More Art for More Children

Image: Wallpaper design based on children's free drawings. This drawing research was created from Kate's own biro drawings of the children's doodles collected from a five minute free drawing warm up at the start of every children's art class. 

This week on the blog, we're thrilled to chat with Kate Hodgson - an artist, educator, and jewellery designer whose practice bridges teaching, making, and a deep-rooted belief in the power of creativity from a young age. Based in Hackney, Kate leads a Children’s Art Studio at Halley House School, where she recently secured funding to transform the Children's Art Room. In this interview, she shares insights into her relationship with drawing, the crossover between metalwork and mark-making, and her inspiring vision for the future of children’s art education.

Hi Kate! Thanks so much for chatting with us today - could you start by telling us a bit about you and your practice? 

I am an artist, educator, and jewellery designer, with a practice that balances teaching and creative work. Three days a week, I lead a Children’s Art Studio at Halley House School, where I develop art projects that complement the school curriculum. Alongside this, I offer private teaching and spend time at my jewellery bench at the Forge, located in the heart of Hatton Garden. My jewellery is sold through three galleries, and since joining the Forge community, I have also launched my Etsy shop. Previously, I ran a full-time jewellery design studio, with work sold at Barneys New York and featured in publications such as Vogue and Harpers & Queen.

Image: Kate's studio at Goldsmiths University while studying for an MA in Arts and Leaning. Drawing in ink with a metal nib connects to working in metal within her practice. Drawing research for jewellery is based on observational drawings over many years. 

You talk about the interaction between metal work and drawing. Here at The Big Draw we promote drawing and mark-making as a fundamental human skill that should be accessible to all. Can you talk about your own relationship to drawing and the role that it plays in your practice?

Hockney once said: “Isn’t the eye part of the mind?” For me, drawing is fundamentally about seeing, and the more you practice, the more deeply you perceive. As we translate what we observe into marks on a page, our visual understanding becomes more nuanced. I love the idea that our eyes are the only part of the brain exposed to the world. Drawing is not just a visual or intellectual activity; it’s sensory, embodied: a whole-body experience.

I extend this approach into my metalwork, where I “draw” by folding and forming metal, using a hammer as my drawing tool. These folds echo the natural forms I observe, turning metal into a kind of evolving mathematics. For me, jewellery is the meeting point of art, engineering, and maths. Similarly, ink, a metal nib, and quality paper offer the same meditative practice - which is also why I’m drawn to embroidery.

At the heart of all my work is an interpretation of botanical forms, designed to be worn as a symbol of the idea that we are not separate from nature. As Bruce Mau (2020) puts it, this shift in thinking “is perhaps the most disruptive transformation that has ever occurred in our understanding of our place in the universe.”

Image: Year 1 Drawings of a plant working with sketching in a HB pencils, then using oil pastels for colour with an outline in 2B pencil. This method allows for layers, practice and development of mark making all supporting observational drawing from a young age. 

You recently completed a Masters Degree in Arts & Learning at Goldsmiths University. We’d love to hear more about this!

Firstly I would like to thank Dr Sayers and Dr Foster; for the way my work was deeply respected at an academic level was transformative.

As one of two self-employed parents, my partner and I had to find a way to balance work with being present for our children. We approached parenting like a relay - always ensuring one of us was physically available. You can have it all, but not all at once: for us, teamwork was essential.

To remain present for our children while continuing to learn and grow professionally, I established a children’s art school at home. This not only allowed me to stay engaged in creative work but also laid the foundation for my academic journey. My time working with children shaped the direction of my MA in Arts and Learning, and I’m grateful to Dr. Sayers and Dr. Foster, who recognised our family’s journey as an academic one in its own right. This progressive outlook built upon my earlier studies - particularly my Postgraduate Certificate in the Use of Arts and Therapy in Education from IATE.

Being with young people has allowed my creative career to flourish. I believe that the foundations of high-level creative skills are formed early in life, and that arts education should begin at age four, not eleven. In this context, children’s art studios are a crucial but often overlooked part of the educational landscape.

My MA dissertation explored this very idea: "How could a children’s art studio within a primary school contribute to increasing children’s access to Imagination, Creativity, Materials and Making within an arts curriculum?" My research engaged with thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Paulo Freire, Dennis Atkinson, James Hillman, bell hooks, David Kolb, Susan Magsamen & Ivy Ross, Etienne Wenger, and Semir Zeki.

Drawing was central to my practice-based research. I created two wallpapers as part of the project - one inspired by children’s free drawings and another based on my own botanical ink studies.

Image: Examples of a Holiday Club drawing class working with Betty Edwards seeing skills in pencil. 

You’ve worked with children in Hackney for 15 years - how has this shaped your philosophy on art education and children's creativity? 

At heart, I am a self-employed entrepreneur. While secondary schools often have dedicated art teachers and funded art rooms, primary schools rely on class teachers to cover all subjects leaving little room for consistent, skills-based art education. The system simply doesn’t support the arts in a meaningful way at this early stage.

In response, I took initiative by starting a children’s after-school art club at home. This led to an invitation from the Headteacher at my children’s school to run a club in their unused art room as a way of revitalising the space. From there, Halley House School asked me to begin teaching an art club and then art as part of the school curriculum. This hands-on experience inspired me to formalise my practice through a Postgraduate Certificate in the Use of Arts and Therapy in Education, followed by an MA in Arts and Learning.

I work as an Artist Educator and serve as an Arts Award Advisor for the Arts Council’s Arts Award programme - continuing to advocate for early access to quality arts education.

You recently secured significant funding to transform the Children’s Art Room at Halley House School - congratulations! Can you tell us more about your vision for the space, and what role you hope it will play in the creative life of the school and its pupils?

The arts are a thriving industry, and one of the aims of my MA was to explore routes to funding within this sector. In what felt like a Dragon’s Den moment, I secured an appointment with Chris Oliver at the Goldsmiths’ Centre, a meeting that came about by chance as I was dropping off stones to my setter, who happens to be based there.

I presented my MA dissertation, which detailed over 15 years of vision and development around a dedicated children’s art studio to support arts education and access for children in Hackney. The timing and mission aligned: the Goldsmiths’ Centre, whose ethos is to widen access and representation and “foster capability at every link in the chain,” recognised the value of starting that chain at age four. Children’s art studios, as I proposed, are critical skills hubs in the wider creative sector. As a result, Halley House School became the first primary school to receive funding from the Goldsmiths’ Centre: a milestone moment in this long-term project.

The funded vision included the creation of long-lasting, modular furniture designed specifically for the needs of a primary art studio. Peter at Rigg Furniture led the design, creating versatile flip tables on wheels that serve as work surfaces, display panels, and easels. Comfortable stools support focused creative work, while three mobile storage units house the materials curriculum safely and out of reach. Art studios are often messy, vibrant environments, but Rigg’s design creates a more sensory-considerate space - increasing accessibility for SEN children and enhancing the studio’s ability to support imagination, creativity, materials, and making.

Image: Portraits from Year 2 using HB, oil pastel and 2B layered method to create bold mark making and teach the use of string negative space. 

This year’s Big Draw Festival theme, ‘Drawn Together’, is all about how creativity unites us, placing collaboration and connection at the heart of making and creating. What does ‘Drawn Together’ mean to you, as both an artist and educator?

Drawing together is how I parented my sons! Teaching children to draw has enabled my own drawing practice to extend, and I believe that creating within a community enhances skills. The science on co-regulation and community connection is very clear, especially in the context of arts and hand skills: it enables learning and connects communities in a relaxed manner. Drawing together is an active reflection. You draw together and you are literally drawn together as a community.

Your plans for a Big Draw event at Halley House School centre on children’s creative responses to history. How do you support them in using drawing as a way to reflect on and interpret the past?

I am deeply inspired by bell hooks, Yinka Shonibare, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Soina Boyce who believes that history can be used within the arts to create change while preserving the past - and that it is the voices of the young, with their power to reinterpret, that often speak the loudest. Inspired by this idea, I wanted to create a curriculum-linked wallpaper project that placed children’s voices at the centre. 

The idea was simple: children would take home postcards and draw someone who inspires them - either from the school curriculum or from contemporary culture. These postcards would then form part of a collaborative drawing event, where students could respond to and reflect on each other’s work in a shared creative experience.

Postcards are an accessible and affordable medium. If the project succeeds, we hope to run a competition where selected drawings would be turned into window stickers. Competitions are already an important part of Halley House School’s culture - not only are they exciting, but they also offer valuable learning experiences.

To truly bring more art to more children, we as practitioners must elevate children’s drawings beyond the domestic space - off the fridge and into the wider world, where they can be seen and valued alongside adult work. That’s why I think the Royal Academy Young Artists’ Summer Show is such a brilliant initiative: it celebrates children’s creativity on an international platform. This year, one of our pupils at Halley House was selected for the online exhibition - a moment of real pride. His drawing showed exceptional observational skill, and we celebrated with a mini RA exhibition in school. All the children worked hard, and the buzz around the subject and the skills involved grew exponentially.

Image: Candlestick still life paintings from a holiday drawing club working with charole, and black and white tonal painting to practice all the key seeing skills in the Betty Edwards method of teaching drawing. 

You’ve spoken about the pressures of the national curriculum and the ‘banking system’ of education, where every moment with children is allocated. What do you feel are some of the greatest challenges facing art education today?

Yes. Drawing is, at its core, a deeply sensory process. Because of this, it can often be misunderstood as directionless or lacking in structure - especially by those outside of the arts. But this perception needs to change. The 2023 Ofsted Review for Art and Design makes this case powerfully, referencing over 150 academic sources and noting that practice is made up of “a thousand everyday moves that add up in sum to practice” (footnote 52).

In primary schools, class teachers are responsible for all subjects, including art, yet many have not had the years of practical experience required to truly understand what it means to learn to draw. Drawing well requires more than technique - it requires sustained access to materials like clay, chalk, ink, pencils, fabric, collage, paint, and multiple surfaces. And it requires repetition. Again and again, and again.

Sketchbooks are widely used in schools, but as a practicing artist, I know they’re among the hardest methods to sustain. My approach involves scaffolded worksheets, artworks stapled onto varied types of paper, and open-ended projects that conclude with a clean slate and a refreshed perspective. The learning lives not on the page but in the body - in the muscle memory of looking, drawing, and making.

We’ve also built an art gallery space within the school, creating a ‘community of practice’ where looking is an active, shared experience. We start each weekly art lesson with a five-minute warm-up: children draw freely on strips of paper with no names attached. These free drawings are not precious - they may be kept or discarded. The value lies in the act of drawing, not in the product.

This practice of repeated, free drawing teaches children to let go - a key part of learning how to draw. Holding on too tightly can block creativity, while letting go opens it up. For children especially, this physical process of looking, drawing, and thinking embeds learning far more deeply than traditional academic methods.

This concept inspired one of the central outcomes of my MA: a wallpaper created from children’s free drawings. I could look at them all day long. Each one is a fragment of thought, perception, movement - and collectively, they represent what real art learning looks like in action.

Image: Year 2 Children in the school Art Gallery at Halley House School - building visual connections through children's knowledge of the linked arts curriculum. It's key to allow children time to practice looking and using the elements of art to assess other children's work. 

Finally, what’s next for you - either personally, professionally, or creatively - that you’re most excited about?

Your Brain on Art, by Magsamen and Ross. I believe in creativity and in the science that supports this. Peer-reviewed studies consistently show that drawing can save lives, extend life, increase synaptic connections, and enhance learning outcomes. So let’s set up more Children’s Art Studios and follow the science!

We are living through a crisis in child wellbeing. Our education systems are stretched, trying to meet the needs of children with diverse learning styles and rising numbers of SEN diagnoses. At the same time, artificial intelligence is transforming the world of work, highlighting creativity as perhaps the last truly human skill. Meanwhile, social media floods young minds with addictive content, stimulating harmful pleasure chemicals rather than those associated with learning, mindfulness, and genuine wellbeing - like those activated by the acts of beholding and making art.

Children’s Art Studios offer an answer - or at the very least, an essential part of the answer. They nurture the whole child, support mental health, celebrate neurodiversity, and provide a space for deep, creative learning. They are more than just rooms; they are ecosystems for growth.

Emerging research in Neuro Arts - the intersection of neuroscience and the arts - is showing us the path forward. It confirms what many artists and educators have always known: creativity and healthy brain development go hand in hand. Children’s Art Studios could be a vital step in translating that science into daily, practical action.

For me, the next step is teaching other teachers. At 56, my goal now is to pass on what I’ve learned. I want to support other adults working in the primary sector - to train more artist educators, create more Children’s Art Studios, and, most importantly, bring more art for more children.

Jamie Oliver’s campaign to support “Educational Needs” focuses on work “in the classroom” and supporting the class teachers which is vital. I hope the Education Secretary acts. 

I want to get across as someone who has seen, first-hand, just how hard primary class teachers work, day in and day out. Yes - support the changes happening in classrooms, but also recognise that if some children struggle in that setting, then we need to offer a different kind of learning environment with materials and drawing at its heart. Support the class teachers by seeing that they can’t do everything alone - we need artist educators with materials skills and drawing experiences, and we need children’s art studios in every primary school in order to provide different learning environments to meet all of our children’s needs.

 #moreartformorechildren

Thanks so much, Kate!

To find out more about The Big Draw Festival and how you can get involved, click here.