Situating the research​

I have been teaching Art and Media in a Further Education college, in the UK, for the past ten years. Learners take full time arts based courses and achieve BTEC qualifications. These are practice led courses for the less academic learners. Teaching on all levels from Pre-GCSE up to Foundation Degree level, I have been able to see a broad span of this type of qualification. Because of the way the qualification is structured, by level 3, A2 level, learners are divided into areas such as; Fine art, Creative Media, Graphics, Fashion or Multi-media. Selection for the courses is based on previous qualifications and the interest of the learner. However it was easy to see that learners with poor drawing skills, applying to fine art level 3, were encouraged to move towards the 'lesser skilled areas' of Graphics, Media and Multimedia. Because of this strong division of skills, talents and equipment, areas did not encourage inter-disceplinary learning and practice. There might be some who wonder if this matters but there are some in our most forward thinking high tec industries who believe we need skilled art graduates to continue to succeed, as was said in the NESTA Next Gen Report. I have been shocked to see the areas of exploration in many schools and further education art courses are limited to drawing, painting, printing and small 3D work. Although Art Galleries and Art Centres exhibit and lead workshops in a wide area of fine art skills, school and college education seems very limited. In a recent report from NESTA written by Ian Livingstone, Alex Hope they have discussed what skills they think are needed and that it is the education system that needs to respond, as they say in the report summery;

​​This landmark report sets out how the UK can be transformed into the world’s leading talent hub for video games and visual effects.​

At over £2 billion in global sales, the UK’s video games sector is bigger than either its film or music industries, and visual effects, the fastest growing component of the UK’s film industry, grew at an explosive 16.8 per cent between 2006 and 2008. High-tech, knowledge-intensive sectors and, in the case of video games, major generators of intellectual property, these industries have all the attributes the UK needs to succeed in the 21st century.

Yet, the sad truth is that we are already starting to lose our cutting edge: in just two years, it seems the UK’s video games industry has dipped from third to sixth place in the global development rankings. Meanwhile, the visual effects industry, though still enjoying very rapid growth, is having to source talent from overseas because of skills shortages at home. That is mainly a failing of our education system – from schools to universities – and it needs to be tackled urgently if we are to remain globally competitive.

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See further comparison of NESTA report and Government response here; ​

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I want to see if I can encourage those in vocational fine art courses to explore a digital world through the use of digital fiction as a medium of exploration.