“Find Your Thing”

When LWC’s Head of Art, Vicky Sanderson, is asked why she loves to teach, she apologises for becoming emotional.

 

“I want to see children come to life,” she begins, eyes glistening. “I’m a teacher because of them. I think I’m emotional about it because I’m so proud of every single person I’ve ever taught.”

 

In 22 years of teaching, that’s a lot of pride.

 

“Being a child can be really hard work,” she continues. “But they can walk into Art and just breathe. I don’t want them to worry if they’re good or not, I don’t want them to worry about what they create. I want them to find happiness.”

 

When reflecting upon her own childhood, Mrs Sanderson admits there was no single, defining moment when she fell in love with the subject. “Art has always been my thing,” she explains. “I’m a massive history geek and I’ve always been obsessed with historic architecture. I think from a young age, I would just draw, draw, draw. I remember going to Hampton Court for the first time, seeing the art and loving it. It’s just been there my whole life.”

 

Being taken to the likes of London’s Tate Britain from a young age by her art-loving (but not creating) father shaped some of Vicky’s earliest memories. “People always used to ask where I ‘got it from’, then when my mum retired, she took up watercolour painting and we discovered that she’s awesome at it. She’d never done it before – she was an accountant.”

 

It’s safe to say that art has always been Vicky’s happy place. “I struggled with writing at school because I’m dyslexic,” she explains. “But art was something I could always do.” She went on to study fine art at university before embarking upon a teaching career. But her own background has clearly influenced her teaching approach.

 

“I want to know everyone’s story. I want to know how everyone feels about themselves. What’s important to them? Everyone is arty. Everyone is creative. It’s about finding their ‘thing’. Unless you know them and you learn them, you can’t help them find it.”

 

Luckily for Vicky, she works alongside an exceptional team in the LWC Art School, well-versed in seeking out the talents of young artists. From September, they will welcome students into a brand new, state-of-the-art creative space in The Grove – housing Art, alongside Design & Technology.   

 

“I want everyone to feel like the Art School is a space they want to be in. It should be an inspirational place and somewhere that students feel relaxed enough to create and be who they want to be.”

— Vicky Sanderson, Head of Art

 

“It’s about giving students the tools to be confident, to have that self-esteem and to be brave enough to trust that they can do it,” Vicky continues. “Our team is amazing at this. We’re good at bringing out the artist, which is why we have such great results.”

 

It’s been an exciting year for the LWC Art School. The Autumn Term saw renowned figurative artist, Keziah Burt, joining the College for a three-week residency – encouraging students to create their own pieces and offering masterclasses across year groups.

   

“I want everyone to feel like the Art School is a space they want to be in,” reveals Vicky. “It should be an inspirational place and somewhere that students feel relaxed enough to create and be who they want to be. They need the space to explore with art – it’s so important as a human being to be able to do this – it’s where cave paintings came from! But I’m also keen to use as much of our incredible environment at LWC as a space for art. I like us to be outside in the 1200 as much as possible.”

 

There’s clearly a lot of pride in her home department, but Vicky is also mindful of the benefits that art can bring to a host of other disciplines. “Creating something releases good chemicals in the brain,” she enthuses. “But Art is also a really important subject for other subjects. Drawing helps you to learn. It gives you confidence to draw a diagram in Science, or to sketch a map in Geography. If you know how to visually show something, you will learn it. We also enable students to independently manage projects. We teach them how to control and process something. They start at the beginning and need to figure out how to get to the end, which you also need across all of the other subjects.”

 

Beyond the doors of the LWC Art School, Vicky is also confident that the future is nothing short of exciting at LWC. “To work at a school where character is held so highly is amazing. It’s who the students are and who they’re going to be. These are the most important things. The amount of parents who say that they were terrible at art makes me so sad. Everyone should say that the Art Department was the place to be.

 

“They just hadn’t found their thing.”