Art (Art Education), MA postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

Last October a boy of about seven stayed at our Saturday drop-in table for forty minutes, pressing a cut-up cereal box into ink and printing it again and again. By the end he had twelve versions of the same shape, each slightly different, and he wanted to explain to his dad why the fourth one was the best. That conversation, which I overheard while wiping rollers, is the reason I want to study art education at postgraduate level. I could see he had learned something about printmaking, but I could not have said exactly what, or how I had helped, and I want to be able to answer that properly.

I graduated with a 2:1 in Fine Art. My final-year project used discarded food packaging as printing plates: I collected cartons from my shared house over a term, cut and layered them into collagraphs, and printed an edition of small works that recorded a household's eating habits. The technical problems were practical ones. Thin card absorbs ink and collapses under pressure, so I tested shellac and PVA sealants and kept a notebook of results. I enjoyed that cycle of testing and recording more than I expected, and in my written component I began asking why cheap, familiar materials make people more willing to experiment. I touched on John Dewey's Art as Experience, which argues that aesthetic experience is continuous with ordinary life rather than confined to galleries, but I was only beginning to understand it.

Since graduating I have worked as a front-of-house assistant at a public gallery. Most of my week is ordinary: greeting visitors, answering questions about exhibitions, keeping count of numbers and covering the shop. For the past eighteen months I have also helped run the free family drop-in sessions on Saturdays, working from activity plans written by the learning team. I set up the materials, demonstrate techniques and talk with families as they work. I have become more confident in adapting an activity on the spot, for instance swapping scissors for tearing when a group of toddlers arrived, or suggesting that a self-conscious teenager start with a single colour. I am careful not to overstate this: I do not design the programme, but I have watched closely what keeps people at the table and what makes them leave.

One evening a week I volunteer at a youth club in my area, where art is only one of many things on offer alongside pool and football. Here no one has to make anything, which has taught me a good deal. Some of the most sustained work has come from a group of girls who began by decorating their trainers and moved on to designing stencils. Their interest started from something they already cared about, which connects back to what drew me to Dewey.

Outside work I sea swim through the winter with a small local group. It has nothing to do with art, but it has made me patient with slow progress and comfortable being a beginner among people more experienced than me, which is how I expect to feel at the start of a master's course.

What I want from postgraduate study is a stronger grounding in theories of learning and in research methods, so that I can examine practice rather than rely on instinct. I am particularly interested in how informal settings such as galleries and youth clubs support creative learning compared with classrooms, and I would like to develop a small, careful study in that area. I bring a working artist's understanding of materials, regular and varied experience of teaching informally, and the habit of recording what I try. I am ready to turn that into more rigorous enquiry, and eventually to work in museum or community education with a clearer sense of why my sessions work, and for whom.