The past six weeks have been extremely busy and to a working artist that is always a good thing. As well as continuing and increasing the Pop Nouveau collection the past month was filled with the sound of young voices attending art sessions, something I feel very passionately about. I am always dismayed to find art budgets cut in schools. Whilst it is good for me as i fill a gap without appearing on a payrol system, It appears that OFSTED in their 'wisdom' award creative subjects, (Art, Music and Drama) zeros in the schools ratings. Headmasters, desperate to achieve targets, therefore place resources (which appears to include staffing) in other areas such as Maths and English which attain the highest ratings.

It is not hard to understand their reasoning nor the result which leaves those students whose abilities may not lie in academic subjects floundering. In an age of inclusivity and diversity, is this not the polar opposite of that agenda? Are those that govern actually saying that every child is the same? Are they finally admitting that developing our young in the Arts is of no good use to our economy? How can that be? The industries founded on art are some of our biggest:- Television, Actors, filmmakers, animators, Computer game creators, architects, clothes designers, musicians, pop artists, dancers. Take a look at the annual honours awards and count how many of those are from the Arts. The truth is that those that make the decisions including OFSTED whose decisions are hated equally by students and teachers, seem to be on a mission to make us pay. Like our other noted national attributes such as the NHS, envied by the world, our creative industries are only worth an existence if we pay for it again, ourselves. My fear is that ultimately we will lose these young creative souls to the humdrum of other industries instead of letting them blossom, that we will start a route to the kind of dictatorial regimes where creativity is seen as subversive, where we all wear colourless, similar clothes, where we live in soulless boxes and we only see and hear creations that are pre-approved by our governors. If you think that is far-fetched then take a look at some of the countries in the world right now. It is time to stand up and fight for your freedom of expression and demand that it is part of the curriculum. It is our civilisation.

Note: I subsequently found these articles https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2018/jan/06/secret-teacher-unbalanced-curriculum-sats-assessment-children-art-music-languages-sidelined

When Warhol let the Art Establishment know that they would never again control the public's opinion on art because it belonged to their own minds and that they actually already purchased great art for their own homes, indeed,their kitchen cupboards were loaded with examples!, it opened the gates for so many brilliant creative painters who must have stood up and applauded, ditto Lichtenstein. The magnificent Peter Blake subsequently picked up the flag, for the third leg of that relay but of course with the smell of lucre the Art Nazis had slipped onto the track and were hyperventilating in anticipation and so, even though Blakes's admirable pursuit had managed to let everyone own a print of his greatest work, with a free pice of black vinyl, in collaboration with the most popular musical artists of the day, those slavering Art Facists, with hand open, had stolen the baton. Now finding themselves in control and with the world watching, they stumbled. Even with those tramlines they were unable to work out the clearly defined route to the finish line. Unfortunately, their potential demise was short-lived and they reverted to type. They jumped back to what they had always done, They told the public what art is. Pop Art, the art that says the elite don’t get a say. Pop Art, the art that belonged to the populus will now be defined by Jeff Koons and his balloon animals...... of course it will……and in doing so, they dismissed the very idea, the very root of that beautiful thing that set it free amongst us, they dismissed a whole creative generation of pop artists that were already working, producing beautiful covers for music albums and vinyl singles, exciting promotions for books and posters, for advertising boards, for films, for every part of popular culture, all washed away, redundant, of no interest, retired, extinct, gone. We got balloon animals. No longer do the people own Pop Art. Millions of houses that displayed and cherished their 'Sgt pepper' their ‘Dark Side’, their Velvet Underground, their Jamie Reid, no longer were they allowed to decide or own this genre because it had been stolen and repackaged. Neo-Pop they called it, those St Martins Shockists, those Chelsea Chumps, those Saatchi Spice Girls ……… So, here’s a bowman with his two fingers intact and Here is Pop Nouveau, not controlled by the establishment, not determined by money but retrieved from the gutter, saved from the incinerator, wrestled from the recycling bin and displayed and revered and enjoyed and used to inspire the very next generation of Pop Art, Its called POP NOUVEAU..and I invite you to see.