S22 Ep5: Artist, Bob and Roberta Smith OBE RA: Guardian of the Arts — why art makes people powerful

36:29Yes. But, you know, we need to nurture every child. and actually if you think about your garden it has different requirements you know yes different plants need different kinds of nurture and you know things are for sandy soil i don't want to extend this metaphor too far yes but you know they have sandy soils or you might want a bit of johnness jonniness number three yes whatever it was on your different plants and we really need to some kids you know some kids need lots of water nutrients and some kids need you know dry soil or something you know but actually if we thought about it like that and tried to play instead of trying to get them to jump through this one hoop of perceived academic success but thought about actually we want to create a garden which flourishes where every kid flourishes that would be a better way i mean good teachers do think like that they do they i mean i think Teachers are kind of human rights work.

37:29All teachers matter. You know, everybody in school is a human rights worker. But we don't want to, I think it's a mistake to pull kids in one direction and say that is a measure of success because it isn't. And it makes lots of kids unhappy. It's a measure of success for a few, but not everyone. And actually everyone does matter, you know, in all our diversity, you know. Talking about this, I interviewed Kate Robinson, daughter of the late, great Ken Robinson, on this podcast a little while ago. And she put it so beautifully. She said that at its core, her dad's work was a celebration of what we as species are capable of achieving within the right conditions.

38:13And, you know, his famous story, I'm sure everyone knows about it. You know, the mum, you know, who my child has got an issue. I don't know. it's disruptive in the class, all these sorts of things. And he tells this beautiful story about, basically, I won't ruin it, people should go and listen to it. But ultimately, the school recognising that the kid had no issues, whatever, put her in the right environment. And the mum looks and peers through the classroom door and sees her daughter dancing. Because she was always, it makes me emotional. She was always meant to be a dancer. That's what her diamond was.

38:53And it was a dull diamond at school. And the job of the school was to shine it. And then she could go and sparkle for her life. And that is, you know, when we look at the, what we're saying is point systems, tiers, accounting data, you know, tick boxes, all these things that we're obsessed about. You wonder if you allowed going to your analogy of the garden and that they were, you know, nurtured in the conditions that they needed to be nurtured in, it would blow away any school system, wouldn't it? If it was looking at, I don't know, like, I don't know, it would be the most successful. This is what people don't understand.

39:37You're actually shackling the potential of the country of our children. If you want a prosperous world, if you nurtured everyone in the right way, you wouldn't even need that. You know, we would be going to the moon and back, literally, because those children's brains were being told, wow, I'm amazing at what I do. And who knows what that could create in terms of economy systems. And I thought that, you know, With your art, what you're saying, the underfunding of the arts, the rigidness of the assessments, the low status it's given, the sort of like, oh, your art. Do you know what I mean? It's like the math is the only thing that can win, is it, this day and age?

40:22A couple of years ago, I went to an amazing primary school near Leeds called Gomisaw Primary School. There are other people doing this, but there's a wonderful teacher there called Mandy Barrett. that Mandy Barrett had persuaded her head teacher. I mean, Mandy Barrett was a generalist teacher, but she had studied art. But she persuaded her head teacher to create an art room in the primary school. And I mean, this is the thing really, I mean, all of these things need looking at, but the primary school is a key place really. Because actually it's quite difficult to teach the arts if you haven't been an artist in that way.

40:59Where do you start? What do you do? How do you do it? So they've created this art room. But the brilliant thing about Mandy Barrett's art room is that it's not the exclusive place where the kids are taught, but she teaches all the subjects, all the other subjects in the school through the arts. So she's teaching mathematics by teaching them algorithmic drawings, by getting them to make paintings, by thinking about rhythm. she's teaching them geography by getting them to draw the landscape but also to map the territory and draw stratigraphy you know she's teaching them english by getting them to think about you know kind of illustrations to stories she's teaching them history by getting them to imagine the past she's teaching them the sciences through thinking about ideas about chemistry and color and all this sort of and biology and draw and you know she's teaching all of these different subjects and also she's teaching art as well and they're making great art but what they're actually doing is developing their human intelligence with sheets of paper and pencils and paint and clay and it's about intelligence it's about our human intelligence and those kids they will be successful because they will see across the silo that we've created for all of these different subjects and see how intelligence is interconnected.

42:33And that's really what education should be about, is being able to see how one facet of human society or one facet of the world is linked to another because we're in a universe that looks at everything. so Mandy Barrett I now understand your posters and your placards in the garden we need a Mandy Barrett art room who is this Mandy Barrett I know she's a hero yeah and I was thinking who is this I felt terrible I was like I must know who this is I love that you highlight that and everyone have a look at the placards well I was really blown away by what she was doing we need more Mandy Barrett's I think you write Yeah, she's not the only person doing that.

43:22There are other schools pushing that. But that is an important way, if the Michael goes to this world, want to improve children's intelligence, they should be doing that. Because that, more than any other way, will improve their mathematical abilities, actually. because if you have a stick a p let's stick a piano in there as well yeah because if you if you get kids to think about music you get get to get kids to draw the world i mean drawing the world is about looking at the world joseph albers said this joseph albers who kind of invented the Bauhaus said that human beings artists we look at the world and we make a decision about it you You know, the decision is making a bit of art, making a drawing.

44:14And then we act upon it. You know, we think about that drawing and we then display it and stick it out in the world. And that idea of looking and understanding, assimilating the world by making a drawing and saying, well, actually, I can do, you know, art says to people, says to children, very young children, I can do something. I can actually contribute. I can make a contribution. And that's a wonderful thing. You know, if you just think of kids as sponges absorbing information, you're ignoring the bit where you're saying they can make a contribution. And we need kids to feel that. Gosh, you're so right.

44:56You mentioned, I just wanted to touch on that you said teaching art is akin to a human right. Art teachers are human right workers. And you said, rightly so. All teachers who are brilliant teachers are fantastic. Schools incorporate, we all know about this, STEM, science, technology, engineering and mathematics into the curriculum. And we're obsessed with STEM. And you say we should teach STEAM, science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics. And it's so simple, right? Just put the A in. Well, I mean, by only teaching STEM subjects, you're doing it. I mean, that is discriminatory. I mean, that just is discriminatory.

45:42And also, it's very blinkered. And also, art. I mean, the STEM idea is one that has caught hold in the kind of campaign. But actually, let kids do what they want. Yeah, yeah. You know, let kids, I don't want to minimise mathematics or the sciences in schools. I think it's all wonderful. But really, we mustn't minimise the arts in schools. It's a total mistake. But you wonder if letting kids do what they want, you know, when we think back to, you know, education and the fact it hasn't changed in at least 100 years, you know, the way that we even learn. You wonder if just the first step, wouldn't it be amazing that we could, if we're this island and we could cultivate anything we wanted to.

46:40And, you know, I always think back to the Olympics when we, that launch Olympic ceremony, right? and I just thought this is where Britain is just cool and imagine if we could recreate I was talking to Tim Smith founder of Eden about this you know recreate agriculture recreate you know education how phenomenal that that we could do that we're born to do this sort of thing but because we live in the world that we do live in and we have the people leading the way that they are you just wonder if it's more palatable just put the a in stem right just to start there because you know you see the problem is you know the impact of the arts not being funded in schools the disadvantaged children are being affected the most in the arts you said um when reading and i didn't know this and when i was reading about you that germany france and finland are all increasing their arts funding right and they sort of you know certainly scandinavian countries you know you definitely know they know what they're doing yet we've cut our budget and that you were saying that how creativity is basically becoming a privilege not a right and what do you think that the real impact of this is going to be i mean diversity are you your i said your art gives me hope are you an optimistic person at heart?

48:04No, I'm a hugely optimistic person. I think it will be okay. Okay. Do you think in your half-hearts that potentially what you want, even just the A in STEM, might happen? I think there's a good chance. There's a wonderful campaign called the Arts and Minds campaign, which is run by the NEU, and I spoke to the NEU, which is the National Education Union in Harrogate, And they are really campaigning, pushing the government. They're a Labour organisation, generally. They're pushing the government. And of course, it's embarrassing for the government to have the NEU really against it. So I think there are some levers that we can push at the moment, which we couldn't push before, because I think the government just didn't listen when it was a conservative government.

48:59But now it does listen, but it's not doing anything because there's too many kind of middle managers involved. That's a bit uninspiring. And they're scared of themselves, really. Yes. But I think there is a chance at the moment. And there's a real momentum going. I mean, I thought when the government changed, that would be the end of all this campaigning. But actually, it's more important now than ever that people push the government to, you know, I think, get rid of Progress Aid and get rid of these accounting mechanisms. It doesn't need to cost them. It costs them a bit more, but it won't cost them very much more, really.

49:39It's really about love. It's the mood. Yes, yeah. And if you were to do that, you would open things up. The thing about the problematic thing is that all the independent schools know the value of the arts. I mean, not every single one of them, but most of them do. And they have lovely art rooms. Yeah. And they really, it's partly because if you are running an independent school that has kids staying overnight, you need something for them to do after the school day is finished. So you can promote the arts and get the ones who are interested in that to engage in it. But the problem with that is that it's making the arts more and more privileged.

50:23And actually really, you know, the discrimination doesn't become against, I mean, I don't want to go on about politics too much because it's a bit divisive. But the thing is, it's not just discrimination against the creative kids. It's discrimination against working people, really. because the people like my parents, you know, they were encouraged to do the arts, weirdly, because there was an economy there and there is a gain now, but there was an economy there that people, so their teachers said, well, go to art school. Yes. And that's what we ought to be saying to working class kids. Go to art school, you know.

51:00And the mums and dads, you see, they're terrified of that. They think their kids are never going to get a job. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely don't see it as good. But they will, you know. And they will create work, create and be part of a real changing economy, you know, they'll be part of that. You being you, you've developed a programme called Superpower of Looking, and it's sort of an antidote to everything that we're really talking about. And by the way, I absolutely love the phrase, Superpower of Looking. It encourages curiosity that's so important for our children, that curiosity, not being scared of life, embracing it.

51:38And one of the things that really struck me about it was that it encourages us to slow down. You know, we live in this, obviously I'm speaking to the converted, this everything, everything we consume is fast and it's only getting faster. Children exposed to that media, TV, phones, I mean, TV, I mean, do they watch TV anymore? I mean, it's just, it's basically all in these tiny, tiny screens and we've sort of lost the ability to slow down. and I talk about myself as well, right? Adults are just getting faster and faster, maybe overstimulated. Tell me about what superpower of looking is and how does it work for anyone who doesn't know about it?

52:20Well, the superpower of looking really comes out of Art UK and I'm an ambassador of the superpower of looking and a patron of Art UK. Art UK is putting the nation's collections online but one of its initiatives is an educative initiative which is the superpower of looking. And the superpower of looking is all about something. I made a painting a few years ago called, which just says deep looking and it's a kind of, it's just the phrase deep looking, but it's kind of painted on a slightly submarine kind of background. So you can imagine that you, you can imagine painting is about looking into space and seeing and trying to understand it, trying to understand what's there.

53:03Literally this idea of a window in the world. And all paintings are a bit like that and all artists like that. So the Superpower of Looking initiative is about making films of artists, but also people who are just fascinated by a particular painting. One of the films in the first trance of Superpower of Looking was a lady who was a taxi driver looking at Paolo Uccello's painting in the National Gallery. And it was an amazing, lovely little film about her interest in it. What is really interesting about all that is that different people have different responses to the same painting. And this is a little vignette of one person's response to the painting.

53:51I looked at Rousseau's surprise, the wonderful image of the tiger that Rousseau lovingly depicted. It was probably a kind of imaginary scene based on the Botanic Gardens in Paris. But it's an amazing image. And when you look at it, it's actually a painting of a storm. So you can imagine the sound of the painting. But if you look at it, it's a powerful image. And you think, well, that's a tiger and he's hunting. But actually, the tiger's frightened by the storm. and you look at it and it reveals itself to you. And all paintings do that because painting, it takes a long time to make a painting. The average time somebody spends in front of a painting in a gallery is somebody worked out with seven seconds.

54:42So they do bear more looking at it. Yes, they deserve more than seven seconds of our time. But it's saying to kids, you know, your mentality, your ability is important in the way that you look at things and how you understand things yes and don't just take things at how they seem at first glance you know really think about them think about what you see that's what it's saying yes think about what you see you're right and how can these are you hoping that this is rolled into i don't know into all all schools you know It's a tool that is available to all schools right now. Okay. And they can just go to the Art UK website and follow the links for that.

55:33And you'll find there's all sorts of material. So they've been developing it. I was involved in the early stages of developing it. But it's grown and grown and grown. and one of the ideas is that the teacher can contact Art UK and show them the work that they've done through the superpower of looking and they'll get a poster and the poster I design says, I really like your paintings. Oh my God. But also the idea, although it's based slightly on these examples, you know, in the National Gallery or also in regional galleries on our national collections. It's not about really copying the work. One of the great things about this, I mean, this whole thing connects up for me because it's on a super power of looking trip that I met Mandy Barrett and saw her amazing art room.

56:30But one of the things that Mandy was doing with the kids was saying, what's outside the painting? And so some of them were painting, you know, crocodiles and giraffes that the tiger might be after. and then some of them had got wind that actually it was a botanical park in Paris and they were painting trams and buses. So they were literally thinking, I know it's overused phrase, but thinking outside the box of the painting to imagine what's going on in the next cage or the next space or the imaginative space. How fantastic. How amazing. It's really lovely. It's very open-ended. It's not about copying those paintings.

57:12It's about getting people to think about. Think about it and be lost in it and its imagination and creativity. Yeah, yeah.

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57:55I wanted to speak to you about AI. I've mentioned it just briefly, but we've seen this explosion the last few years of the rise of AI. And we're, you know, I talk about it often. We're all using AI all day long without even realizing it now. And so this is here to stay. And there's a huge response, though, recently to the government's proposal to allow AI companies to train their models using copyrighted works without permission, unless the owner opts out of it. Right. So I've spoken to different artists about this, different illustrators, obviously myself, 20 years now representing creative small businesses in this country.

58:37You can imagine, you know, there is just this absolute jaw dropping moment that this is being allowed. I'd love to know what your view is on this, because it's been a bit of a bombshell. It's a nightmare, really. I mean, I think the thing is, one of the things happening with AI is it's the latest, it's a long journey. This is social media. It's to do with platforms, who owns the platforms, the agglomeration of wealth and power away from governments into allowing people to have huge, huge, wealth which is totally unaccountable and ai for creatives we're the latest victims of that really and we have to push against it we have to push against it and own our own uh own our own copyright it's a business thing fundamentally it's a democratic thing right yeah it's a huge it's a human being thing yes uh it's not really political it's humanistic we have to hang on and have control over our creative outputs because it's the only way in which we will push back against having everything, lots of power and democracy removed from us.

1:00:04And it's been when Keir Starmer signs up to this, he's signing away his democratic power actually in a weird way because it's just about enormous wealth ripping this all off and not banish. And why isn't there courage to stand up against this? I don't know why there's not political courage. There's lots of courage in the arts to speak up about this. I mean, a lot of noise being made about this. A lot of people saying how ridiculous this is. Where is our backbone? There's a nice story which highlights all this which came about yesterday, which is Taylor Swift buying back the rights of her albums, her early albums.

1:00:53That's what we've got to do. We've got to hang on to our creative shtick. Also, it does tie itself into this idea of the art room, Mandy Barrett's art room. I'm going to go on about this endlessly, but the Mandy Barrett Art Room is about human intelligence. It's about really what she's doing is saying to the kids, develop, develop your human intelligence. And that will give them power in this new world of AI because the conventionally clever child is going to be a bit screwed. Yes. Because if you're really great at maths and you think you're going to be an accountant, that job is going. If you're really great at English and you're an argumentative person, you think you're going to be a lawyer, those jobs are going.

1:01:43It's only the kids who can see across the silos of the subjects and see the possibilities and can imagine new futures which will be empowered. But our blooming government is undermining them, you know, by giving their power away to the AI oligarchs, if you like. So we've got to stop that. We've got to stop that. You can see it's not good for America. And it's becoming pernicious in this country as well. We've got to stop the people who own social media platforms from running the show, you know. The world. I'm going to come towards the end of this podcast now and ask you a final question on a more sort of positive, I suppose, note.

1:02:32But just to finish off that last bit on AI, it makes me think about the child who drew the trams and the trains. Right. And because that is exactly the skill we're talking about. Yeah. Seeing outside what the curiosity took that child to drawing the trams and the trains. It's not what they were asked to do, but it was within the thing. that is exactly what we're talking about. And if we didn't have this point system, score system. It's imagination. And that's what we've got to cultivate. That is the thing that will invent the jobs outside of the AI, et cetera, et cetera, or using AI. It's such a narrow way of thinking that we're thinking at the moment.

1:03:14And it's, as you said, it's dangerous as well. But to end on a more positive note, we said before that people are immersed in the arts, whether they understand it or not, you know, and you've said that and I completely agree. We're in the arts, you know, by being alive and being outside. And I see and meet so many people who say they're not creative. They haven't got a creative bone in their body, is the phrase. It can be things we don't even think about when we think about the arts. And I know you feel the same, you know, cooking a meal, juggling the demands of work and childcare and being present in our homes.

1:03:50You know, everything is, it's the way in which we view it. Do you think we all underestimate how creative we are in our day to day? And I wonder what you would say to someone who says, I haven't got a creative bone in my body. Well, I would say to them, art, you know, is a bit like love. Because, you know, art, you know, we have these, beware out there, folks. there are people who call themselves artists but calling yourself an artist is a bit daft because it's a bit like saying I'm a lovest yeah because art depends primarily on dopamine and and kind of the enthusiasm that that creates and it is very like love art exists between us just like love exists between us and so whether you like it or not art is just is is at everybody's fingertips and creativity is at everybody's fingertips pencils are cheap bits of paper a bit more expensive but they're fairly cheap and i would encourage people to just draw something just look at something something that you're interested in something that you love maybe think about a piece of music you really love and just try and picture how it might look or how it does look if you're really into plants and gardens just draw a rose or you know draw a hydrangea or something you know and actually by doing it you're studying it and you're synthesizing that information and that's important for us that's important for us to do it and you'll have an heirloom that you can hand on thank you so much i've just gone through so many questions i wanted to ask you but we we've run out of time and I use this analogy in this podcast that you know the journey that we're going through and what you've been doing and the just honestly just oh you've just got if you had a very big fan before now I'm bursting tell me if you were on a roller coaster and you were in your carriage with your you know amazing slogans on the side of your carriage that you would have signed painted onto them what would you say has been a low um one of your greatest lows in this journey i don't have loads of regrets really but i um it's not been a greatest low but i wish i had um started playing the piano when i was younger I really do.

1:06:28I see it behind you and I can see that that is a very good piece of music there, which means that you're pretty good. Well, I'm learning that. Do you not be so excited? But I really wish I had started this journey a lot. I mean, I love playing music. I love playing the piano and I write lots of songs. I've written lots of songs for children about the arts, which I'm working on at the moment, which we've recorded actually and we do stuff with. And, you know, every Wednesday I go to the local pub and do the open mic night and play my children's songs. Which pub? A bit inappropriate. It's the Queen Charlotte in Addington Street in Ramsgate.

1:07:17Oh my goodness. And I love that because I can get, I mean, I used to play in bands a lot, but now I live in Ramsdale. It's not quite the possibility to do that. It's quite so much. But I love going to the open right now and play. I wish I'd done that a bit earlier. I mean, that would be my only real regret. I mean, I haven't had any terrible... I mean, you know, we all go through very difficult times, don't we? Like medical things and stuff like that. But actually, I haven't had any great disasters, I don't think. Luckily. Well, I'm so pleased to hear that. What would you say, with your cap off and the wind on the top of your head, I don't know if there's much hair underneath there and in the roller coaster, what would you say one of your greatest highs has been?

1:08:06Well, that is very clearly for me. Painting and exhibiting the interview with David Knott. I met this, I listened to a Radio 4 interview, which was an amazing surgeon being interviewed by a wonderful journalist, Eddie Mair. And it kind of changed my life. I painted it. I thought, I don't want this interview to go away. He had been a surgeon in Aleppo during the height of Assad's campaign. And he had been stitching everybody together, you know, people who would kill him if they realised that he was a British citizen, and mothers and children. It's a heartbreaking interview. And in the middle of it, it gets so, I won't go into it, but it gets so gory, really, that Eddie Mayer cracks up, he can't continue, but then he gets himself together.

1:09:03So there was radio silence in the middle of it. Anyway, I painted this painting, and I exhibited it in the Royal Academy. I hadn't told them, but they did a piece about it. and so I got to meet David. But what has been amazing, that was about 10 years ago, but what was really amazing is that it wasn't until last year, I think, I sold it to the National Museum of Wales and I've donated the funds after the HMRC got their share, but I've donated the funds to his charity. But it wasn't until I did that, and we did a piece for ITV about it. But he told me that he took his then girlfriend, he took somebody on a date to see the painting, Ellie.

1:09:52So their first date was to go and see this painting. And they got married. They've got two kids and they set up the David Knot Foundation. and that is, I mean, that's an unbelievable thing for me because they work, I mean, they're a real example of the power of teaching, you know, sharing knowledge. They're teaching surgeons how to be generalist surgeons in war zones and they're saving millions of lives. So that is definitely, I don't think I'll ever do anything as powerful as that again. It was an amazing thing to have done and I really value my friendship with David. and Eddie Mayer's interview.

1:10:33It was all dependent on Eddie Mayer's interview, really, but it was an extraordinary thing. Thank you for sharing that. They could have gone to see Starlight Express or something, but they did go and see that painting and they got together, so that was amazing. How beautiful. Bob, this has just been, I mean, I speak to everyone listening. I've just so enjoyed getting to know you today and you remind us that creativity is inside of all of us, but also that it belongs to us and that there's a lot of work for us to do, but we've got to come together. And I think one of the things I would say to anyone listening is, you know, please support Bob.

1:11:10What you're doing is so important, almost like crazily important. You know, when you actually, you know, stack it up to actually what you're representing, you know, you're representing like slightly saving the planet. So I won't put that on you, but I'm just saying that that is sort of, you know, the essence of you and your voice and your art is an incredible force and I thank you for existing and I really thank you for being you and I'm so privileged to have this conversation with you today so thank you. Oh Holly it's been a pleasure. I'm going to hand over to this moment where I ask you to read something that you've prepared.

1:11:54Yes the letter to myself. Yes the letter to the The young one sitting around that kitchen table. I don't know what age you've pitched this at, but I'm going to hand the microphone over to you. Okay. All right. Well, it's a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but I have done it. Thank you. Dear Patrick, dear Patrick, for those of my real men, dear Patrick, get some decent clothes. No one likes a scruff. Don't change your name to a brother and sister duo. No one will know why you did that, and it will cause confusion. Remember, there's no God, and you are an intellectual. Don't make funny art. No one will take you seriously.

1:12:41Only amateur artists get paint on their clothes. Look like something, but remember, only printmakers and TV presenters have twiddly moustaches and waistcoats. Don't overdo it, or people will think you have nothing to say. don't borrow money to go on holiday get to grips with the piano do ask for help marry an italian then you and your kids can forget about brexit and have nice holidays meeting your extended family and the food is good speak at least two other languages and get to paris whenever you can listen to what others are telling you stay visible try to tune in a bit more mind the paintwork Go to the pub and discuss art with your pals.

1:13:29Don't be such an arrogant git. Take money making business a bit more seriously. But without you, I wouldn't be me. And it does work out. So begrudgingly, thank you. And thank your sisters, Vicky and Charlotte, and your mum and dad for me. Just thank you. thank you for sharing that with us and thank you for doing what you're doing and please never even and I think you don't have dark moments but if you do can you just know that we really need what you do and we are right behind you all the way and thank you so much for dedicating yourself to such an important thing on behalf of us all so thank you so much for being on this podcast Oh, well, thank you, Ollie.

1:14:23It's been great. And I've really enjoyed it and all power to you. Thank you. Thank you for joining me today. If you've enjoyed this episode, can I ask that you share it with a friend and like, subscribe and review it too, so that together we can inspire even more people to follow their dreams to build a life they love.

1:14:51Thank you.