Underestimate Art at your Peril

In our latest Future Focus blog article, ACS Egham’s Head of Visual Arts, Andrew Vaughan, explores the significance of ‘the arts’ in the modern world, and how it helps children develop highly valuable and transferrable skills for the future.

Leading artists say excluding art at school will seriously damage young people’s futures. That’s a bold statement. Can it really be true? It was based on a letter signed by 100 artists including Tracey Emin, Rachel Whiteread, Phyllida Barlow, Anish Kapoor, Jeremy Deller and Antony Gormley, published in The Guardian on Tuesday May 8th 2018. 

You might say, “well they would say that wouldn’t they?”  and as an art teacher myself, you’d expect me to agree.

The letter says there is compelling evidence that the study of creative subjects is in decline in state schools and that entries to arts subjects have fallen to their lowest level in a decade.