University of Westminster and the National Gallery are pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded collaborative doctoral studentship from 1 October 2026 under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Scheme.
About the studentship
Take One Picture (TOP) was launched in 1995 by the National Gallery and inspired by the work of Windmill Hill Primary School, Swindon. It is a national primary schools programme centred on the in-depth exploration of a single painting each year, encouraging children to respond creatively to its themes and formal qualities, with selected works exhibited at the Gallery.
This project adopts a longitudinal, multidisciplinary approach to examine TOP’s development and impact over three decades, drawing on its engagement with thousands of pupils across the UK. Working collaboratively with museum professionals, teachers, and past and present participants, it will also reimagine the future of arts education at the National Gallery and beyond, developing a blueprint to support cultural organisations in empowering children, schools and their communities.
This project will be jointly supervised by Dr Alison Hess (Lecturer in Museum Studies), Dr Anna Doering (Reader in Psychology) and Dr Sara Dominici (Reader in Photographic History and Visual Culture) at the University of Westminster, and Caroline Smith, Children & Young People’s Leadership Manager and Karen Eslea, Head of Learning and National Programmes at the National Gallery. The student will be expected to spend time at both the University of Westminster and the National Gallery, as well as becoming part of the wider cohort of CDP funded students across the UK.
The studentship can be studied either full or part-time.
We encourage the widest range of potential students to apply for this CDP studentship and are committed to welcoming students from diverse backgrounds and career stages to apply. We particularly welcome applications from people of Global Majority backgrounds as they are currently underrepresented at this level in this area.
Students should have a Masters Degree in a relevant subject such as Museum Studies, Art History, Education Studies, Psychology or Visual and Material Culture Studies or be able to demonstrate equivalent experience in a professional setting such as practical experience of educational environments and/or culture sector institutions such as museums and galleries.
The studentship is open to both home and international applicants.
Project overview
This Collaborative Doctoral Award takes as its case study Take One Picture (TOP) – a national programme for primary schools launched in 1995 by the National Gallery (NG) – to develop a new children-led approach to museum education. It was inspired by the work of Windmill Hill Primary School, Swindon. Each year a single painting is selected from the NG collections. Primary school children and their teachers are then supported to investigate the focus painting and produce a response to its themes as well as its formal qualities using their own ideas and a wide range of materials and techniques. The culmination of each annual cycle of the programme sees a selection of the artworks produced displayed in the NG, which in 2025 included, for the first time, an Augmented Reality Experience trail outside the gallery.
Set up ‘to inspire a lifelong love of art and learning’, TOP has worked with thousands of children to date. This offers a rich dataset to help better understand the evolution of the programme and measure its impact and, in collaboration with present-day primary school children, rethink its future possibilities. The project will offer a blueprint for museum educators at the NG and beyond looking to empower younger generations to make art and culture their own. It does so by applying research methods from museum studies, psychology and educational sciences, and visual and material culture. The proposed project will explore:
- The history of the programme itself and its place within the institutional history of the NG, mapping its relationship with primary schools nationwide. With its thirty-year history, TOP offers the opportunity to examine, on the one hand, the practical experiences of museum professionals by reflecting on how the delivery and professionalisation of museum learning and education programmes has changed during this time. On the other hand, to consider the impact of a London-based art museum on cross-curricular work in primary classrooms across the country.
- Situating TOP within the field of arts education, which has emerged over the last thirty years. The project will consider the intertwined development of TOP and arts education, focusing specifically on the role of children and how ideas around creative-based learning have evolved across this time period. This phase of work will contextualise TOP’s engagement with changing approaches to arts education in primary schools by researching the ways in which children-focused arts programmes at other comparable institutions, national and internationally, have developed across the same period. This is an under researched area but essential to evaluating the applicability of the CDP’s findings to the wider arts sector.
- Collaborating with past and current TOP participants (staff and students) to understand their own experience of TOP and, together, develop a set of recommendations for the future of child-centred learning at the NG and beyond. While evaluations of the programme have tended to focus on current delivery and art created. This CDA will embed a doctoral researcher in the Learning team at the NG, creating new opportunities for exploring how the educational offer in medium to large organisations like the NG can be rethought to empower children’s experiences.
TOP was founded on an ethos of child-led creativity and learning which has exciting implications for the ways in which museum-based arts programmes are designed, delivered and governed. Taking a longitudinal approach provides an exciting opportunity to draw on learning and experience from across multiple decades. Using innovative multidisciplinary research methods this project will identify and work with museum professionals, teachers, former and current TOP participants to rethink the delivery of arts education programmes both in the NG and through its relationship with classrooms across the country. This project offers significant learning opportunities for the wider arts sector, that have applications within any organisation seeking to reach out to children, schools and the communities they represent. The CDP student will have the opportunity to work at both the University of Westminster and the National Gallery, presenting an exciting opportunity to apply doctoral-level research to education within a gallery setting.
Research questions include
- How has the delivery of arts education in museums and galleries changed, as examined through a case study of the TOP programme (1995-present)?
- How has the delivery of arts educational outreach changed through the introduction of new theoretical and technological developments in museum practice (eg digital resources)? And what has been the impact on children’s creativity, imagination, and curiosity in relation to the arts?
- How have experiences of childhood, and formal and informal education, changed in the thirty years since TOP was founded? How can reflections on past practice influence current informal learning strategies, particularly in relation to child-led learning?
- From the perspective of children and their teachers, how can TOP and the National Gallery best continue to support arts education and children’s creativity in the future? How can these lessons be applied beyond the National Gallery?
Details of award
CDP doctoral training grants fund full-time studentships for 4 years or part-time equivalent up to a maximum of 8 years.
The award pays tuition fees up to the value of the full-time home UKRI rate for PhD degrees.
The award pays full maintenance for all students, both home and international. The UKRI National Minimum Doctoral Stipend for 2026/2027 is £21,805 plus London Weighting of £2,000/year and a CDP maintenance payment of £600/year.
Students with an ‘overseas’ fee status are welcome to apply but will need to cover the difference between the UK and overseas fees rate [2025/26 £17,000 per annum] and will be required to reside in the UK until completion of the PhD.
The student is eligible to receive an additional travel and related expenses grant during the course of the project courtesy of National Gallery worth up to £1,000 per year for 4 years.
The successful candidate will be eligible to participate in events organised for all Collaborative Doctoral Partnership students who are registered with different universities and studying with cultural and heritage organisations across the UK.
Eligibility
This studentship is open to both Home and International applicants.
To be classed as a home student, candidates must meet the following criteria:
- Be a UK National (meeting residency requirements), or
- Have settled status, or
- Have pre-settled status (meeting residency requirements), or
- Have indefinite leave to remain or enter
Further guidance can be found here on the UKRI website.
International students are eligible to receive the same full award for maintenance as home students. For fees, international students will need to pay the difference between the funding AHRC provide to the University for tuition and the fees charged by the University for international students studying for a doctoral degree in Museum and Heritage Studies. This for 2025/26 is £17,000 full-time (note that fees are expected to increase annually by 3 per cent in line with expected inflation).
Further information is available on our fees and funding page.
Applicants should ideally have or expect to receive a relevant Masters-level qualification in a relevant subject such as Museum Studies, Art History, Education Studies, Psychology or Visual and Material Culture Studies, or be able to demonstrate equivalent experience in a professional setting such as museums and galleries, particularly in education, learning or outreach teams, or educational settings, such as Primary teaching, educational policy or research.
As a collaborative award, students will be expected to spend time at both the University and the National Gallery.
Note that all applicants must meet UKRI terms and conditions for funding.
Read further information about Research Degrees and eligibility requirements at the University of Westminster.
Project details and how to apply
How to apply
Please include in your application:
- Personal Statement (maximum 1,500 words) explaining why you are interested in researching this topic, including what you would bring to the project and how you think you would develop it to reflect your own interests and expertise
- A sample of writing. This could be a piece of academic writing (eg MA dissertation) or a text written in the course of any current or previous professional work
- Your CV
- Two references (at least one academic)
- Transcript of university-level grades and qualification certificates
The University of Westminster and the National Gallery will jointly assess the applications to reach a decision.
For informal enquiries about the project, please contact the lead co-supervisor Dr Alison Hess at [email protected].
We ask all applicants to complete a voluntary EDI monitoring form. All responses are anonymous.
All CDP projects are part of a nationwide programme called the Collaborative Doctoral Partnership consortium. The CDP consortium will host an online webinar for prospective applicants on 13 April 2026 at 11 am. These webinars will provide an overview of the CDP funding scheme.
To sign up for a webinar, please email [email protected] with the subject line “Prospective Applicant Webinar” from the email address you would like to join the online meeting from. Sign up will close on 10 April 2026 at 5 pm.
Please note, the webinars will not focus on individual projects.
Apply
Please choose the following programme area when making your application ‘MPhil/PhD Visual Culture’.
Please include the internal reference/code when applying: AHRC-NG CDP.
Application deadline: 30 April 2026 (for a start date of 1 October 2026)
Interviews (online): the week commencing 18th May 2026.