Beyond the Studio
In the realm of contemporary art, the boundary between creation and education is increasingly porous. Artists today are not only makers but also mentors, researchers, and facilitators of experience. For Yanan He, the roles of artist and educator are not parallel identities but interconnected practices. Her work in jewellery and her approach to early art education form a feedback loop: creation informs teaching, and teaching reshapes creation. As both a practitioner and pedagogue, she reframes education not as a one-way transmission of skills but as a space for mutual discovery.
Crafted Foundations: Jewellery as Cultural Translation
From 2009 to 2012, Yanan He studied in the Silversmithing and Jewellery department at the Glasgow School of Art, known for its rigorous craft-based training and progressive artistic inquiry. This experience provided her with a strong technical foundation while encouraging conceptual exploration. Her award-winning series *Traces of Time*, recipient of the Richard Hubbard Arroll Memorial Prize, draws inspiration from traditional Chinese architecture. Through recomposed decorative motifs and rhythmic structural elements, Yanan creates oxidised silver vessels inlaid with gold leaf. These works embody a dynamic interplay between heritage and innovation, inviting viewers to perceive ornament not as static symbol but as a living rhythm of visual expansion.
The contrast between materials—the darkened silver and the luminous gold leaf—further enhances the narrative of time and transformation. Each piece speaks to the temporality embedded in built environments and how craft can echo cultural memory while proposing new formal vocabularies.
To Teach as an Artist: Reframing Early Art Education
After returning to Beijing, Yanan established her own studio where she began integrating artistic creation with educational practice. Eschewing rigid curricula, she chose to teach children as an artist rather than a conventional art instructor. In her studio, lessons became shared explorations. Children sketched, patterned, built, and observed—not to replicate predetermined forms, but to develop personal visual languages.
For students aged 4 to 12, Yanan emphasised the ludic nature of art: making as both idea and play. This approach encouraged sensitivity, curiosity, and embodied thinking. Rather than positioning herself as the arbiter of knowledge, she became a co-explorer, guiding children to find value in process and perception.
Her educational methods reflect her own creative process: iterative, intuitive, and responsive. In return, her interactions with young learners have continually influenced her studio practice, revealing new emotional registers and alternative ways of seeing.
Bridging Educational Cultures: China and the UK
Educated in both Chinese and British systems, Yanan is acutely aware of the contrasts between them. Chinese art education, grounded in Confucian values, privileges discipline, technique, and respect for tradition. British art education, shaped by progressive pedagogies, encourages independent thinking, conceptual development, and cross-disciplinary experimentation.
Rather than seeing these models as oppositional, Yanan works to synthesise their strengths. She introduces structured craftsmanship alongside critical inquiry, helping students navigate both form and meaning. During annual study trips to the UK, her Chinese students visit institutions like the British Museum, the V&A, and the National Gallery, experiencing firsthand the diversity of Western art history and museum culture. Conversely, her studio in China incorporates hands-on research of Chinese heritage sites, such as the mural paintings of Dunhuang and Yongle Palace.
This cultural exchange expands the boundaries of art education. Students come to understand both their local traditions and global contexts, learning to ask not only how to make, but why to make.
A Two-Way Nourishment: Pedagogy as Practice
Yanan’s philosophy echoes wider conversations in the art world on the reciprocal nature of teaching and making. In a panel titled *Why Artists Should Teach* (Freelands Foundation, 2023), artists discussed how education forces them to articulate tacit knowledge, reconsider assumptions, and remain intellectually agile. Yanan’s experience affirms these ideas: her students’ questions often disrupt artistic habits and open up uncharted creative possibilities.
She also sees a particular value in artists teaching children. Artists, attuned to nuance and expression, can recognise the latent creativity in each child and protect it from premature standardisation. By treating each child’s response as meaningful, Yanan nurtures a sense of agency and originality from the earliest stages.
For Yanan He, education is not a fixed system but an evolving practice. She believes it should be driven not by efficiency or formality but by vision, empathy, and flexibility. Her dual role as artist-educator enables her to reimagine the classroom as a site of artistic experimentation and the studio as a pedagogical space. Whether through her vessels or her teaching, she offers a sustained inquiry into how tradition can remain fluid, how children can be creators, and how art—at any age—can be both personal and shared.
