Contains Art Evaluation Report 2020

Final evaluation, January 2020
access to high quality, rich and
varied creative experiences.
The ‘art mapping’ creative
consultation exercise revealed
children’s understanding and
experience of arts provision,
both within school and the
locality. It also revealed
children’s desire to explore
unconventional forms of
art within which they can
be immersed, art they can
interact with, art that is big or
art that surprises them. The
art mapping also revealed
how the children had limited
understanding of the range of
creative career opportunities
and that they perceived jobs
and careers in the creative
industries as an unobtainable
‘dream’. We intend to reverse
this viewpoint for future
generations of schoolchildren
here.
The ‘visioning’ exercise, art
mapping creative consultations,
artist conferences alongside
our experiences and reflections,
have fed into our co-created
education strategy, detailing
Contains Arts offer for the near
future. Over the next five years
we will seek to achieve all that
it envisages, transforming arts
education across a large rural
area.
There were two exhibitions
which proved highly
successful with the schools
in 2018. These were Lumen’s
Adventures in Digital Art and
Chris Dobrowolski’s Transit
Transition. Both exhibitions
were participatory in nature,
which children and young
people responded well to.
They developed children’s
conceptual understanding
of what art can be and went
a long way to dismissing
negative gallery perceptions
where children are made to feel
uneasy. Our programming will
follow this lead, ensuring that
interactivity, participation are
front and centre as a means
to build lifelong connections
to contemporary art that
challenges assumptions for
children and their families.
‘I never realised this [Lumen’s
digital works] could be art.’
School pupil.
The two after-school art clubs,
funded through the West
Somerset Opportunity Area,
have successfully enabled us
regular access into the two
local middle schools: Minehead
Middle and Danesfield Middle
(both of whom had previously
proved difficult to engage).
These clubs have linked artists
with students through a series
of hands-on workshops,
focusing on a variety of
different artforms including
wirework, plaster casting,
drawing, iPad art, sculpture and
printing. The art clubs enabled
Contains Art to become a
regular fixture within these
schools, building vital working
relationships with staff and
students alike. The two clubs
have culminated in a highly
successful exhibition, attended
by over 120 people including
the students themselves, their
families, local school staff and
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