It's traditional for teachers who have won at the Music & Drama Education Awards to be invited back to judge the following year. In all the years of the awards, this opportunity has never yet been turned down by a teacher, and Gill Foster is no exception. Having won the Drama Inspiration Award 2020, for ‘a teacher who has made or continues to make a real and significant difference to the lives of their students’, Foster will now sit on the panel to join in judging all Drama categories in 2021.
I ask Foster what the career pathway was which led to her success: ‘I've had a bit of an unconventional pathway,’ she remarks, ‘I started offacting, and then moved into secondary teaching. Then I moved into FE and was head of a big performing arts department at a sixth form college. I left to go back into acting and creative practice, and then I got a part-time job as a lecturer at London South Bank University. That was ten years ago now. I arrived at the University to a tiny and rather chaotic course in drama. The last ten years have been spent restructuring it, building it and developing it into something that I think is really worthwhile and works for the students.
‘Starting as a teacher a long time ago, I really didn't expect to be a Professor and leading a department at a university. Education is very hierarchical, and I remember as a teacher thinking there was no possibility of ever moving between those levels. The jump to FE seemed unrealistic and then the jump to HE seemed impossible.’
How, then, has Foster made those unconventional leaps? ‘I think I've done the same thing, but just adapted it all the way through. If there's something in what you're doing that can work across the strata that we have in the system, and if you're passionate about your subject, which I am, then you can transcend these levels that people get stuck at.’
Changing the face of the industry
Foster's key interest as a teacher and practitioner is, she tells me, ‘about how you work in partnership with the industry to give students opportunities who may not have had them otherwise.
‘We have a richly diverse student body at LSBU, I've always taught in schools and colleges where there is a diverse population, and it's really important to me. It's about how we can use the arts to really open up thought, feeling, broaden horizons; take students to different countries and get them working with people they never thought they'd have a chance to work with, and see them really grow and change over the course of the programme.
‘Diversity has to be a joint effort by industry and education,’ she says, ‘inclusivity isn't going to work by itself, it's got to be actively delivered.’
One of Foster's first students when she moved to FE was the young David Oyelowo, now a Hollywood actor and OBE, and holder of an honorary doctorate at LSBU for his services to the performing arts industry. Oyelowo's family hoped he would become a lawyer, she tells me. ‘I met him outside the college and said “you know, you could be an actor.” We prepared his audition speech for drama school secretly, and he got into LAMDA on a scholarship.
‘He's a really passionate advocate for inclusivity in the arts,’ Foster explains, ‘so now he's aligned with our programme, and I think it is about us working really hard to get those role models there for young people to aspire to. It's brilliant for my students: they see themselves being reflected back at that high level, and that's what we need. The challenge that I've got is to make sure that I've got enough Black artists and academics, or working-class artists and academics, to teach our students, because academia itself is still very white, middle class. It's a constant battle to make small changes that actually have a big impact.’
Personal and professional development
For Foster, the process of nomination for the Music & Drama Education Awards was ‘very developmental for me, regardless of winning,’ she says. ‘The process of articulating your own thinking and achievements is actually very helpful in terms of developing yourself professionally.’
However, there was a clear and direct benefit to her career as well: ‘I think winning contributed to my promotion to Professor because a Professor post is all about external reputation and impact, so I think it was significant for me in helping me develop my career.’
‘As a judge I'm hoping to see some really exciting examples of innovative and creative thinking being put into practice. People being able to think outside the box, and not be constrained by the daily grind of the tasks that we all have to deal with. And people who are invested in their students’ learning: it's that notion of investment and passion that's lovely to see.
‘It's important to recognise that the arts have been under some threat, with curriculum changes, and the EBacc. I think that as long as we commit at a grassroots level to maintaining creativity and arts in schools and in people's hearts and minds, they will carry on no matter what. It's that enduring commitment and passion that the awards celebrate that's really important.’
The Music & Drama Education Awards 2021 will take place on Facebook Live on the evening of 24 March 2021. For more information, go to www.musicdramaedawards.com