Ladies and Gentlemen.

Good morning.

My name is Danielle Souness and I am this years managing director of the room 13 project in Caol Primary School. This is our treasurer Eileen Innes and this is one of the project's artists Emma Clark. Last July I travelled to London with last years chairwoman Fiona Cameron to speak in the Tate Gallery at a huge conference called Creativity in Education which was organised by the NUT and the NCA. It was addressed by Professor Ken Robinson (who had flown in from Los Angeles especially for the conference) and who wrote the famous report on arts education 'All Our Futures' which sets out the way arts education should be handled throughout the country. Also speaking was Estelle Morris the Secretary of State for Education and Tessa Blackstone the Arts Minister. Fiona, in her speech pointed out that young people's expectation of the adult world and what you offer us rarely meet, and it is that problem that Room 13 tries to put right.

Room 13 is basically an art studio, the size of a normal classroom in Caol Primary School. It tries very hard to be part of everything the school does but with the enormous difference in that it never patronises us. Nothing is for children. Everything is for real. We do not use kiddies paints and paper we use real acrylic paint on board or canvas, we do not use kiddies tools we are taught to use real tools safely. We are encouraged to read proper books and newspapers and to attempt to understand art music. Lots of adults find it disturbing to come across primary school pupils who want to discuss Finnegan's Wake or Sophie's World. Why? Is it maybe because they do not know as much as they think and do not want to admit it? I spent a day in the summer holidays exploring Joyce's Dublin and it has been brilliant to be able to tell Mr Fairley all about it cos he has never been there! Last year we had a visit from the Chairman of the RSA and he was noticeably taken aback to be questioned closely by one of the boys on his own personal holdings of stocks and shares…and even more surprised to be told that he should have sold all his Royal Bank shares a week earlier cos that was when the real profit could have been made!

Most importantly, to me, we are introduced to philosophy. I had never realised how exciting it can be to think about thinking but now all my artwork is to do with this.

Room 13 began nearly ten years ago when two Primary six girls firstly were brave enough to take all the school photographs and then managed to persuade Mr Fairley who had originally been paid to work in the school for three months to stay on. He is still with us … just… but I will come to that later. A management team runs the studio… I am not going to go into that too much now cos the workshop which follows will explore that subject in depth… however we look after everything from keeping the room clean and tidy (?) to ordering paint and canvas and finding ways of paying Mr Fairley and Claire.

The work produced, probably because we study philosophy, is very different from what you would normally find in a school. This painting is by Rachel Allison and was painted when she was in Primary 3. It started after Mr Fairley told a group of P3's that the Hindu creation myth involved the world being circled by flocks of flying elephants. Rachel's painting is not just about that but questions the meaning of words and colour because it is called The Magic Yellow Elephant …but if you look closely you will see that the elephant in question is actually Red! Is it that colour because Rachel chooses to call Yellow, Red. Or is the elephant actually magic? Getting Rachel to stop painting elephants was quite difficult even this brilliant drawing started as an elephant in the bottom left hand corner.

Jodie Fraser in my class has exhibited in adult exhibitions all over the world every year since 1997. The 'Guardian' described her 911 as 'staggeringly inventive'. She burnt exactly the same number of matches as people who died in the World Trade Centre and then scattered the ashes on to a canvas. The piece actually looks like the photographs of the buildings collapsing. She also made a series of digital prints and did a performance piece using latex underlay, surgeon's gloves and dust masks ...which was deeply disturbing.

Emma here is a more traditional artist and works with normal paint on canvas. Her most recent piece is a huge (6ft square) canvas. Mr Fairley thinks it is a self-portrait but Emma, quite rightly, is keeping the subject to herself! Jo Birrell also in our class is another traditional artist and painted this portrait of one of our classmates.

We built our own darkroom some years ago and take all sorts of photographs sometimes with cameras sometimes with things as strange as red peppers and this one was taken using a wheelie bin!

Once a year we organise an expedition to somewhere in Scotland. We have gone gold prospecting in Helmsdale,looking for Shearwaters on Rum, investigating Jacobite graves in the remote hills of Moidart and even tried to walk from Fort William to Stonehaven. These expeditions lead to the opportunity of going on an expedition to Nepal, India or Tibet when you reach S3. We have close links with Kathmandu University High School and have sent teams to work in arts projects with them. The photographs here show some of the girls working in a project designed to take art education into the remote village schools that normally have no art education at all. The team that tried to walk across Scotland mounted an expedition to walk to Everest Base Camp and this time succeeded. Next summer a group is going to work with an orphanage in Kathmandu.

Maybe the best thing about the project from our point of view is that we are encouraged to use the studio whenever we want. This means that if a maths lesson is boring we can ask the teacher if we can go to the studio to work instead. I can see the teachers amongst you thinking that this is really silly! But the one main rule that Room 13 has is that we must not fall behind in our class work. Mr Fairley is always saying that he does not care how we keep up but we must keep up. Some of us do it after school, some take it home. Some of us work really really hard all week so that we can spend all day in the studio on Friday. It may sound strange but it does work particularly as often the work you are doing in the studio is more advanced than that in class. Eileen's spreadsheets for her accounts and the school photograph project are brilliant and we have never done spreadsheets in class!

This all sounds really good and exciting but there are problems. It constantly proves very difficult to fund the project. We would love to be able to say at conferences like this (and particularly to the Secretary of State last July) that Room 13 is an exciting Scottish (Highland?) funded project which has proven over ten years to be of benefit not only to the school but to the whole community. However we can't. All we can say is that it is Caol Primary School's project. Highland Council have, in ten years, contributed only one thousand pounds … that is less than 100 pounds a year (our parent's council have contributed more). The Arts Council gave us a grant of £21000 but actually paid under that, meaning that we could not pay Mr Fairley for a month's work last September…in fact, I think I am right Eileen…since last September we have only been able to pay him £2000. Constantly people in England, Denmark and Norway want Room 13 to move. We know there are ongoing discussions with a school in Rotherham and another in London and we hope to be able to extend Room 13 to them and two other primary schools in Fort William but it looks almost certain that the money will not come from Scotland and that therefore its base may have to move away. And it is frighteningly possible that eventually someone is going to make an offer from abroad that Claire and Mr Fairley cannot refuse.

Ladies and Gentlemen: Fiona was right. What we young people want is not what you are providing. Room 13 proves that if you give us the chance we can organise our education and we are fed up at being patronised by your idea of what we can understand. Before I close let me give you an example. Last week our school was connected to Highland Council's Internet network. We have always been encouraged to read newspapers, last year it was even part of P7 homework every night, and Room 13 gets the Times delivered every day…Highland Council's internet network denies us access to ALL newspapers on line.

How patronising is that?!

Thank you.

Danielle Souness, Managing Director 2002/2003

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