Room 13

Page 12

The range of interests encouraged is too wide to describe easily. An indication is the variety of books in the book-case. Art-books dominate, but on a non-art shelf I found this group of books next-door to each other: Children on the Oregon Trail, Finnegan's Wake, Philosophical Problems (actually a book of logic puzzles), Sophie's World, Swallows and Amazons, Martin Pippin in the Daisyfield (a sort of Puck of Pook's Hill) and The Rough Guide to Kenya.

The last title suggests another aspect of Room 13, which is the opportunity to go on expeditions. Jennifer Cattanach described her feelings when she heard about the walk across Scotland on her first visit to the school. Present plans include climbing every highland mountain over 3000 feet in the next two years; some of these expeditions will involve overnight camps. Advertised at the time of my second visit was the chance to go stalking. This was to be no naturalist's observation trip, but would offer the chance to shoot, kill and gralloch a deer. At the bottom of the notice was a warning that you should not take part if you liked killing things. Camping, killing, gralloching are all more examples of the reality that the children of Room 13 are invited to experience, and that, according to the questionnaire I gave them, they so value.

The Barbie Award that they won in 2002 was worth £20,000, but it was not to be used to employ staff. Instead the management team decided to put £4000 towards running costs, and to use the remainder to fund trips to exhibitions and to France. In fact there has yet to be a Room 13 expedition to France, but there may well be a trip to Germany in 2005.

However, their travel has not been limited to Europe. Rob takes pupils of secondary school age to Nepal. The group who had impressed Jennifer Cattanach with their account of their failed trans-Scotland expedition later made a successful expedition to Everest Base Camp. The children and Rob have been involved in setting up a Room 13 in a school in Kathmandu, and a project called "Mountain Spirit", which offers education for women. In 2004 Rob, Claire Gibb and two students went on a month's visit to India, during which they attended the International Democratic Education Conference in Bhubaneshwar, where they gave a presentation about Room 13. Early in 2005 there may be an expedition to South Africa, as described in the management team minutes that I have quoted. The visits to Nepal and India have not been typical tourist visits; the children have lived among local people and have seen the shattering poverty. Here, too, they are allowed to experience reality.

All that I have so far described is about the opportunities for children who are or have been at Caol Primary School. The money from NESTA is being used to expand the initiative to other schools. There are now three staff involved - Rob Fairley at Caol, Clare Gibb at Lochyside and Joe French visiting both primary schools and also the new Room 13 being set up in Lochaber High School. (The High School has been persuaded to open a Room 13 firstly as a special needs unit, and secondly to ease the transition from primary to secondary. Danielle Souness, now a pupil at the school, has been appointed as artist in residence.)

Claire, who joined Room 13 straight from school, worked at Caol with Rob before she went to Lochyside. She was away in India with Rob during my second visit, but I talked to her briefly during my first. She defined Room 13 as "finding different ways of learning, different ways of thinking, being, doing." She sees that philosophy goes hand in hand with art, but for her the essential quality of a Room 13 artist in residence is that she should be a person who is doing work of her own, who can spark enthusiasm and who appreciates what the children do. It is important to Claire that the children should know that they are able to reject adult proposals.

Joe's ideas are a little different again. He is not an artist himself, but a musician, a chess-player and a special needs teacher. These interests mean that he is more active in providing ideas than Rob might be. On the occasion of my second visit, for instance, he was helping the children to organise a chess tournament. I met one of his pupils who had been diagnosed by an educational psychologist as having no memory; by the time I met him he was a successful chess player, and teaching other children how to play. One of Joe's secondary pupils was writing hiphop lyrics and recording them over manipulated musical samples. To another boy, unhappy at home and refusing to come to school, he had given a tent which he could set up on the shore of the loch and keep entirely to himself. If Joe was allowed in, he went in; if not he stayed outside. Sometimes the tent was a boat, sometimes a bus - whatever the boy wanted. He had collected flotsam from the shore of the loch and at the time of my visit he had actually chosen to bring some of it into school, to Room 13, to assemble into a sculpture, which he intended to return to the shore.

I told Joe of the work of Jürg Jegge, the Swiss teacher whose book Dummheit ist lernbar (Stupidity is learnable) propounds the theory that maladjusted behaviour is taught - that you are stupid because you have been told over and over again that you are stupid, that you lie because you are repeatedly told that you are a liar, you steal because you are told you are a thief. Joe and I agreed with Jegge, and we also agreed that everyone, of any age, whatever the appearances may be, actually wants to learn.