Interpretation and education are fundamental to Tate's remit. Our audiences come to the galleries wanting to learn more about art so they can enjoy it to the full1, and depend on the interpretation tools we provide. In addition, many take advantage of our talks, symposia, workshops and courses. Developing our learning programmes has been a strategic priority over the last two years and now, thanks to extensive research, we have the knowledge not only to improve and expand our offer but also to innovate.

Partnership and research are the cornerstones on which we have been developing our learning policy. A project that relies on both is our Multimedia Tour2, an exciting new learning tool which, thanks to the active participation of our commercial and technological partners, we have successfully piloted at Tate Modern. Visitors carry a small handheld computer, or PDA. Linked to a wireless network, it provides on-the-spot information and other rich multimedia content about selected works. Research has shown that this device can enhance people's experience of looking at art, and when fully developed it will offer a radically different way of exploring the galleries. The Multimedia Tour was awarded a BAFTA in the Technical Innovation category in 2002.

Each year, over 400,000 people participate in our education programmes, a vast range of activities that can be accessed in and beyond the galleries, and online. Around exhibitions and displays, each Tate gallery organises its own talks, schools and community programmes, and activities for families and young people. In addition, we work on projects across all the galleries. We now have an E-Learning Curator who has introduced a range of online activities, and it has recently become possible to study art online at tate.org.uk, thanks to a collaboration between Tate and the City Literary Institute.

Tate welcomes thousands of schoolchildren and teachers to its galleries every year, with many projects designed around the National Curriculum and Key Stages. Tate Online has developed online activities, resources for community groups and a supportive information system for teachers. Among many notable projects over the biennium, a literacy programme called Visual Paths3, based at Tate Britain, has been helping to build teachers' skills in using art to stimulate children's interest in words.

Our work with young people extends far beyond the schools curriculum. Raw Canvas4 at Tate Modern is a scheme devised, marketed and delivered by young people to encourage their peers to find out more about art. Now four years old, it is going from strength to strength. Early in 2004, Tate Forum, a similar group run by teenagers at Tate Britain, completed a film, shown in the gallery, which tracked the curatorial and technical processes involved in the installation of Michael Landy's Semi-Detached5. At Tate St Ives, education events around the Barbara Hepworth Centenary included a workshop on Porthmeor Beach investigating ideas of landscape and body in the sculptor's work. And an ambitious film and club night project at Tate Liverpool gave a group of young people a hands-on connection to the Remix exhibition.

We have forged further links with universities, including the Universities of Essex and Manchester6 and Falmouth College of Arts7. A new Masters research degree - a partnership between Tate and Liverpool John Moores University - uses Tate Liverpool as a resource and model, and other popular courses continue in partnership with the London Consortium, the Open University and the Royal College of Art. We have also commissioned the National Foundation for Educational Research to look at how schools work with contemporary art8.

Our Public Events programme ranges across an increasingly broad area of visual art and culture, engaging some of the most stimulating and distinguished thinkers of our time. In the last two years we have incorporated more films into our programmes, helped by a successful partnership with the British Film Institute.

In 2003, we began an audit of all Tate's learning activities. This major Interpretation and Education review has led to the formulation of a Tate-wide strategy to be delivered late in 2004. The strategy focuses on young people and adults, including professional development for teachers, and on expanding our adult courses and our work with universities.

Footnotes

1. The visitor research audit Tate Through Visitors' Eyes, commissioned 2003, identified the desire to learn as the single most important driver behind any visit.
2. Multimedia Tour is sponsored by Bloomberg and developed in association with Antenna Radio
3. Supported by Morgan Stanley
4. Supported by The Paul Hamlyn Foundation
5. Semi-Detached by Michael Landy, 18 May - 12 December 2004. Supported by Tate Members with additional support from The Henry Moore Foundation
6. AHRB Research Centre for Studies of Surrealism and its Legacies. Set up in 2002 by the Arts and Humanities Research Board, Tate and the Universities of Essex and Manchester.See www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk
7. A joint project with Tate St Ives
8. National Foundation for Educational Research: Research into Visual Arts Learning 2003-05

We continue to improve our infrastructure