Room 13

Page 6

During my second visit I had an enjoyable demonstration of the way the children in the school have absorbed this concept. One day I played the piano to myself in the TV room for a short time at the beginning of lunch break and Lynne Smith, the Primary 7 teacher, and several children came in to listen. Some of them immediately asked for piano lessons, so during lunch I drew a keyboard on the blackboard, labelled the keys with their names and added a few suggestions for simple improvisation. When the children came back no one paid any attention to what I had done. They were not interested in what I wanted to tell them, but only in what they wanted to know for themselves. They wanted to play the piano, which most of them had never done before; I encouraged them to come back and go on experimenting. I hope the resulting noise hasn't driven other people to desperation and resulted in children being forbidden to use the piano. Anne Cameron, for instance, learnt the first two bars of the black-note chopsticks and refused to learn any more. The next day three of her friends spent a few minutes devising a dance to a piece which consisted of this phrase played six or seven times in succession. They were good at following each other's movements, and at the end Anne slowed down and did a rumble in the bass and they all fell to the ground. I wondered whether this corresponded to the children going into the studio and making random patterns in paint and gradually finding more purpose in what they were doing. It seemed possible.

In 2003 Room 13 published a booklet with the same title as the TV programme - What age can you start being an artist? - to coincide with an exhibition of work by Danielle Souness and other Room 13 artists in the West Highland Museum. Much of it is professionally produced, for instance the photographs, which are all taken by Päl Hansen, from Denmark, and an article by Craig McLean reprinted from the Telegraph Magazine, but there is also a piece by Danielle on her own work and an article by Danielle and her friend Kerrie Grant entitled Creative Education, first published in NCA Art News Magazine in 2002. This article ends:

"It would be really good to be in charge of our own education, as we have always had to go with adults thinking, and they don't do the work that they make the rules for. This does NOT mean we do not want to learn, quite the opposite, we would like to find a way which would make learning better and we think that we should be listened to a lot more. Adults often think that we are more stupid and ignorant of what goes on in the world than we really are. We actually DO know what would work."

On the first page of this booklet Jennifer Cattanach is quoted as saying "When I first experienced Room 13 the hairs on the back of my neck stood up." When I had the opportunity I asked her why. It turns out that this first experience had not been of the studio itself.

I was interviewed on a Monday, and appointed the same day, not due to start for another month, and because I was local, on Tuesday I received an invitation to come on Thursday night to a slide show. After they've been on an expedition Rob usually has an information evening for the parents and they show slides and they talk about what they've been up to on the expedition. And I sat there in the canteen that night thinking, "Have I made a mistake? Am I an optimist?" It was just so different, it was just so exciting, so new. It was just - tingle factor. I hadn't seen Room 13 at that point. It was just a slide show of their expedition. But they were talking about things that they did. And yes, it was quite an introduction. They were just talking about how they decide on their expedition, how they organise it, who they involve, what all the responsibilities are, and then there was the slide show, showing what they had done, some of the problems they encountered, and how they dealt with the problems. And on that particular one they were trying to walk across Scotland from West to East, and they didn't actually make it. They had difficulty, they had over-estimated their capabilities and so difficult decisions had to be made, partway through, and they changed their original plan and adapted it, and it was just the discussion and the involvement of the children and the level of decision-making with the children - it was evident right from that point that it was different.

I was for the first time ever setting foot in the school that evening - for the slide show. And the invitation had come from the children, and I thought somebody prompted it, somebody's put them up to it, and then of course it became very evident that no, that wasn't the case, because they were talking about how they had written to the army to organise supplies, food supplies, and so on. And I thought, "They do it themselves," and they genuinely do.

In some way, you see, people think of Room 13 as being art art art, art-driven, and yes, art is a huge part of it, but in other ways the art work's almost insignificant. And there are children up there that don't consider themselves talented in any way artistically, and aren't all that interested in art, but they just want to be part of Room 13, want to be part of the group, want to be part of the decision-making.