Little Boxes: A personal exploration of creative arts and social confidence.

This is the title of my Proposal for Study. My starting point. I’m trying to combine a head full of memory, emotion, trauma, anti establishment ism, lightbulb moments and an urge to create change and do my bit for the future generation!

Firstly, my anger and disapproval of a government that is reducing young minds into statistical gains. Putting importance on point scoring and making it increasingly more difficult for teachers to put individual needs ahead of their given targets.

This is relatable because art was so important to me from day dot. Maths on the other hand, has been the bane of my life. Because I was pretty good at most other subjects, I went under the radar and was never confident enough to put my hand up and admit I was ‘winging’ it.

My argument therefore is, had an equal importance been given to subjects such as art, design, music and drama, would I, among others, have had more confidence in the way we handled a maths class? I may be wrong but I was never made to feel that having a creative talent and mind held you in good stead for an academic future.

As as a result I fear that social confidences suffer. Just look at all the people awakening to the fact that they may have been living with a learning or mental health issue, unaddressed and undetected for years. Surely, this will only get worse if teachers are not given the freedom to see a child as an individual with very bespoke needs. Perhaps I am expecting too much.

During my my secondary school years of hating maths and loving art, my mum passed away I’m sure my confidence and anxiety issues are more to do with this life changing event but the safe, happy group of kids hanging out in the art room at every opportune moment was a therapy to me. My mum was always the one who encouraged my creative side and held value in my talent, whereas my dad was a technical draftsman with a mathematical brain, inherited solely by my big brother. I had a place to go where other people liked what I liked and I didn’t feel thick.

I didn’t pursue art at college though, because I remember my dad saying the standard of the time, and probably still the standard advice that art was not a career choice. Absolutely no academic importance at all.

My brother was the clever, academic one and I was the vocational one who would go out and get a job. A good all rounder. It’s not my dads fault, or my brothers. Just the way it was.

This could open up a number of questions with me as a feminist but the point still stands that because what I was good at was art, they saw no real progression for me.

I eventually made it to the right path for me and it has become apparent that my need to create is set deep within memory and emotion. This is also true of my social insecurities and in my head, it’s all intrinsically linked.

So finally, why ‘little boxes’?

The memory of walking back from school. A long mile down a country lane with my mum and brother, singing the song ‘little boxes ... on all hillside ...little boxes made of ticky tacky...’

The emotional message of this song and the political message, being that of ‘power to the people...stick it to the man!’ Of a government in 1970s America putting everyone into boxes and churning them all out the same. Both messages resinating, in my memories as a child and in my believes as an adult.