Room 13

Page 4

I eventually spent three days there in March 2004, staying with Rob Fairley and Fiona Marwick in their croft some twenty miles away. At the school I was looked after by Ami and Rosie; I watched what was going on and chatted and recorded interviews with children. In the evenings I talked for hours with Rob and Fiona. All this was not enough. I went back for another week in December, while Rob was away with some of the older students at the IDEC in India, and I began to understand what is going on.

I must start by describing what I saw.

Room 13 itself is as untidy as any professional artist's studio. There are finished and unfinished canvases propped up in several different places. There is a sink full of not very well-washed brushes and paint trays. In addition there are two sets of book-shelves, three computers, a desk for the treasure and the secretary, a shelf of files labelled "Letters," "Receipts and Invoices," "Lucy's emails," "History of Room 13 Photo Album," "Orders," "Minutes" and so on, and a few insecure chairs and battered arm-chairs, a step-ladder for children painting canvases too large for them to be able to reach the top and a number of pin-boards with a huge variety of information ranging from posters for art exhibitions to a rather crumpled list of rules.

During my first visit I made notes of what was going on in the studio. Some extracts will show how difficult it was to form any overall opinion.

Thursday afternoon

• Eleven people present
• Cameron and Nick preparing a power-point presentation about the school council on a computer, scanning something; Nick goes off to get stationery.
• One girl with a bit of A3 drawing a lot of red stick men.
• Rosie and Ami painting two canvases with black acrylic, trying various ways to get it even. Rob offers advice.
• A girl reading Mega Sleep-over Club.
• Rosie keeping everybody in order, fairly strictly

...

• Sean sitting on the top of a step-ladder with a piece of paper and a ruler.
• Another girl talking to him.

...

• Another boy in conversation with Rosie.

...

• A girl and a boy together are painting a foot-square piece of board white; it had been painted before, and has a bumpy surface.
• The girl doing the stick men is scribbling over them - just doodling, she said, when I asked her.
• Dean has asked how many countries I have visited and lots of people listened to the answers.
• Stephanie came in to chat with the red stick-man girl.
• Lucy and a friend are going off to take photographs of "nothing" for the cover of some document. The "nothing" has to be bright-coloured and apparently abstract. They have a digital camera. Their eight best pictures will be submitted (I think with others) to whoever it is who has commissioned the project. (Scottish Arts Council)
• Cameron comes in with a pack of pages of the Annual Report.
• Lots of people go off to extra gym.
• Sean was, as far as I can see, drawing a maze. He has gone to help collate the pages of the Annual Report.
• Ami and Rosie have finished their painting. Ami is at a computer.

...

• Stephanie has noticed that my biro is running out and has got me another one from a drawer without me asking. Rosie has told Cameron off for leaving the drawer open.
• Ami says "This is a typical afternoon with everyone shouting at everyone else." When I asked if it would be different if Mr. Fairley were there she said yes, everyone would be good. (It didn't actually seem to me to be particularly unruly.)
• Mr. Fairley has come back with a middle-aged woman. The room is quieter and several people have left.

...

• Ami has been called over to talk to Rob's visitor.
• Only five people left now.
• The wee photographers are back. Lucy has put the camera batteries into the recharger. The other is painting a brown castle on dark grey paper. Lucy starts drawing in pastel on the same sort of dark grey paper.
• Three children on chairs, three on the floor.
• Then two on chairs, two on the floor, two standing.
• Then to the previous arrangement, which was due in part to Ami suggesting a helpful way of separating complete copies of the annual report, which is 30 pages long.
• 2.50 Rosie and Ami have gone (to singing?)

...

• Lucy is now also painting a castle, but she already has a white pastel moon up in one corner. As yet it is just a tower, and looks rather good. My guess is that she will go right across the page and seem a bit clumsy, like the other one. Now I see that the other one has a white moon too.
• Cameron and Nick are discussing whose computer can cope with the size of the powerpoint presentation.
• Lucy's friend is doing a black sky with a roller - it can't go between the battlements or up to the moon.
• Lucy's castle has a big gateway in the middle (or perhaps it is just somewhere to hold the paper without getting paint on her hand)
• 3.00 Five people left, all working with concentration.
• Lucy is painting in the space she had left.
• Rosie and Ami are back with two messages from the office, one of them about an attempt to pay in a cheque which has been refused because there is no sort code (?)

End of school.

• Lucy's friend is filling in the space between the battlements with her fingers and seemed to me to have finished her painting, but now she is drawing a red gate over the top.
• Rosie has come to say goodbye to me as she won't be here tomorrow.
• Everyone has gone except Lucy's friend, but two other girls have come up.
• Lucy's friend is adding windows.
• Lunch break on Friday
• Lucy and her friend are adjusting their photographs on the computer.
• Some very small boys are collecting masses of paints and using very little.
• Two girls are painting A3 sheets, over and over again, in swirls of colour.

...

• When the bell goes, Ami gets a mop to try to clear up a crushed blue pastel on the floor.
• Everyone else left before or just after the bell, except Lucy.
• A parcel arrives containing a new camcorder. Ami opens it and starts reading the instructions.
• Ami gives out A3 paper to two boys and a girl.
• Jennifer McCleod is sitting in an armchair glumly eating an apple.
• Ami read the rules (!) to three boys and has a bit of an argument.

...

• Jennifer, wearing a very painty sweater, has started painting her white board (the square that was being painted white yesterday). She has drawn on it carefully in biro, and now she is painting round a shape in blue.
• 2.45
• Jennifer has finished her piece - it is blue and green round the outside of a white circle. She explained that this was an inversion of the usual cartoon of the world, which has a blue and green globe in the centre. In her white circle she has written all the days of the week, muddled up, because nobody likes school.
• Lucy and her friend are painting now - apparently coloured rectangles.
• Ami is keeping order.
• A boy is reading the National Geographic.

...

• Lucy's picture is now a purple circle on a dark green background.
• Several boys are rather waiting for the end of school.

...

• John MacGillivray has only just started coming to Room 13. He has done a picture called "Money isn't everything." He took me to see it in his classroom. It is 1p and 2p coins on a dark blue background, like stars in the sky. Money isn't everything, he explained, you have your family and other things that are more important. He did his picture because Mr. Fairley said "good art doesn't need to take a while." It had only taken him one afternoon. For his next work he wants to break a bottle and stick the bits on canvas to reflect the sun, but he doesn't know what to call it, and the broken glass may be dangerous.
• Lucy's painting now has orange revealed by scraping away paint.

Most of the time I was the only adult in the room, and I was in an inconspicuous corner sheltered by a book-case. That is one of the extraordinary things about my observations. Another is that when the parcel arrived containing the new camcorder it was one of the children who unpacked it and began to read the instructions. Another is that two eight-year-old girls were allowed to take a school digital camera wherever they liked, and that they were later able to work on their photographs at the computer. (I asked Rob what their designs were to be used for, and he told me it was probably the cover for the corporate report for the Scottish Arts Council. Other direct commissions had come at different times from Scottish Natural Heritage, The Guardian, the Scottish Arts Council, Grounds for Learning, the West Highland Museum and the Highland Council.)