Speech by Mark Faulkner
Chairman, Room 13 Lochyside
'Strangely Familiar' Conference, Canterbury Christchurch University, April 2007
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen
The short film you have just seen was part of a series about Room 13 on Channel 4.
Today I am going to speak to you all about Room 13 in my school; Lochyside Primary School, near Fort William.
Room 13 is the art studio in our school. Room 13 isn’t your normal school art room. It is run by children, not adults.
I am the Chairman which means I have to run the place and organise meetings and visits and buying the supplies. Francis here is the secretary. He writes down the minutes at our meetings and types out letters that we need to send. We also have a treasurer called Tom who looks after the money. We have our own bank account for Room 13 Lochyside. When we need to pay out money we write cheques and sign them.
We raise money by selling things, like our own Room 13 magazine, and things we have bought. We take the school photos every year and we take on commissions.
We have two MDs which is what we call the Managing Director. They keep track of what’s going on in the studio and give reports to our head teacher, Miss Smith. We also have 4 Directors who help out and take charge of particular projects.
I think I’m very lucky that there is a Room 13 in our school.
Room 13 means a lot to me because I have got a lot of opportunities from it. I used to be very quiet and I didn’t really think that much of the world. At my old school, I didn’t think I mattered very much. The first time I came up to Room 13 after I started at Lochyside I was stunned because I had never seen a place like this before.
I started to develop into a person who wasn’t shy.
In Room 13 we talk about philosophy a lot and this leads to a lot of debating about things, which I enjoy. You get freedom of speech and there is not any particular subject that you have to do, you can just do whatever you’re interested in. I like having the independence to be creative and do things without being forced to.
We have a small library of books in Room 13. The books are interesting and aren’t like any other books that you’d find in a normal school library. Some of the ones that I enjoy are: The brief history of time by Stephen Hawking, and a Spanish book about stencil art which shows the political troubles of the world.
I have developed an interest in politics which has been influenced by my experiences with Room 13. Politics isn’t just ruling a country it is about exploring ways for the betterment of a country and its people, which I think children should learn more about in schools.
Then we would have chance of understanding and learning about the main things in life.
For me Room 13 is mostly about thinking and art is a way of expressing thinking.
With Room13 I have learned to appreciate what art is. I used think in P3 that I couldn’t draw. I just thought art was painting pictures of landscape. but then we started to do philosophy talks in class. Claire would come down from Room 13 every week and we’d talk about different stuff. The one I most remember was when we talked about nothing! That sort of started my mind up and I realised that art is more about ideas that just trying to make a picture that looks like something. Then I realised that most famous artists are men and art isn’t just a girly thing.
A good thing about Room 13 is that it gives us and the other young people that are involved with it a lot of unusual opportunities.
The film that you saw earlier was made by me for Channel 4. This was a great experience for telling the UK about Room 13 and I learned about how people really make films; not just the glamorous acting but the writing and directing and how to edit the film so that it is good and gets the right message across.
Natalie, one of our MDs has talked about Room 13 on the radio. Some artists from our studio did a residency at the Irish Museum of Modern Art and other students have had the opportunity to visit Room 13s abroad.
As you have heard, there is now an international network of Room 13 Studios.
I think this has helped people in different schools learn more about different cultures and understand more about life in different parts of the world other than just reading about it in text books.
For example
Last year some people from the South African Room 13s came to our school. There were two teachers and two artists. They gave a presentation at assembly and told us about how Room 13 changed the lives of their students. I was amazed to find that there are at least 1000 pupils in each school when we only have 170. Many of them are orphans which is quite shocking and they are very poor and face a lot of problems. It is so amazing how well they can draw and paint. One boy sold his artwork that he made in Room 13 and used the money to buy his first pair of shoes.
Mrs Tabane, one of the teachers, joined in the Philosphy discussion that my class were having with Claire and talked about Nelson Mandela.
Now Nelson Mandela is a real life supporter of Room 13! His Children’s fund has given money to expand the project into more schools all across South Africa.
Another thing that happened was two men who had heard about Room 13 wanted to do something to help so they drove a car all the way to Mongolia to introduce the idea of Room 13. They travelled through Prague, Ukraine, and across many countries in a very small car that was painted by Room 13 Aragon in London. They managed to do the trip (even though they broke down a few times and were absolutely shattered after driving for days on end) and auctioned off the car to make money for street children in the Mongolian capital Ulan Battar.
When they came back one of the guys came to visit our studios and showed us a slide show of the trip. He talked about playing golf on the top of the car, being stopped by customs officers and seeing pictures of a dictator who took water melons on holiday! It was funny and interesting and we all enjoyed seeing pictures of traditional Mongolian houses and way of life. And as for the Homer Simpson mascot on the top of the car – he was covered in muck after the journey!
These are just a couple of the experiences our school has got from being a part of Room 13 International.
Finally ladies and gentlemen, I hope you will tell your students and colleagues back at school about Room 13. If you have the time and space to create a Room 13 studio think of the benefits that your students could have.
If you don’t give children the chance to think for themselves and be independent like in Room 13, they will just follow each other like sheep.
If you can’t have a Room 13 in your school you can still make a difference by adopting the philosophy in the way you teach.
Children have minds as brilliant as Albert Einstein so don’t under estimate them.
Listen the young people that you work with. Talk to them about the things that matter and answer any question that they give you honestly without any doubt about what they can understand.
Don’t underestimate a child at any age. Tell them what they want to know.
You are the people who guide us children through our life at school so you should tell us all the wisdom from your mind. All that you have heard here and what you have been taught in the past. We would really appreciate it.
Thank you
Speech delivered by Mark Faulkner, Room 13 Lochyside
With technical support by Francis McCaffrey, Room 13 Lochyside