Interview with Sam Eyre, Head of CREATE Creative Arts Academy at Coombeshead Academy

“I credit teaching with making me a more creative person because I work in a creative environment every single day with young people that I think makes me a better artist.”

A passionate practitioner and Arts educator, Sam Eyre is Head of Creative Arts Academy at Coombeshead Academy and SWIFT Professional Community and Secondary ITT Lead for SWIFT Teacher Training.
 
Dedicated to developing high-quality Art and Design curriculum content accessible and engaging for all young people and teachers, Sam is driven by a professional ethos to provide the best possible Arts education. Throughout his career, Sam has undertaken various roles working with numerous Art Departments, teachers, and young people across the region at the forefront of Arts education in Devon and across the South West, including positions as AST for Devon, SLE (SWTSA), PGCE Secondary Course Lead (University of Plymouth), and Regional Subject Advisor for NSEAD. 

Sam's commitment to Arts education is evident in developing and implementing effective and engaging curriculums that achieves outstanding results and make him an invaluable asset and he has a dynamic lead of the CREATE Creative Academy at Coombeshead Academy now in its second year.
 
Sam is also a fully trained Mental Health First Aider, supporting staff with professional and personal challenges with a dedication to resilience and balanced approaches to ensure success for teachers and students. 

1. How has your journey to teaching and leading Art featured in your professional life?
Essentially, the majority of my professional life has been here at Coombeshead Academy for the past 23 years, which is a long time. Coombeshead and then evolving into Education South West, have always been hugely supportive of the Arts and I feel very, very lucky to be teaching here for so long.
 
I have always been a practising artist in my professional life outside school and that has evolved in lots of different ways and I believe teaching and my own practice have fed into each other. I credit teaching with making me a more creative person, because I work in a creative environment every single day with young people that I think makes me a better artist. It also gives me credibility in that I am able to show work to my students and I can say, “I'm not simply reading this out of a book or talking about it, I actually do this as well” and I can apply this working experience to my own practice.
 
Back in the day when Coombeshead supported me to become an Advanced Skills Teacher (AST) for Devon, when that role existed, around 2008/2009, Coombeshead, has always been supportive of the Arts, which has grown and grown, and whereas other Art Departments might not be as valued or are shrinking, we have always developed. This has made it a very exciting place to be and, on my journey, to be here, even 23 years in, I am now ready to start!
 
In the last two years we have moved the entire Art Department from one side of school to the other, and have officially become the Creative Arts Academy. That has almost been like getting a new job within the same institution in that we are beginning. But we have got the experience and new members of staff from other schools that are very experienced and the Team are now in a very special place and the journey has evolved and developed.
 
With that experience, we are able to create the best Art Department we possibly can. Whilst this has been part of a long journey, it has fed into the ethos here. To reference an article last week in the TES in which I quoted Bruce Lee who said that you have to be like water to navigate all the challenges and that can be tricky in providing the best level of creativity and experience you can for your young people and teachers. I think my AST work got me out to other schools and see other Art Departments and I became very passionate about supporting other Teachers of Art. It is because I feel very fortunate in my position that I want to spread that support, help and experience.
 
2. From your experience as a teacher and school leader, what do you believe to be the top benefits of Art in education?
Firstly, and thinking big at our very core - I would say creative thinking and self-expression for humanity. When I say to my Year 7 students think about the stereotypical caveperson using handprints on a wall, we have this basic need in us to express ourselves in some way. Whether it is Music, Drama, or Art, there is a need to perform, entertain and express creative thinking, and that is part of human nature
 
To be able to foster and develop this creativity is a big benefit. So many people walk into this Department and one of the first things they say - and often it is a member of the Senior Leadership Team, who say, “I can't draw…I couldn't do that at school.” There is sometimes a fear about creativity.
 
Whereas primary school children and younger children love art and then something happens when you get older where you suddenly think that you cannot do it and cannot draw. The challenge for us as Teachers of Art is to open up creativity and share that it is not only about drawing. It is about photography, textiles and making sculpture and it is important to find that individual talent and self-expression.
 
Another benefit is that the Art Department becomes a sanctuary for what might be slightly stereotypical, but true as well for some of the students who tend not to conform or feel like they do not always fit in and they can find their voice in a different way. Unlike some subjects that are necessarily more conformist in that everyone learns the same. However, I want to see 30 different outcomes in the class from 30 individuals. Because we all have different fashion sense, we all like different music and different tastes and personalities. I want to enable young people to have their own voice or identity.

As well as our own identity, I think confidence is another benefit and the self-esteem to be yourself and this feeds into good mental health [I am the Mental Health First Aider for staff here at Coombeshead.] I believe it is fundamental to give people their self-esteem and confidence in being good at something. When a student might say to me, “I can’t do it,” I always adopt a positive approach: “Let's find out what you can do…what is your story…? What is your message?”
 
We have designed our curriculum in such a way that we are the only GCSE where the students design their course.

I do not act like the expert. But I show the young people the tools and how to use them and guide them in what they want to say. “What's your voice?” And that's it in a nutshell. It's the young people's voices.

3. Do you consider there to be any barriers to Art in the curriculum and if so, how are you working to overcome these barriers?
Yes, there are barriers for Art in the curriculum and there are always going to be.
I think there is always going to be a perception that the Arts are on the outside and on the edge and this feeds back to my last answer in students sometimes thinking, “I'm not good at this...I can't do it…There's no career for me in Art.”

Whereas, in reality the creative industries are one of the biggest employers in the country.

People think about artists and galleries and it is almost like becoming a famous footballer, it only happens to the few. Whereas, if you want to work in the creative industries, there are film studios, makeup artists, fashion designers, photojournalists, people who work in magazines. So, the career pathways in Art are huge.
 
Not only do we need to overcome the perception of young people, but of parents and the community about what the Arts are about; because they might not have had a good experience in their own Art education. It is my ultimate aim to give every young person, whether or not they consider they are good at drawing or painting, the confidence to walk into a gallery as a young adult and to be able to look and understand a piece of art; and to go to the cinema or the theatre and not feel out of place.
 
Of course, there are the logistical barriers of funding and time on the curriculum and all those aspects that we constantly face; which we have always faced and has always been the challenge. We need to find the positive solutions and these barriers are not only here at Coombeshead, but are nationwide. We are fighting against curriculum design and time being cut from the Art curriculum to feed into English and Maths, because they are seen as the more important and employable subjects to raise our profile in removing barriers; which I have been doing for the past 23 years.

I think my job, along with other Teachers of Art is to give teachers the confidence to do all this and to give them the skills and the passion. I feel very passionate and responsible for this region and we are very fortunate in Devon and the South West to have an amazing network of Teachers of Art who are passionate and committed and work hard to work overcome those barriers.

4. How are your roles with SWIFT /Teacher Training enhancing your current role at CREATE Creative Arts Academy?
Working on the SWIFT Teacher Training course is a privilege working as a part of a team to develop a new curriculum for a new ITT course. Because 23 years ago my PGCE course leaders were incredible and a real inspiration and have impacted not only on my career, but on my life. To be part of teaching training today and build on that experience 23 years later, is wonderful. The fact that we are hosting the Art subject curriculum days for trainees here at Coombeshead is a significant addition to the Department. We have a group of training teachers seeing real teaching life here, every Friday, which hopefully feeds enthusiasm and passion into their placement schools.
 
For myself and my Team, it keeps us on our toes. Similar to learning to drive, you learn to drive, you pass the test and then slowly over a number of years we become slightly worse drivers, don't we?! I think we get into habits and into our own ways and it is good to keep our own learning fresh and new, and on top of our game. All the time, we are constantly reviewing our own practice. I am certainly no expert. Indeed, I will probably retire one Friday in the future and wake up on the Monday and think, I wish I had done that.

It is important to try to get better and better and this is where working with SWIFT has been helpful for me in leading the Art Professional Community; having time to work with other teachers and also leading the annual Art Teachers’ Conference, and other professional development events that brings the network together, and gives teachers confidence. We can share good practice and ideas, because this is not a solitary profession. It is a team effort, enabled by this work with SWIFT.

5. What would be your number one wish for the future of Art in schools and Multi Academy Trusts (MATs)?
Very simply, creativity needs to be at the heart of the curriculum.
I recently saw some lovely practice in a primary school that in a local MAT that blew me away. So many schools are using iPads and technology, but this particular primary have gone in a different direction in journaling in sketch books. Not only for creative practice, but for all their learning. Imagine a sketchbook, something like Darwin would have used, as a diary of learning with drawings and annotations as experiments to show their thinking.
 
This idea of sketchbooks as a place for all learning regardless of the subject is a collective, because students are not separate across their five periods in a day: they are the same person travelling around. So, if all that learning is in one place, I think that is aspirational and I would like to explore further that idea and I am in conversation with the Headteacher of that Trust and looking at how they have introduced this practice with their young people, because it is something I would like to do.
 
I think we have got a lot to learn from primary education in secondary. Whereas, it is sometimes seen as the other way around. But I think we can learn from fostering and harnessing creativity into secondary education.
 
I think my other wish would be more funding, more time in the curriculum, and all those other logistical aspects.
 
But for my number one wish, it is for creativity to be at the heart of the curriculum; because no matter what subject you are doing, there is creativity involved.
 
Interview by Jude Baylis, SWIFT Executive Assistant

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Find out more about CREATE Creative Arts Academy here