Welcome to The Everyday School of Art
Why “The Everyday School of Art”?
The Everyday School of Art shares individual reflections by Rowan Briggs Smith (BFA student at The Ruskin School of Art, Oxford), and Paula Briggs (Co-founder and Director of AccessArt), as we undertake our own creative journeys.
As mother and daughter, our creativity has been intertwined for many years. During Rowan’s childhood we made things on the dining room table, attended workshops together (mother as facilitator, daughter as participant), shared creative discussions and plotted projects. Now it’s time to let these creative connections tease apart so that each of us has the space to explore our own creativity.
We know that at all stages in life, many of us crave a greater sense of creative connection and fulfilment. Whether that’s a child who enjoys making, a young person driven to pursue a career, an adult trying to fit time and space into their lives, or someone returning to explore creativity when time is available (and many more versions of ourselves in between).
We decided to share our journeys in acknowledgement that there is so much common ground in how, as humans, we build our personal relationship with creativity. We can learn from each other.
Why Subscribe?
Our aim is that The Everyday School of Art becomes a beautiful, tranquil and inspirational place to enable creativity to flourish, whatever stage of life we may be at. Philosophical and practical, we hope we can inspire you by sharing:
Our personal journeys - with space to let our writing evolve over time to reflect where we are on our journeys.
Illustrated writing which explores contemporary thinking about the relevance of art, why we might make art, how art affects us, and how we make art.
Sparks of creative energy to feed your personal journey – things we’ve seen, read, heard and tried.
The Everyday School of Art is for everyone. So if you:
would like to be more creative in your everyday life
would benefit from company and inspiration on your creative journey
or are professionally or personally interested in how we enable creativity in others
Then join us as we explore how we can make space for more creativity in our everyday lives.
Please note, whilst The Everyday School of Art is a paid for newsletter on Substack, we would not wish that anyone is stopped from accessing the content on financial grounds. If you can afford to join then thank you, but if you cannot, then please create a free subscription then get in touch and we will give you ones years complementary access.
Who Are We?
A quick introduction. We are mother and daughter, sharing our collective experiences across the generations:
The Mother:
Paula Briggs, Co-Founder, CEO and Creative Director of UK Visual Arts Education Charity AccessArt (www.accessart.org.uk). Paula studied Sculpture at Norwich School of Art (now NUA) and later at the Royal College of Art. For the last 25 years Paula has led AccessArt to become the leading visual arts educational charity in the UK, with over 42,000 subscribers and 24,000 members using AccessArt resources to inspire and enable high-quality teaching and learning across educational settings and in the community. Paula is the Creative Director of the AccessArt Lab at Stapleford Granary, and is also author of two books: Drawing Projects for Children and Make, Build, Create: Sculpture Projects for Children.
The Daughter:
Rowan Briggs Smith is just starting out on her art school experience. Rowan is emerging from an education system that values the measurement of definable knowledge and which pushes many pupils away from creative and cultural subjects. Having completed a Foundation Diploma at The Kings Foundation, London, Rowan is now studying at the Ruskin School of Art, at The University of Oxford. Rowan is passionate about following her instinct to paint and make and looks forward to exploring where her interest in multi-disciplinary art forms and immersion in contemporary and historical culture takes her. She’s keen to record and share her current thought processes as she navigates different stages of creative practices.
The Community:
We are also you! Help us build a community of like-minded creatives, who can support and inspire each other to find just a little bit more time for creativity in our lives. Please join us – you are very welcome, and we especially appreciate your support at this early stage in our venture! By becoming a paid subscriber of The Everyday School of Art, you will receive full access to all posts and help us fund this newsletter.
