Room 13

Yesterday I saw something that lit up my world. A spark of freedom in a young girl’s eyes.

Room 13 is an extraordinary educational experiment that started in an ordinary school in Scotland and is now sweeping the world.

Room 13 started as an art room and became something much more, a self-managed space run for schoolchildren by schoolchildren, with an artist-in-residence who is employed by the children’s committee rather than by the school.

Room 13 started as a space for philosophical ideas as much as for creativity. Room 13 is a social enterprise existing within a school, but not controlled by the school authorities, with children controlling the budget and being the signatories to the bank account.

Artists from Room 13 have exhibited internationally, and the Room 13 framework has been seized upon by leading figures in the art world (including Nicholas Serota of the Tate) as a trailblazing initiative. And Room 13 has changed some lives.

Room 13 has spread across the world, to South Africa and to Nepal, among other places, and it is also slowly spreading to other parts of Britain. Among other places, it is spreading to Eastbourne, on the south coast of England. Ordinary schools, extraordinary experiences.

Yesterday, I went to a presentation by two of the committee members of the Eastbourne Room 13, supplemented by their deputy head teacher (probably the driving force behind the introduction of the project), and their artist-in-residence.

Maria (Year 5 – perhaps age 10) and Tyler (Year 4, I think – perhaps age 9) gave a lively presentation, and showed two films they had edited, one depicting their trip to Room 13 Scotland, and the other showing their own Room 13.

For the second film they had interviewed a few other members of the committee. Martha, a new member of the committee, said of Room 13, ‘It’s where you go to do something important.’

Afterwards, Neil, the deputy head, remarked half-jokingly: ‘School, that’s nothing. Room 13, that’s where the important work is done.’

Neil described the atmosphere in Room 13 as ‘amazing!’ A dozen children, with no adult in charge, no direction from anyone, with their heads down, totally absorbed in their work.

The committee was selected by staff in the first instance (from next year the committee will select its own membership), and given guidance on what the different roles (Treasurer, Managing Director and so on) entailed.

The committee then allocated roles within the group (an adult is nearby, but not directing the group), choosing a Year 5 (Maria) to be their Managing Director, much to the surprise of the staff (who would have chosen someone from the top of the school, Year 6).

The committee in Eastbourne does not yet control the company bank account (as in Scotland), but will shortly (said Neil – perhaps I’m wrong but this seemed to be a bit of a surprise to the two committee members).

The committee have a budget of £2000 for stocking the room, and are starting to keep a stock list to make sure they don’t run out of materials. They are in email contact with Room 13 Scotland, who included the Eastbourne initiative in their annual report.

During classroom hours, the artist-in-residence is in the room, as a resource for the children to draw on as they wish. (Some teachers would have liked there to be structured formal teaching of art skills, but this is the exact opposite of the Room 13 idea.)

If a child is up to date with their work, they can ask to be excused from the class to go to Room 13, which is in a old caretaker’s building a short distance from the main school building. (Some staff had been worried about children going unaccompanied out of the main building, but these fears had been overruled.)

There is a limit of two children per class at any one time, and children must return to classrooms after each break and after lunch, in order for teachers to check they are still present, and to receive permission to return to Room 13.

The room has only been running for three weeks. There is no sign of any child having been refused permission by a teacher to go to Room 13, though several teachers have been very resistant to the initiative. (They appear to be retiring or leaving, so that by September the staff there will all be supportive of the project.)

Neil, the deputy head, remarked that when children return from Room 13, their work is invariably ‘better’.

This I find interesting. What is it that improves, and why does it improve? My suspicion would be that part of the improvement is due to the fact that children are choosing to be in class, and this gives the experience an entirely different feel to it.

The ordinary classroom is no longer an unavoidable prison, but to some extent an option. And children do voluntarily return to class before they have to, in order not to miss too much work, according to Neil. (I wonder if this could be because Room 13 is precious to them, and they want to protect it from accusations of abuse.)

During lunchtimes, Monday and Thursday, the commitee is in charge, with no adults there at all. There is no attendance limit per class, just the physical limits of the room.

The committee will put out a sign saying ‘Full’ on the gate to the caretaker’s house when it becomes jampacked. At the end of the lunch hour, everyone is told to put away and clear up whatever they have used. If they don’t, Maria said firmly, ‘they’ll be in trouble’.

An adult in the audience confessed that she had watched the film of Room 13 Eastbourne with a knot of anxiety. Who would put away all the mess? (Maria answered for the committee.) It seemed so chaotic!

Abby, the artist-in-residence, commented that the room felt completely different to how it had looked in the film. The room is a ‘very calm’ space, she said. There’s been a lot of excitement in these first weeks, but it is all calming down.

The users are getting down to their ‘important’ work.

And what was it that lit up my world?

I asked the two committee members if being on the committee had changed them. Maria answered straightforwardly, ‘Yes.’ Before being on the committee, she’d been really shy, but now, having done so many things, including making speeches ‘to people like you’, she could do ‘more things’.

I asked about the other members, had they changed? Maria said, ‘Well, we know each other, we wouldn’t have known each other before.’ Abby, the artist-in-residence, jumped in, remembering that Maria had said in the review of the project that the thing she had valued the most was having a committee made up of, and a room used by, people from all year groups.

(As a home-educating parent, this is one of the things that has struck me most forcibly about home education, the unforced and easy mixing of ages – and genders.)

I asked Maria what her ambitions for Room 13 Eastbourne were. Room 13 Scotland has exhibited all over the place and won awards. What was her dream for Eastbourne, or was her goal just to make the place work and carry on as it has started?

Maria said, with mounting excitement and with a growing spark in her eyes: ‘I just want it to work, and then other schools will see what it’s like, and then there will be Room 13s everywhere!’

And in that young transformed life, with a person seeing herself in a new light, and with a new sense of her own powers, and that shining generosity of spirit, and that vision of transformation, I saw a little way into our future, and the light shone back, and it lit up my world.