The artist David Shrigley has said Stem subjects should be expanded to prioritise the arts, adding that children’s creativity is being stymied by the narrow focus on maths and the sciences.
The Turner prize-nominated artist says “Stem” – which stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics – should be changed to “Steam” to include the arts, which he believes are at the core of a rounded education.
He said: “I think it is really important because if you talk to anybody, any professional within engineering, for example, in order to be a good engineer, you need to have creativity in order to do that job. Creativity is part of learning … It’s part of problem solving.”
On Monday, Shrigley unveiled the Mantis Muse, a towering nine-metre sculpture that is at the centre of a two-week alternative curriculum he is bringing to his former comprehensive school in Leicestershire, which he hopes will start a national conversation about the importance of the arts in education.
“Art subjects are the only subjects that give kids agency to do something, because the way you learn to do maths, the way you learn to do science, is really just about … remembering information and being able to apply that information to problem solving,” he said.
“Whereas an art education – particularly fine art and visual art – is about setting your own path, setting your own parameters, creating your own project. And that agency is really important to kids’ development … I think that it’s a profound mistake to take the A out of the Stem.”
Students at Beauchamp College in Oadby, where Shrigley was a student in the 1980s, were confronted by the giant insect on Monday, which sits in the middle of the school’s art and design block, with the artist’s lesson plan launching on the same day.
Staff and pupils will have the chance to take part in yoga classes, kung fu lessons, screen-printing workshops, bug drawing and attend a talk from animal behaviour and mantids specialist Dr Vivek Nityananda, and Plunge Creations, the company that made the insect for Shrigley.
A-level students in England have increasingly dropped humanities and arts subjects in favour of a limited number of science-based subjects, and concerns have been raised about the lack of children from black Caribbean backgrounds taking Stem subjects.
In the summer, a report by the British Academy and the National Foundation for Educational Research found that over the past decade fewer students were combining humanities such as English or music with sciences or maths.
More than half of students in England were choosing at least one humanities subject until 2015-16 – but by 2021-22, just 38% of students took at least one humanities course. The drop in arts subjects such as music, design and media studies was even more dramatic and started earlier, falling to 24% in 2021-22.
Last month, in an exclusive interview with the Guardian, the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, accused the previous Conservative government of “vandalism” and “violent indifference” to the arts, which meant communities across the country were deprived of access to culture.
Nandy singled out the school curriculum as being a particular problem area, saying Tory ministers had dismissed arts subjects as “Mickey Mouse” while “erasing” them from the classroom.
The number of students taking arts GCSEs has dropped by 47% since 2010.
Shrigley said Nandy’s comments were “really encouraging”, adding that “hopefully she can make some progress in that regard”.
The Mantis Muse, which is made from steel and fibreglass and uses a mechanical system to rotate the insect’s head, is Shrigley’s latest intervention and echoes his Life Model installation displayed at the Turner prize in 2013.
Known for his sense of humour, last year Shrigley collected 6,000 copies of Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code – after a Swansea charity shop had jokingly appealed for people to stop donating copies – and recycled them, turning them into a new edition of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
“George Orwell, I think, always intended it to be a warning,” he said. “It wasn’t necessarily a parable of an existing state, but it was kind of a warning of what can happen when we don’t value our democracy.”
