It is my assembly this week. I take my assemblies seriously. They are crucial to community ethos and creating shared vision and values. I don’t just churn out a simple message in response to a generic theme, rather we really try here to engage our creative energies in topics of relevance to our specialism and the contemporary world.

This week, I have found myself immeasurably challenged by the theme for assembly. The concept for consideration is ‘know thyself’. I try to think about assembly themes from a community perspective. With a topic like ‘Know Thyself’, it would be fairly easy to give a motivational message about being self confident and ‘true to yourself’ - this is important and work on self confidence is needed but this can be a little too individualistic. It’s harder to think about how we know ourselves together as a creative community - how we establish and protect our community identity and spirit. I would say on a small and fairly local level, this is something we’re pretty good at here at Elstree. We don’t have any bullying to speak of and we are well connected and united in our love of, and commitment to, the creative arts and culture industries. We’ve all found ourselves feeling uninspired and ‘switched off’ by traditional and draconian approaches to school and learning and we are seeking something more vibrant and relevant together - something more creative and this gives us a togetherness and a sense of shared values.

But in the bigger picture, as a learning community in a national and global context, we are facing so many challenges that it is daunting. 2020 is truly an extraordinary, and traumatic, year. We’ve had extinction rebellion and the mass demonstrations around the dangers of climate change, we’ve officially left the European Union following a highly divisive national debate, we’re in the throws of a global health pandemic and impending economic and unemployment crisis and most recently the world was shocked and appalled by the murder of George Floyd - and race inequality, wide-ranging injustice and institutional racism was highlighted afresh across the world.

Know thyself.

Woah…

How do I begin? Who do we say we are in these times? How do we unite under inspiring and equally held values? How do we remain positive and together in such divided and scary times?

I took a few days to consider this before beginning my assembly blog. Nothing came to me… I felt daunted - hopeless even. I just wanted normality back. Healthy and safe students and staff in school relating and learning; engaging and connecting - like it was. I wanted a world I knew; a world I liked and understood - I wanted to know myself and my community. I felt worried and unsure.

Know thyself.

Identity… purpose… meaning.

Then, sitting in my living room at some late hour, I noticed a book on the shelf… the title down the spine caught my eye - ‘Resources of Hope’ by Raymond Williams. There’s a number of great essays in this book about community and culture and art and how we advance a fairer and better world.

Here’s a bit that jumped out to me.

“Empowerment for all people is found in the activity of creating meaning. Therefore, one is bound to be shocked by any society which either suppresses the meanings or values of whole groups, or which fails to extend to these groups the possibility of articulating and communicating those meanings. Social problems inevitably arise where people are shut out by the nature of the educational system from access to the full range of meanings of their predecessors in that place, and excluded from the whole structure of communications from any adequate participation in the process of creating and developing meanings.” [Williams R, Resources of Hope, Verso London, 1989]

Knowing thyself both individually and as a community is about culture and ethos, vision, and meaning. It is about values. That is the way we know who we are, by what we stand for, by connecting through our culture with the ideas and meanings of our ‘predecessors’. By sharing the stories of where we come from and how we got here, by listening and narrating our journeys and our learning. The education system and the structures of communication are crucial to telling and sharing these stories and sustaining these cultures which create meaning and empower people. So there is a weighty responsibility on educators to ensure cultural representation and stories which share the diverse histories and the ‘full range of meanings of the ‘predecessors’ in that place. This challenges me as a curriculum designer to think about change and development in the prescribed canon of literature, art, and knowledge. This challenge in turn reminded me of Riz Ahmed’s much more recent speech to parliament.

Nearly fifty years after Raymond Williams first wrote that essay, Actor and musician Riz Ahmed addressed ministers and politicians at the houses of parliament in 2017. Here is the speech - it’s a brilliant 20 minutes:

Almost half a century later and Riz is still saying a lot of very similar things. He speaks about the structures of communication and the responsibility of government and the media industry to produce and distribute stories which give voice and representation to all the groups that make up our collective nation. He calls on media producers to offer an inclusive and expansive story which presents a message of belonging.

As Elstree Screen Arts Academy and UTC, we have a responsibility in both these examples above because we are both part of the education system and the structure of communications. Therefore at an historic time of such political and ideological division, and as international crisis follows international crisis, we must be a constant ‘resource of hope’. We must stand for unity and togetherness and continuing progress. We must share stories and culture together which give power and voice to underrepresented groups. We must provide opportunities to be visible and heard for people whose stories and meanings are being suppressed and marginalised. We must be creative and brave in the way we design curriculum and produce media content so that meaning is made and shared and culture is created and protected.

We already engage with this mission actively at Elstree. We celebrate diverse studio icons and have built valuable cultural partnerships with organisations like Apples and Snakes and the MOBO awards. We also track our projects work which has seen over 60% of our creative management roles occupied by young women. However, as we begin our next phase of school development as Elstree Screen Arts Academy, we have decided to push even further - the mission is simply too vital. We will start with a further curriculum and learning review to ensure that our learning environments, curriculum provision and projects offer is even more representative, inclusive, inspiring and empowering so that all people are extended the possibility of creating, articulating and communicating their meaning. We are starting with a staff working group and will be extending this to students and partners as schools start to reopen more fully.

This morning, like a sign, hope returned with its wings spread. Ms Christy and I had a very encouraging meeting with our new partners at BBC Studioworks. As our national broadcaster, it was refreshing and reassuring to hear a little about the BBC’s explicit objective to increase points of access for groups not currently sufficiently represented within the media and culture industries. They will be working with us specifically to address this issue, providing opportunities for some of our students from a range of backgrounds and contexts to start directly working within the UK communication and storytelling industry.

As Riz Ahmed says ‘a new national story is being written about who we are’. Elstree Screen Arts Academy and UTC is determined to be a meaning maker in this inclusive national story that embraces and empowers and represents.

Know Thyself - Resources of Hope in Divided Times