I have been communicating with Honor, a 13 year old, who is home-schooled and spends most of her time dancing. She works full time on this activity and is extraordinarily and strikingly self-assured. She is often at Oxford House attending classes at the Lisa Gilbert Dance Academy. This work is made as a collaboration with Honor and with thanks to Honor’s family, and to Lisa Gilbert and her staff for their support.
A short sentence that sums up my objectives for the initial publicity document:
Sarah-Jane Field’s work celebrates social progression and explores underlying assumptions we may have about education in general.
I will post the whole document this sentence comes from along with the advertising poster once it had been released as I don’t wish to pre-empt my collaborating partners.
Other words and ideas that fit into the objective:
Performance
Intrinsic motivation
Power relations
Authority – authoritarianism, authoritative, facilitating, permissive, lacking in containment (links to certainty, feelings of safety)
Work I have sent to Honor to look at
A Private Landscape – Eikoh Hosoe
Gillian Wearing – Dancing in Peckham
Alexey Brodovitch – Ballet
Some things to consider
Education
It is interesting to note that Oxford House was set up by Victorian men to educate and alleviate some of the stresses of poverty in Bethnal Green. They were primarily concerned with men and elsewhere another institution dealt with women.
It is argued the basic structure of our education system today was formed during the Victorian era in order to educate and shape future workers as well as soldiers, although there are critics of this theory too and you can find both sides of the argument easily online. Nevertheless, industrialisation had an impact on all aspects of society and education was certainly one of them.
The Natural Child Project is an organisation that promotes the concept of un-schooling and some of their rationale is relevant.
I have been thinking recently – pedagogy, however it is delivered, is perhaps more useful when the ones doing the teaching are more concerned with teaching their students how to think rather than what to think. Of course there are going to be areas where this may not be entirely true. We photographer’s need to know how overexposure can be avoided etc. and in medicine , we want our doctors to know what dosage to give us. But we also want our doctors to be able to question dogma and look outside old knowledge when appropriate. Without that we’d still be dealing with autism as if Fridge Mother theory had any basis in reality.
Religion
Christianity was key to the initiators of Oxford House, academic men from Keble College, Oxford. I do not wish to dwell on religion but it is worth noting that today we live in more secular times, that Oxford House is open to all and does not have a religious attachment. Bethnal Green is populated by a range of people from all religious persuasions as well as those without any religion and Oxford House today is accessed by everyone.