Ambitions for the future as we reflect on success of the last year

By Rose Aidin MBE

Founder and CEO

We are now two weeks into our first term and our new students are settling well, confidence is rising, discussion is starting and new friendships are blossoming. With a new year to look forward to, it seems a strange time to be look back - as we did last week to gather material for our annual report - but it was particularly satisfying to see that there were, as ever, many positive developments to report on from last year.

Indeed, the 2024-2025 academic year was one of the busiest and most transformational for Art History Link-Up yet! Almost 200 young people from 101 state schools around the UK participated in our free Art History programmes. In a sector with low social mobility and diversity, it is a significant achievement that over 70% of these students identified as belonging to an ethnic minority and over half had widening participation indicators.

We launched a potentially transformational course for younger pupils, aged 13-15. The ten-week taught course is centred around a High Project Qualification (HPQs are equivalent to half a GCSE and moderated by Pearson Edexcel). We ran three extra-mural pilots in total (two in London and one at Waddesdon Church of England Secondary School in Buckinghamshire) and the students took advantage of the world class collections at the Courtauld and Waddesdon Manor to build their personal projects.

We ran our A level Art History and EPQ courses at the Courtauld from September 2024 - July 2025, enrolling over 80 students, from 64 schools. Of this number 53% were based outside Greater London. All of our 2025 external qualification candidates were awarded their qualifications. This September, we have alumni studying Art History in every undergraduate year group at the Courtauld Institute, University of Cambridge and University of Oxford.

Or course these are the public-facing aspects of our work but behind the scenes we increased organisational capacity, convened panels, revived our Young Patrons scheme and were involved in many sector-wide opportunities - all with the aim of securing art history as a subject and more generally creative education.

They say it takes a village to raise a child and so it is with advocating for art history. We are part of a community of like-minded organisations and individuals without whom it wouldn’t be possible and to whom we are very grateful. For more information and details about our work in 2024-25, and our funders and partners, please see here

So what does this mean for the year ahead?

The Art History A level and EPQ courses are still at the core of what we do however for the last few years we have been increasing the opportunities for younger state secondary students to engage with art history at some point in their education. In an ideal world, every young person would have that opportunity and for some it will be life-changing. The damage of years of emphasis on STEM subjects is still very clear to see in our schools however we are encouraged by increased focus from the Government of the importance of cultural enrichment and creative education. We await the National Curriculum Review to see what impact that will have on improving access to creative subjects at schools but in the meanwhile we’re encouraged by the amount of interest in our pilot HPQ courses and just how many people recognise the value and importance of studying art history for all young people.

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