The word is everywhere: growth targets, growing children, growing a business — but nobody stops to ask how anything actually grows?

I am listening to a conversation about the change of prime minister for the however many times in the last years. The conversation goes in this pattern and it's a pattern I see in the media and echoed in every part of our daily lives. We should tax more and pay for all the things that are very much needed. We should tax less so that more money is in the economy and this will bring growth and more tax revenue. If you tax too much you stop growth. It's a loop and loop of consumption not growth.

When the word growth is used - no one defines what that actually means. In this pattern of conversation which is so widespread - we need growth but is anyone actually saying how that happens and how that happens for our children? In our primary schools?

If you get the roots of growth set, the cycle continues. If you teach children what growth feels like, how its acts, how to push it , how to pull it - then the children take that skill into adulthood, that feeling that embodied ability to identify growth to help the conditions that create growth happen, into their lives and their communities.

So I pipe up - if you teach children art. The answer comes quick, what good will that do, art is about how much dead peoples work sells for. I take a breath and say - If all 16,712 primary schools have art studios, artist educators and art curriculum design to teach growth and creativity we will have creative lawyers, creative plumbers, creative politicians, creative communities. We would prevent 50% of our prisons being filled with dyslexic children, who have been failed by non growth curriculum. The prisons would be less full and our environment would be filled with a powerful focus of SEND children using their hand to make our environment better for everyone. Growth would like a root system spread from each children’s art studio into every industry, every career, every corner of our economy would be growing.

One simple change - a national survey of primary art studios and setting up a network of this educational facility for 4-11 year olds. Making sure every child has access to a growth art curriculum and materials - teach and study growth. Materials to interrelate to, clay to push and shift, ideas to adapt and change, artists who model creative growth.

That is how you will break out of the tax less and tax more loop. Where the word growth is misused - what they actually mean is consumption not human growth. Before anyone thinks I am getting ahead of myself - its not either or. All our schools amazing work continues - we just end up with children who have creativity because we actually teach it like any other subject through visual art and materials.

One simple change at the root of every life in this country. From that our whole relationship with growth would be embedded. Rooted in each child and then just let the children do what children do and see this country change.