* Begin with your local gallery. We started at the Gasworks, and all other projects sprang from that. People heard what we had achieved with that gallery, and it snowballed.

* Approach a gallery’s education department with your project idea; they are very amenable. Don’t feel intimidated into settling for just viewing a great exhibition and leaving. Talk to them about how you can extend work in another direction.

* Plan ahead. We gear our curriculum teaching around exhibitions that are coming up. I have met the curators of the exhibitions coming up in 2006, and they showed me slides of work they have already obtained and of work they hope to get.

* I have also asked curators to visit the school to show just how exciting curating an exhibition can be.