Spark!

Maria Amidu was Listener-in-Residence for A New Direction’s Space for Change programme in 2023/24, and previously in 2022/23. She was invited by Senior Programmes Manager, Corinne Micallef, to be witness and observer to the cohorts’ conversations. Spark!, which Maria first presented at the Space for Change Symposium in March 2024, is a short chronicle of her second artistic response.

Three things happened in the first session in September: one, an incredible dynamic developed very quickly between this lovely group of people who had never worked together before. Two, everyone brought an object that said something about them, and when Carys shared her father’s original 1982 copy of The Arts in Schools there was a collective Oooh! Three, Rob, in the discussion about what is and is not working said: “I want to burn it all down and start again.”

In the second session while the group were discussing  power and cultural capital and visualising this in the form of collage, Corinne and I puzzled over a teacher once saying to her: “We don’t have time for art” and Corinne said to me: “Imagine if teachers were saying we haven’t got time for maths!”

In all the sessions Sheryl used an image of a dandelion as a metaphor for seeds, planting and growth.

So, from the get-go I wanted to use Carys’ dad’s book in some way and started thinking about the spine as a kind of spark. What I kept hearing were energetic, determined, optimistic words from the cohort, who I had began to think of as ‘fire starters’. Given the topic and the visuals the cohort created in the second session some form of actual art making in my artistic response also seemed vital.

To create the piece, I scanned and photocopied a photograph of The Arts in Schools book spine, using 300+ identical images to illustrate fireworks, sparklers, volcanoes, and matchboxes, eventually settling on the idea of the spine as a single ‘match’ and key words with corresponding numbers from the new Arts in Schools recommendations as ‘spark’ and ‘flame’.

When Corinne and I were talking through my poster ideas she had the genius idea of producing matchbooks as an accompaniment. Matchbooks morphed into seed books and became the perfect amalgamation of the fire starting and the seed planting!

In the fourth session Heart of Glass asked: do you remember something your favourite art teacher did that was important to you? So, on the seed books we have reproduced this powerful question and the inspired answers alongside Spark!

Spark!, honours the Space for Change 2023/24 cohort, celebrating just how much arts in schools ignites young minds and plants seeds for future artistic careers.

A couple of days before the symposium Corinne sent me an article about Frank Bowling’s project Pipeline with CIRCA to supply £500,000 worth of art materials to primary schools. In it he said this:

"Access to materials isn't just about creating; it's about nurturing possibility [...] young children need schools to be a place of artistic possibilities. It's not just about making art; it's about making sure they feel empowered to create, no matter what. Let's spark that fire early on."

This is such fortuitous, timely and useful serendipity.

P.S. When I went in search of paper for my poster design the one I selected just so happened to be called smoke.”