Applied across a breadth of subjects, the National Saturday Club’s teaching approach is designed to create a distinct learning environment in which young people acquire core skills, channel their creativity and build on their individual strengths. In dialogue with three tutors, we consider the principal features of the Club’s pedagogy and its fundamental impacts on Club members.

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At the end of each year, Saturday Club members regularly convey that they feel more confident, more skilled in their chosen subject and better informed about their future options than prior to their Club experience. Since 2012, annual external evaluation has shown that these outcomes are consistent across the national network, evidencing that the Club’s pedagogical approach results in numerous positive outcomes. The National Saturday Club’s expert tutors are integral to this, as they design and lead the extracurricular programmes that inspire and inform Club members, and equip them with capabilities that can aid their progression.

Across eight subject areas, Club tutors shape their teaching practice to engage young people educationally, creatively and socially. In the non- formal yet structured and supportive environment of a Saturday Club, tutors’ focus is on giving Club members the freedom and the means to discover their talents, to express their individuality and to nurture aptitudes that will benefit their wider learning journey. As the number of Saturday Clubs increases, identifying the essential principles and commonalities of this pedagogy provides an important guide to best practice and to the effects of the Club’s pedagogy, which can be shared accordingly across the network and within the education sector more widely.

Through the Tutors’ Programme, Conference and Advisory Group, Club tutors routinely discuss and examine the ways in which they shape Saturday Club pedagogy, and the structure of their programmes in a variety of disciplines. This dialogue is critical to the evolution of the Club’s approach to teaching and learning, and to an appraisal of how it is enhancing young people’s educational and social development.

Dr David Parker, National Saturday Club Special Advisor on Research and Evaluation, says:

“There are so many nuances and complexities when talking about pedagogy and pedagogical practice that it’s important to understand what your practice is and investigate the ways in which it is being delivered. Inviting tutors to talk about how they are devising individual programmes and engaging with their Club members is a vital part of us understanding how we can relate our activity to the outcomes for young people, and to the wider impacts of the Club’s pedagogical approach.”

In his assessment of the Club’s pedagogy to date, David Parker has identified a number of signature teaching methods adopted by tutors across all Club subjects.

These methods include:

• encouraging self-expression and a sense of agency

• allowing for co-creation while basing activities around a project brief

• setting problem-based tasks

• developing a community of practice through group collaboration

• knowledge-sharing about future pathways

As David Parker’s research and external evaluation show, applied together these strategies stimulate Club members’ creative and critical thinking capabilities, improve their self-confidence and spark their overall enjoyment of learning. The result is a dynamic educational experience that can significantly alter young people’s understanding of a subject and their outlook on their options.

Informed by the work of The Sorrell Foundation

The educational model that formed the precursor to the National Saturday Club was developed by John and Frances Sorrell, co-founders of The Sorrell Foundation and the National Saturday Club. Launched in 1999, The Sorrell Foundation engaged more than 100,000 primary- and secondary-school students across the UK, in numerous learning initiatives designed to show young people that their ideas can play a role in changing the world for the better.

Placing creativity and agency at the heart of the learning experience, The Sorrell Foundation’s programmes were designed to involve children and young people in projects centred around a real-world brief and topics that were directly relevant to them. For example, Joined Up Design For Schools (2000–2006) invited students aged between 4 and 16 to devise a design brief that would improve the quality of life at their school. A designer or architect was appointed to work with the young participants and together they formed a client- consultant relationship to work on possible solutions.

In the programme Design Out Crime (2008–2010), young ‘advisors’ (school students and others not in formal education) were invited to raise crime issues that they had experienced at their school and in their community. They then worked with professional designers to look at solutions for reducing and preventing these crimes. The results were presented to local decision makers, community leaders and police officers.

The central aims of these initiatives – encouraging young people to express themselves and to acquire certain aptitudes through working with a brief – were carried through to the National Saturday Club’s programme design. Cultivating transferable skills and creative and critical thinking abilities remains at the heart of the Club’s teaching practice, and continues to prove a highly successful way of giving young people an enriching and transformative educational experience.

In conversation with tutors Camilla Robinson, Dominic Heffer and Dr Naomi Braithwaite

To illustrate how the Club’s pedagogy is realised, we invited three experienced Saturday Club tutors to discuss their approach and their reflections on the foundational features that underpin the Club’s pedagogy.

Encouraging agency and self-expression

Teaching in the extracurricular environment of a Saturday Club, many tutors comment that young people’s self-perception and understanding of their own creativity undergo significant changes as a result of their Club membership, and that this can have a powerful influence on their future aspirations and sense of agency. Commenting on his experience of running the Art&Design Saturday Club at The Institute of Arts, Hull College and  Ferens Art Gallery, Dominic Heffer said:

“In Hull, which is a relatively small city, our Club is often young people’s first experience of their own creativity and a sort of ignition point. The first thing we do is to give Club members sketchbooks and say, ‘This is yours for the rest of the year. You can do what you want in it.’ With this approach, we’re trying to obliterate the line between the personal and the institutional. In a Club, young people are already in a very different pedagogical environment and their behaviours and reactions are different. Frequently, their work is so good that we say, ‘We could pull that into this project we’re working on’. They may reply, ‘Really? I can use something like sketches of my favourite manga characters?’ Club members are surprised when they discover that they can use their own personal work as a resource.”

Creating opportunities for self-expression and personal decision-making is vital, concurs Camilla Robinson, who facilitates the Craft&Making Club at City & Guilds of London Art School. When Club members are shown that their ideas and responses have value, it can be a rare and important gesture, in her opinion:

“I don’t think there are many opportunities for young people to express their identity. Our society doesn’t give them that permission. People older than them are often telling them how to act. A Saturday Club is a space where the people running it are committed to saying, ‘Be yourself’. The permissions of expression that Club tutors are giving may be through materials or design choices, or equipping them with a sketchbook to speak in their voice, but they are all powerful.”

“It’s interesting to think about how we enable young people and show them that having a voice can be a way forward. I was a secondary school teacher for a while and the learning experience there felt the opposite of this. A Saturday Club is a place where young people can understand their identify and emotional landscape. It’s an empowering space for them and for us. We can see some of the problems they’re facing and we’re able to be part of a solution.”

Co-creation and working with a project brief

Allowing for freedom of expression and co-creation while simultaneously encouraging group collaboration and interaction are fundamental aspects of the Club’s pedagogy. Evaluation has shown that these approaches can boost both young people’s self-confidence and their core communication and social skills. Basing teaching activities around a project brief gives Club members a chance to explore their own creativity and encourages them to work productively with their peers. Dr Naomi Braithwaite, who leads Nottingham Trent University’s Art&Design Club, outlined how she structured her Club sessions this year and how her Club members’ responded:

“I built my Club sessions around three different themes. The first was identity, where we looked at self-portraits. The second was about experimentation and working with different materials and forms. And the third, for the summer term, was centred on imagination. I asked my Club members to think about the question: ‘What might Nottingham be like in the year 3000?’ I asked them to work in small groups and bring together their passions, worries and hopes, and the issues they care about. It was really exciting to see how they connected with each other, sharing and debating ideas, and then using their creative practice to respond to these ideas. It wasn’t my intention, but the theme of speculative futures was something Club members loved so much it came to underpin whatever they produced in the following weeks, in whatever medium we were working in. Co-creating in this way has been very inspiring.”

Balancing group working and individual needs

Creating a supportive atmosphere is an important facet of the Saturday Club’s pedagogy, and Club tutors are alert to where learning journeys may have to be tailored in a group of young people of varying ages and abilities. Addressing the needs of an individual Club member while encouraging social interaction and collaboration can be a balancing act, but the fruits of this approach can be many. As Dominic Heffer said:

“A high proportion of our young people are neurodiverse and like a structured environment where they are told what we’d like them to do. We differentiate between those who need this support and those who are more autonomous. Some Club members are able to take their own route after we’ve given them a springboard each week, and some require a little more guidance.”

For Dr Naomi Braithwaite, allowing young people of different characters to develop and build social skills at their own pace is equally important:

“This year I had an all-girl Club and noticed many of them were particularly awkward with each other, more than in previous years. One Club member was painfully shy and would not communicate at all, so we did a lot of work to bring the group together in a relaxed way. By the fifth session, this Club member was starting to smile and she kept coming back. When we did the speculative futures project and split into groups, I asked each group to choose a spokesperson. It was this individual who spoke, which was surprising. Her mother said to me later that since joining the Saturday Club her daughter had really come out of her shell. I think the social side of my Club has been particularly significant this year.”

Camilla Robinson added that the unthreatening and non-formal nature of the Club environment, and tutors’ focus on individual needs, are especially important for young people at this point in time:

“The biggest impacts we see are shown in our questionnaire feedback at the end of the year. Our stats are really high: 85 to 95% of Club members say that their wellbeing and confidence have improved. This is at a time when the cohort of young people joining us were at home during the [COVID-19] pandemic. A lot of them present with different anxieties and appear quite isolated. They don’t want to talk or mix, but actually that doesn’t always mean they are unhappy. They may be happy being within this space but are just not talking. They can do that in a Saturday Club.”

Creating a distinct learning environment

Irrespective of the subject strand and in addition to the signature teaching pedagogies, a Saturday Club environment encompasses a learning space that is immersive and non-prescriptive about outcomes. The Club’s partnership with a diversity of host institutions affords Club members a unique array of learning opportunities, including interaction with tutors and practitioners who are experts in their field, and exposure to the well-equipped and advanced learning and cultural facilities of a university, further education college, museum or gallery. In turn, these environments allow tutors to introduce Club members to a wide breadth of activities, techniques, materials and equipment that can broaden a young person’s awareness of the subject they’re interested in and the study and career pathways that may be open to them.

For Camilla Robinson, tutoring in a setting that embraces experimentation and discovery is key in terms of the National Saturday Club’s approach:

“I feel the outcome is secondary to the process and environment of a Saturday Club. Immersing young people in a certain practice is really important … They need to feel it. Working with lots of different materials is a way in, but it’s also about creating an environment in which young people feel empowered to express themselves and ask questions. I try to appoint a diversity of makers to lead our Club, and City & Guilds Art School gives us an amazing range to choose from. Our Club members have the chance to be with tutors who all have a different process. They might be with a paper marbler for two weeks, or a stone carver for six. My goal is to expose them to as many different worlds as possible.”

Naomi Braithwaite also underscored the benefit of the National Saturday Club’s partnership model in this respect:

“Since running our Club, I’ve more fully integrated it into the university’s School of Art and Design. This allows us to make the most of the variety of creative disciplines studied here, from painting, ceramics and textiles to costume, filmmaking and photography. I find this very exciting because it gives young people the opportunity to see and experience many things.”

Knowledge-sharing to uncover new pathways

Evaluation indicates that young people’s Saturday Club experience deepens their comprehension of their chosen subject, and reinforces their desire to pursue related further or higher education and a career. In this respect, Saturday Club membership can be viewed as a bridge which young people can traverse to lead them in exciting new directions. Augmenting Club members’ self-confidence and self-awareness about their individual potential is an essential stepping stone towards that bridge, commented Dominic Heffer:

“From the start, we say to Club members that they are all creative individuals and we’re interested in them and what they do, whatever it is and wherever – it could be in their free time or at school. This year, for example, one of our members said they were doing their GCSE RS exam and thinking through what they needed to do. The Club member showed us her thought process and plan for her final piece, and it was clear that it tied into a particular method we were using in our Saturday Club. Taking what she had learned with us helped her with a creative problem for her exam, which really underpins the notion of building transferable skills. Skills are not boxed off. They can be useful in a Club, in school or anywhere. Seeing this interconnectedness is really important for young people.”

Noting that a Saturday Club experience can show young people how they can apply what they’ve learned there, Dominic Heffer added:

“There are young people who I worked with in 2017 who were 16 years old at the time. I then worked with them again when they were aged 18 to 19 in the Future Ferens programme. Now they’re at university. That’s a wonderful trajectory I’ve been able to observe, and I absolutely believe the seed was planted in the Saturday Club.”

Offering useful and practical information about possible pathways to further education, vocational training and jobs is a further vital “next step” aspect of the Club’s teaching method, concluded Camilla Robinson:

“We see the potential of what young people can do, and work to embed them in that future. Sometimes it’s as if they can see the door but they don’t know the way in, or that there’s another door, and another door behind the first one. We can help them see all the doors.”

Supporting tutors’ professional development

Recurrent testimonies from numerous Club tutors confirm that teaching a Saturday Club is not only a fulfilling experience but highly valuable in terms of their professional development. As many convey, it can result in a greater appreciation and understanding of young people, which can benefit a tutor’s wider teaching practice. Dr Naomi Braithwaite described how running a Saturday Club has aided her work and pedagogical approach to teaching graduate students at Nottingham Trent University.

“My Club experience has been helpful for thinking about how I develop my own research and the questions that I ask. As a lecturer, I’m now more mindful and aware of how young people are experiencing life and issues like anxiety and stress. By communicating with young people in a Saturday Club I learn from them, and how creativity can be used to channel and express these emotions. This has made me think about how we can employ different pedagogies with university students as well, to fire their imagination in an assessment-driven environment. Running a Saturday Club is an amazingly enriching experience and rewarding on so many levels.”

Dominic Heffer expressed a similar view:

“The National Saturday Cub is a huge resource for learning. It helps me keep a finger on the pulse of young people and how they are feeling and experiencing the world. Feeding that knowledge back into the institutional organisations I work with is really useful as far as future programming goes. On a practical level, there may be things I am doing in my own studio practice that I can use in Club sessions, which keeps things fresh and also helps me as a practitioner.”

Camilla Robinson explained how much she gains personally from facilitating Saturday Clubs, and that she sees the impacts of the National Saturday Club’s programmes as extensive and profound:

“Since I started organising a Saturday Club for City & Guilds Art School, I’ve looked at various types of practice and made connections through the network that have enabled me to take on new projects. I wouldn’t have done that without getting involved with the National Saturday Club. My work with the Club has expanded my process and materials knowledge, which I can now share as widely as possible. That’s always my goal, to find ways to make the arts more accessible. I feel privileged to be part of the Saturday Club network, to have conversations like this and to meet and learn from other practitioners working in the field – it’s such a gift.”

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