Conditions for learning: partnerships for engaging secondary pupils with contemporary art.

Critical Minds was received positively by all participants and our report identifies
how such partnerships can provide models for challenging safe and predictable
practice. In no way does it provide a panacea and many of the issues arising from the
collaboration merit further research. Nonetheless, within the context of the project, we
have identified the conditions necessary to develop pupils’ learning in the
contemporary art gallery and they are summarised in the following recommendations.

1. Deploy socially engaged artists as interventionists to challenge limiting and
normative pedagogic patterns and encourage participants to think differently;

2. Use external spaces as sites for learning (e.g. the contemporary art gallery, its
communities and environs) to encourage pupils and teachers to reconsider and
reconceptualise the process of learning;

3. Develop communities of learning to:

a.  break away from the notion of the artist as an isolated creator;

b.  encourage dialogical practices to enable collaboration and mutuality;

c. sustain the role of adults as experts across disciplines (within the
collaborative/facilitative paradigm) (pupils appreciate the knowledgeable
support of adults as a means to develop peer-cooperation and autonomy);

4. Allow time

Collaborative Projects require time to enable:

a. Planning;

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