With the new school year fast approaching, Anne Dempsey meets three adults who are returning to the classroom to learn and develop skills for living and working
Can life-long learning contribute to positive health? National College of Art (NCAD) adult students John Brennan, Winnie Ryan and Andrew Wortley believe it can, and are just three of an estimated 300,000 people, according to Aontas, who return to school each year to learn, develop skills and help de-stress. As autumn enrolment brochures from institutions nationwide appear in shops, libraries and websites, more may consider this work/life balance idea.
John Brennan, mid-fifties, is a social worker in age-related healthcare at Tallaght Hospital with a degree in health management, a master's in social work, and a love of painting and drawing. He's been taking life drawing and painting classes for almost 20 years, enrolled in NCAD's night course in fine arts three years ago, is now in Advanced 2 and already sharpening his pencils for October.
"At the moment, my drawing has gone to pot. You have to keep practising, keep up your observation, your hand/eye co-ordination, your confidence. One term that kept cropping up lately was mark making, making your own unique mark on the page according to how you see, observe, translate.
"I see a real link between my work and my art. For me, social work is art. You have to be totally creative if you are working in a health and social care system that lacks equity and falls apart in places. Typically, if someone needs a service, you should be able to access it, spending a number of hours to get what the patient is looking for, but often you can't, because it is not there.
"So then you have to see how you can access it by being more creative. What ways are there around this? In my case, I use my own professional association. We have a special interest advocacy group for ageing and older people, we write reports, lobby Government including Ivor Callely [Minister of Services for Older People\]. I see healthcare as a human rights issue at this macro level.
"At the individual level, you try to find other ways of meeting patients' needs. You are persistent, you listen. Art work is about people, relationships, narrative. Patients too can find it helpful if they are listened to as they tell their story, and I think art has expanded my ability to be with people in that way.
"Job stress has become a bit of a cliché, but it's true also that work can be stressful, and if you are involved in an artistic endeavour, you concentrate absolutely on it, it takes you away from everything else."
Brennan is night student representative on the board of NCAD. "I think the whole idea of continuing education is hugely important. The fact that life-long education is now becoming part of more mainstream policy is brilliant as it gives people the opportunity to change careers, develop knowledge and skills in new areas. I plan a further year in fine arts because I have more to learn and I'm interesting in etching and print making."
Winnie Ryan, 36, is also proof that following your extra-mural star confers wider benefits. "I had drawn from an early age, did art in school but if you mentioned it as a career, the response was - 'how could you get a job from it?'"
So she went the permanent and pensionable route in the civil service, but became progressively unfulfilled and, at age 23, took a career break and enrolled as a mature student in NCAD's four- year fine arts degree course.
"I loved it, but the grant was not as much as it is now, and as the months went on, I found it more and more difficult to manage financially. At the end of first year I realised I couldn't afford to continue, and tried unsuccessfully to get a deferment."
Today she is co-owner of The Diceman, supplying costumes, props and performers for events. With two children aged four and two, life was busy, but the need for more self-expression continued to gnaw.
Last autumn she applied for NCAD's one-year part-time certificate course in drawing and visual investigation (DVI) which fosters ideas and observation. "Some of the people were very good technically and they were encouraged to let go of that, loosen up, do the opposite. One of the main things I got was being part of a creative environment that I couldn't give myself at home.
"It was one of the best courses I have ever done. We used all kinds of different materials for mark making - twigs, biro lids, bleach, charcoals, ink, acetone. I hardly picked up a pencil the whole year. It was a debrief, forgetting technique and freeing something deeper in yourself. Using a notebook for research, to explore, investigate, experiment was a core part of the course. We learnt a different way to see, to begin something without knowing how it will end, trusting, learning to be more instinctive and spontaneous.
"There has been a spillover in my job, in having more ideas, being quicker, more independent. And in my life. A course like this makes you feel better about yourself, more confident. Doing the course I was very busy with less time in the short term, but I found I had more patience with the children, was dealing with them differently, more creatively. I paid less attention to trivial stuff, had a different sense of proportion. I could escape from the mundane into the course projects which were never far from my thoughts. It's been great."
At age 59, Andrew Wortley's interest and growing proficiency in painting and sculpture means that his retirement will be a time of challenge and expansion. The only student in his school taking art for Leaving Cert in the early 1960s, he qualified in medicine, then moved to advertising for 25 years, before returning to his original profession. Today he works as a medical scientist in the biochemistry department at the Rotunda Hospital. "It is less stressful than advertising, your work stops as you walk out the door, and it gives me more head space for art."
Over the years he drew, painted, tried his hand at batik, and 11 years ago applied for a diploma course in Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology. "I felt I might be wasting a possible talent. There's a spiritual side of oneself that can be lost in the commercial world, which art can help to explore. In Dún Laoghaire, we drew from life, did portraiture. It's a lovely area, relational, getting in touch with the essence of someone, and reflecting on what happens between you when you draw them. In my six years there, I learnt to look and see in a different way. I also took a sculpture course which I enjoyed very much.
"I loved painting but found it very stressful, and three years ago while walking from the hospital down to NCAD to enrol in a night course, I found myself deciding on sculpture. I've never looked back. It's relaxing, it's uplifting, sheer joy. Working with clay and plaster is very earthy, it gives you access to different emotions.
"I've since moved on to bronze casting, a fine tuning process, learning to look at your work and to know whether it is ready for casting."
Wortley's paintings and sculptures have sold well in NCAD's art shows and in the hospital's own fundraising exhibitions.
"It is absolutely wonderful that people are buying and loving my work. I have no regrets that I didn't study when younger because what I am producing now is where I am now. I feel completely lucky. Heading into retirement is exciting and I'm looking forward to finding a studio in town with a group of other people so that I can work more fully."