Art-K provides a vast assortment of art education- from painting to 3D modelling to drawing. Their aim is for their students’ skillsets to grow at their own pace in a peaceful and non-competitive environment, to boost their confidence and let their creativity flourish! 

On Friday, I visited the art-K studio in Earley and talked to Hannah Blackman-Kurz, the art club manager and teacher there. From highlighting the importance of supporting children's creativity while schools are cutting their art budget, to showing me some of the students’ phenomenal work, Hannah also gave me an insight on the freedom the children are given to allow their vivid imaginations to run away with them, and express their inventiveness through their art.  

So, tell me about your role at art-K and what you enjoy about your job. 

So, my role at art-K is that I manage this space, I manage the art studio and everything that goes into it, but also as an arts educator. I come from an education background at university, teaching illustration for a few years while having my own illustration practice. I’ve come into this role just to get more of an understanding of management, working with lots of different age groups (from little kids aged six, all the way up to adults); just to help nurture creativity. Adults who have never done art before come in here every Tuesday and Friday, just to have this space to learn, play and experiment and same with all the kids. 

In your email, you mentioned that schools nationwide are cutting their art budget. Why do you think it’s important that places like art-K support children’s passions for art and their creativity? 

What we’ve seen in the last decade- this is quite a systemic issue within our education. Arts have been pretty underfunded and fewer kids are doing those careers; pursuing arts and drama, design and music just because that is not valued in our education system. So, that means we are getting fewer opportunities for the current generation (they have limited options). So, it’s really important for things like art-K to support kids who are creative, or kids who have creative energy and are not able to explore it in school, because you don’t necessarily have to be an artist. If you come to these classes, it doesn’t mean you’re going to be an amazing artist, it just gives you the opportunity to learn new skills, play- play is really important in education, and having the ability to problem solve by working on a project and thinking of different ways that we can approach it, that can help you throughout your education system, throughout your academic subjects. So, this is why it’s really important to have a place like this in the community because you’re getting children from all sorts of different backgrounds come here for an hour and fifteen minutes to just explore and experiment and talk to each other, and they all have different interests and it’s a really lovely place to be in and just watch it happen in front of you. You’re just there helping them, to hold a paintbrush or to learn some shading and just help them think about new things, approaching new things. 

This is a bit more of a fun question. What have been your favourite classes to teach? 

All our classes are of mixed ages between six and sixteen so predominantly we’re working with primary-aged children. That seems to be the main demographic we get in the Earley studio at least, so, it’s always lots of fun, a bit crazy sometimes, but they’re all working on projects they really love, they get really creative. So, we have projects- I'll show you what they do [she gets up to show me some of the work the students have been up to]. We work with kids who may be struggling with certain art skills. [she shows me a jungle-themed house someone made] So it’s just really fun to see how you can just say, like, “We’re going to make a house” and see how big this world becomes, and everything that comes with it. That’s the same for projects involved with mixed media like with this [shows me] Egyptian cat, [gestures towards the patterns on it] paying close attention to these patterns; so, it’s just finding out what really ticks in all these children, having the space to be limitless. 

Is there anything else you would like to say about art-K as a whole? 

The good thing about art-K is that we’re a really inclusive environment. You don’t have to be like, “I’m bad at art”. It is a place where you’re going to be developing your art at your own pace, you know, it’s not competitive. We have kids who are all at different abilities and there’s no pressure on them, they just come here, we help support them in every way that we can, so overtime they will see that improvement and they can look back at that, and that’s a really nice thing to be a part of. 

Interested in taking classes? Visit the art-K website linked below for more information! 

https://www.art-k.co.uk/