Good Mourning
Hand-Crafted Ceramics superimposed over an AI Generated Image
Good Mourning combines AI-generated imagery and hand-crafted ceramics. The artwork aims to critique the current educational climate, particularly the system overseen by Ofsted, which prioritizes data-driven assessment and bureaucratic protocols over the fundamental aspects of teaching and pastoral care. By emphasizing the disconnection between the teacher's genuine interaction with their students and the overwhelming administrative burdens imposed upon them, Good Morning underscores the potential loss of personal connection and individualized guidance.
The mask is coated in thin layers of exaggerated, sickly skin tones, symbolising the negative impacts of these procedures on mental and physical wellbeing. The ceramic face is superimposed over an AI-generated image of a child, representing the students who are ultimately affected by this phenomenon. The choice of a child's image serves as a poignant reminder of the crucial role teachers play in nurturing and shaping young minds.
Through this juxtaposition, the artwork challenges viewers to reflect on the significance of fostering a holistic educational environment that values the teacher-student relationship, empathy, and individual growth. It serves as a powerful visual statement, reminding us that the well-being and development of those being taught should always remain at the forefront of educational priorities, ensuring that the untapped potential within each student is not overshadowed by administrative demands.
31/10/22 - 31/10/23 - Unpaid Hours
Unpaid Hours is a year-long, time-based, conceptual artwork that unveils the hidden toll of unpaid hours. The piece addresses the systemic issues within the education sector and the wider public sectors in crisis due to the Tory Government. Unpaid Hours sheds light on the undervalued labor and the necessity for strike action and change. The piece is created by Bristol-based artist Annie Edwards, who is also a college lecturer. When a year has passed, the first half of the piece will be complete. Annie will use this primary data to inform a visual, colour-coded piece to accompany the book. Stay tuned for the result!
Unpaid Hours invites the viewer to reflect on the profound impact of these working conditions (outlined in the statistics above) addressing the unbalanced expectations imposed by Ofsted and the Government.
By capturing the essence of time and translating it into a tangible record, this time-based artwork urges Ofsted and the Government to reevaluate their bureaucratic procedures and to recognise and respect the tireless efforts of those who shape the future generation. If you would like to join in and record your unpaid hours for a year tag #unpaidhours
Good Morning
Resources sent at 9
PM
Train delayed
Apathy
Skint, but paid the hefty fine
Sat in the taxi
Up since five
Baptism of fire
I go in blind
Good Morning
Today you will deliver
A PowerPoint
You’ve never seen before
Quiver
To a group of people
You’ve never met before
Children who have seen the worst
Children whose futures
Spin round in reverse
People who are treated worse
Than you can ever imagine
Famine
Damaged
Oh - you’ll manage
Good Morning sexual assault
Welcome, look out for knife crime
True or false you can get murdered online
It’s called attempted suicide
Are you awake
Are you aware of climate change
Good
Good Mourning
Your future’s fucked
Trigger warning kids
Your teacher is in mourning
She had to beg
To attend a funeral
She isn’t equipped
She’s set up to fail
Off the rails with lack of detail
From her manager
Undiagnosed
Special Educational Needs
No paperwork? No Proof? No EHCP?
Clearly, no support worker needed
Non medial seizures?
Self harming in class - but no bleeding
Not a cause for concern
I’ll put it down as a TSG
Poor mental health and attempts on life?
Easy
Clearly
No support worker needed
Welcome, Good Morning
Sign in to a calculator
Do you compute?
It takes 30 minutes to load
30 minutes to encode
The education these kids are owed
Each cut you make
Cuts our children
Who try to make it
How will our students thrive and learn
When as staff
We do not earn
Enough to catch the bus
Depleted
No energy to make a fuss
Worn thinner than bone
Live in houses we’ll never own
We are tired
We are penniless and assessed
Signed off work with work related stress
Under staffed
Underpaid
Might as well
Be on minimum wage
Underfunded
Under Tory Government
Our children’s days are numbered
Inflation: match it
Or each year we take a pay cut
No ifs and no buts
We’d take action, except we can’t
You pass bills that do not pay us
Education is the square route of opportunity
Community
Give our starving children unity, and a slice of pi
Why Richi, won’t you spare us a fraction
Your actions speak louder than words
Will your push for mathematics
Help you to quantify how little you pay us
Tory tactics
Pay the rich and cut the asthmatics
Abolish the arts that breath the truth
But your data speaks
And we read it
We liquify your threat with paint
When will our pay equate
To the percentage of our fate
We are owed for data duplicates
Motivate then suffocate
Multiply subtracted time
This is measured and far from fine
Far from equal
Break the calculator
Insurmountable unpaid hours
We cower
Weakened under toppling paperwork towers
Scrape the barrel
Prepare for lessons on the toilet
Don’t forget
To do your planning while you eat
Deliver lessons while you sleep
The reality is
We are striking
Fighting against suicide
Against one word that ended a life
Entrapped by stress
Entrapped by fear
Damned if we do
Damned if we don’t
Take a pay cut or be scorned
We are warned
The media supports our poverty
College lecturers
Worse off than school teachers
College lecturers
Worse off than Uni lecturers
Yet we aren’t even allowed to strike
Why?
If the building is burning
Will you carry on learning?
It took you eight months
To teach me protocols for fire safety
Safeguarding training?
It can wait
Safety last
Let’s have a laugh
Look past the glassy manager
Blame the begging lower staff
Good Morning Miss Edwards
Today
You will be taught
How to ignore
Your human instincts
How to show
A child the door
A child
Penniless
No weight to weigh
Starving hungry
What five a day?
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
How are they to succeed
With no mouths or money to feed
Forgotten dreams of achieving
Self actualisation
I often fear
I often hear
“I didn’t think I’d live this long”
How wrong
They didn’t draw blood
Send them back to get a thud
No
They’re non medical seizures
Let’s call their bluff
It’s full of fluff
They’re attention seeking
Poor mental health is peeking
I am shrieking
But my precaution meets an eye-roll
Worry
Passed off in dismissal
Acute awareness
An empty chair
Run the stairs
To raise the alarm
They left my classroom to self harm
Broken glass
Right up their arms
A web of blood upon their forearm
Spell it out in flesh and rhyme
We caught them in the nick of time
Before they spread their wings to fly
Off of the multi story car park to die
I take pride
I will not roll a lazy eye
Like you did
This child drew blood
Ill mark it in the system as a concern
The child’s at risk
Of your blinded idle eyes
Vulnerable
Spider addled mind
They convinced her
She was toxic
So she walked the corridors at night
Crying
Holding her mother’s kitchen knife
Someone did this to a child
To a beautiful, funny, creative mind
She could have thrived
If my manager had tried
To catch the person
That turned her blind
That turned her sick
That warped her mind
Level 3 sectioning status
On a permanent hiatus
Welcome, Good Morning
My level 2’s
They start at 9
And finish learning
At half past 5
On a Friday
The graveyard shift
God’s single greatest gift
They call me names like fucking bitch
Fuck off you fucking bitch
I don’t shame them
I don’t blame them
They spit at me with weighted phlegm
And I take it because I see them
I see every single person
I see their terror
I see their joy
I see their rage
An empty page
Beyond their heavy venom
Their oppositional defiance
Is a child
Welcome everyone,
Today you are armed
With a sturdy graphite pencil
Use this stencil
Then screw it up
Cut and paste and re-imagine us
Who can define the word symbol?
It is simple and you are symbolic
Draw out a better future
Listen to your tutor
You are bright
It’s colour theory
Don’t be teary
You are warmer than the truth
Embrace and have a look
Still life
A tint of hope
A shade of fate
No time to waste
You paint it straight
We celebrate
With art
We fight the cuts they make
Hello
Good Morning
Wake up
When will you come to realise
That every lesson shapes a life
It starts with loyal staff
But we’re busy fighting fires
Where is this end?
Where is the truth?
I bid you lord to save youth
Statistics
After reaching out to organisations and submitting a number of FOI requests to the Department for Education, here is the latest data on mental health within the college sector. (Last accessed 07/03/23)
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Staff in Further Education colleges are working an average of 2 unpaid days per week. (Source: UCU Workload Survey 2021)
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More than 90% of respondents said pace or intensity had increased over the last three years (either slightly or significantly). 3 in 4 respondents stated that the pace or intensity of work had increased significantly. (Source: UCU Workload Survey 2021)
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8 in 10 staff in English colleges suffer from financial insecurity. 4 in 5 (80%) said they felt financially insecure or very financially insecure, compared to 12 months ago. (Source: UCU ‘On the Breadline’ Report July 2022)
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7 in 10 (70%) of the report's respondents said they would not be working in the sector in five years' time unless issues surrounding pay, workloads and job security are addressed. (Source: UCU ‘On the Breadline’ Report July 2022)
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Over 19 in 20 (96%) said that their income either does not cover their costs of living or only just about covers their cost of living. (Source: UCU ‘On the Breadline’ Report July 2022
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More than 4 in 5 respondents (82%) said their financial situation was having an impact on their mental health. (Source: UCU ‘On the Breadline’ Report July 2022)
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57% of sixth form college staff had actively sought to change or leave their current job. 57% of Sixth Form Staff and 61% of FE staff have actively sought to change or leave their current job. (Source: Education Support Teacher Wellbeing Index 2022)
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63% of Sixth form and 67% of FE staff described themselves as stressed. (Source: Education Support Teacher Wellbeing Index 2022)
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Sixth Form College staff had an average wellbeing score of 44.68, classified as being at high risk of psychological distress and increased risk of depression, while FE staff had a score of 43.80. (Source: Education Support Teacher Wellbeing Index 2022)
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“Our findings show that teachers spend less than a half of their time on teaching, while lesson planning, marking and administrative tasks take up a large part of their non-teaching time. Many respondents in both sectors do not have enough time to do the important aspects of their job. This is why they work in their free time: evenings, weekends or annual leave.” (Source: 2019 Ofsted report on Schools and Further Education)