When we are children, it is very hard to understand and appreciate the education we are fortunate to receive in the UK. Despite the complaints, obstacles and constraints education professionals have continuously faced, I rarely remember any of that impacting me as a student or if it did, I didn’t realise it. Being of school age, I found myself spending a majority of my time wishing away my childhood years. I just wanted to hurry up and be an adult, so I could do what I wanted. News flash – you can’t do 100% of what you want as an adult either with #adultresponsibilities, but the ignorance to reality was strong at that age!
When I was young, it was pushed on me that I should have an idea of the career I wanted to have at the age of 16, but as I’ve grown and navigated my way through life it became clear that it is absolutely fine to not know. Life teaches you as you go along and the minimal exposure you have to the world at secondary school doesn’t equip you enough to make that lifelong commitment. It is absolutely fine to change your mind, it’s just important you know the type of thing you love. That’s how Art lessons shaped my future and looking back now, I had no idea the impact my teacher would have on my career and my life as a whole.
Everyday my parents faced the battle of dragging me out of bed. A familiar tale in most households on your average weekday morning. Your typical petulant teenager, trying for an Oscar with a sick day worthy performance. It rarely worked, and I’d always be dragging myself into school, pouting, despite my best efforts. Unless it was a day that I had Art lesson.
Mr Costas became my Art teacher in Year 8. I didn’t find art very inspiring in Year 7, I found it to be repetitive and a lesson for the sake of it. But when he became my teacher, his own passion for the subject and creativity sparked inspiration in his whole class. There was a reason why a vast number of students in my year ended up taking double art GSCE. The class was one of my biggest and many of us would stay over lunch or after school to complete our projects.
He instilled the above life lesson in me, to know what you enjoy and follow your instinct in that direction. And in the art world it doesn’t matter if you take a wrong turn because they don’t exist. Your perception and interpretation of the subject helps you get to the end goal and create something beautiful, so in hindsight, was it ever really a wrong direction?
Countless times I would find Mr Costas painting stunning pieces over his lunch break or creating sculptures, and he wasn’t your typical stereotype of an art teacher. He was young, into his rock bands and rather cool from a student perspective, just to shatter that mental image of Bob Ross currently in your mind. I always looked forward to his classes. Looking back at all I have achieved and the path I started to go in, it's no wonder I’ve ended up going down a creative route.
His passion was contagious, and his ethos that there was no right or wrong in the art world as long as you had depth and thought created healthy competition amongst the class. His energy was always calm and collected, very poised and would challenge each individual to push the imagery boundaries we’d each created in our own minds.
I was so inspired and driven to succeed in Art, that I ended up overachieving. I completed projects way ahead of time, I put all my efforts and hours into creating, to the point where I ended up ahead of the curriculum and poor Mr Costas had to create extra projects just to keep me entertained whilst the rest of the class caught up. Coincidentally I probably created more work for the poor guy, as all the other students fought to keep up, meaning half the class ended up ahead and then they all had to make sculptures! For the record, I took that sculpture home proud as punch only for it to be put into the back of a cupboard as my mum was adamant there was no place for it in the house.
Art transformed my approach to things. Visual aids helped me to revise. In my job now, I can remember colours, and visuals rather than spoken words and absorb information so easily in this format. It became my tool, even if the task at hand didn’t require creativity, I’d find a way to use it. Every job I have had has had a creative element, and although I studied performing arts at university, I always preferred the creative units like script writing, stage design and director as opposed to the performance part. Which eventually led me into a career in Marketing, a career I now feel I am firmly seated in and won’t be changing direction anytime soon.
Art was also an outlet for me during a time in my life when I struggled, perhaps didn’t have the healthiest set up outside of school. His guidance and positive influence kept a small fire burning inside of me, which gave me the valuable skill of persistence, drive and determination. Skills that have shaped the person I am.
Sadly, Mr. Costas will never know the great impact he had on my life and the person I became because of his teachings. After successfully battling with the big C twice, the third time he had no fight left, and the teaching world lost a great asset. I was in sixth form at the time, and us students invested what little money we were earning at the time into creating a flower display in the shape of an artist palette. All of his ex-students turned out in mass for his funeral. A large majority of us were standing outside the chapel, just to have the opportunity to pay our respects. His teachings will always stay with me, and I carry that creativity with me everywhere I go.
