Sketchbooks can be many, many things and my own sketchbooking varies wildly from week to week and from year to year but I keep it going and it keeps me going. The freedom for it to be what I want is important but getting started with sketchbooking is the thing - I wish someone had introduced me to the idea as a kid ( I didn't grow up amongst artist or designers so school teachers would have been most likely conduit for this).
Obviously lots of kids will get the wrong idea, others will hate it, others be confused at first, but hundreds, possibly thousands will catch a glimpse of the myriad possibilities that their imaginations can offer them and some might even carry on keeping a sketchbook for themselves.
I teach Landscape Architecture at Uni now and have sketchbooks as exam hand in material - privacy is important and students know their work is confidential - we also give the opportunity to remove or indicate anything they don' want us to assess. It is a minefield of intentions and conflicting interests but the response from the students is overwhelming, some (most of them actually) even carry on keeping a sketchbook for themselves.
It's not perfect what we do but we can build on it. The foundations are not the building but you have to start somewhere.
best of luck
Richard Hare
University of Copenhagen
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