Nicola Churchward

Major Project: Contemporary Art for School Education (CASE)


The adoption of pedagogical models and processes into curatorial and art practice is often referred to as the ‘educational turn’. Rather than existing on the periphery of an exhibition, knowledge production becomes an explicit and primary objective of artistic endeavour. Under the current coalition government, primary and secondary school education in the UK looks set to undertake a somewhat contrary turn. This is one that requires its participants to move away from the curriculum established by the previous Labour administration – which foregrounds interdisciplinary thinking and creativity as essential components of education – to a position that prioritises the production of knowledge in terms of correct and provable fact, within discrete subject areas.


Although these so-called turns in the distinct fields of art and education cannot be reduced to straight analogy, the fact remains that education as art 
is enjoying the avid attention of 
practitioners and academics worldwide, while the possibility for art to function as 
a component of education in UK schools is being marginalised and diminished.


'CASE' is a teaching resource that presents contemporary artworks as interdisciplinary thinking models that are significant and relevant to learning subjects across the curriculum.