I have been invited to chair the discussion panel around Community and Place at this forthcoming symposium at the ICA.
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What Is It That Makes Today's Art Schools So Different, So Appealing?
ICA, London, 29 Mar 2014
Situating current art schools within the context of an
historical legacy of self-organised, experimental and alternative education
models, this symposium aims to interrogate the content of art and design
education. In May 1968 students and a few staff occupied Hornsey College of Art
in a protest derived from frustration and discontent of teaching methods,
curricular relevance and art school resources. Hornsey College of Art, later to
become Middlesex University, became renowned for its experimental and progressive
approach to art and design education. In the North East, Richard Hamilton and
others pioneered a new, radical method of art training at Newcastle University
which was to influence higher art education for generations to come. In London
the St Martins 'A' course took sculpture students into a radically new
pedagogical experiment whilst Art & Language founded their collaboration
within Coventry School of Art.
From today’s standpoint, where art and design pedagogy has
gained new attention and prompted strong criticism within contemporary art
discourse, this moment can be seen as the start of a new wave of thinking about
how art and design is taught in the UK. What is interesting from a contemporary
perspective is that these new forms of teaching and resistance emerged from
within the art institutions, detaching them absolutely from past modes of
teaching and learning. Beset on one side by the emergence of ‘open schools’ and
gallery-led pedagogical projects, and on the other by the emergence of
independent commercial ventures that teach specialist skills and techniques,
today’s UK art schools may be arriving at a similar turning point. In a climate
where University managements suspend students over participation in protests
this symposium will examine the possibilities for change and ask how art school
teaching can equip our young people for their futures.
Situating current art schools within the context of an
historical legacy of self-organised, experimental and alternative education
models, we will probe further, aiming to interrogate the content of art and
design education. It will explore current concerns around the desire of
students to learn ‘skills’ as well as the role of the tutor who is no longer
the expert. It will examine the art school as a community of ideas and
resistance as well as how the institution develops ‘officially’ and
‘unofficially’. In a discourse dominated by models, this symposium will ask;
can art and design be taught? And if so, how? What is the current art school
experience and what could it be?
Speakers include scholars of the history of art pedagogy as well
as tutors, students and those engaged in pedagogical initiatives external to
established institutions: Lucy Rose Bayley, Prof. Jon Bird, Prof. Sonia Boyce, Maurice Carlin,
Kelly Chorpening, Dr. Elena Crippa, Emma Cocker, David Cross, Ian Dawson, Emily
Druiff, Anna Harding, Anna Hart, Dr. Nicholas Houghton, Timothy Ivison, Maria
Lisogorskaya, Dr. Loraine Leeson, Andrew McGettigan, Louisa Minkin, Prof.
Nicholas Mirzoeff, Prof. Lucy Renton, Dr. Hilary Robinson, Harriet Warden,
Martin Westwood, Laura White and Prof. Neal White. In partnership with Middlesex University, London
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