving into what it means to be an artist, and art classrooms are not diving into technical, functionality and other things that sit on that side of the triangle.

Learners move up and down and across and they speak to each other, and respect each other’s areas. In really good, functioning schools with good functioning design education happening in both subject areas, it’s a curriculum conversation.

So my plea is: come and look at this together because the consultation so far has not indicated that we’re going to get any more time for these two subjects. My fear is that we are like polar bears on an iceberg that is melting, and we’re going to start fighting for that space. Frankly, that already happens. Tony is going to talk about workforce later. Truth is workforce requires us to work together.