Just What is it Makes Today's Art Schools So Different So Appealing?

Editor's Notes

• #3: I’ve been asked to talk about my vision[… …..] This involves answering the question “where we want to go”?The answer to this is, I think, straighforward enough: towards an integrated 21st Century art school!This raises two questions:Firstly: What is art really like in the 21st century?Secondly: How do we visibly engage with this.
• #4: A Vision has to primarilyconcern itself with what artists want art to become.It is a catalyst for change - it should be led by emerging art practices.
• #5: Figuring out what is emerging is not any easy task since contemporary art is notoriously polyglot. The various elements that might make up the field of art in the early 21st Century are moving targets rather than fixed points of reference.The deeper you dig into any element the more layers and interconnections you find.
• #6: What we think of as discrete practices are in fact packed full of the variety of the artworld.e.g. Artists’ Publishing[MOVE ON QUICKLY TO NEXT SLIDE]
• #7: There is a spiraling of this particular approach to practice ranging from the artisan to the digital, from artists’ books to text messaging.The field of contemporary art is enormous and growing rapidly. This demands a dynamic approach to knowledge. Art education must continually change in order to engage with and contribute to this expanding field. Being contemporary means engaging with multiple perspectives and different ways of learning.
• #8: This raises the issue of visibility.How do we know what to engage with?How do we measure ‘success’? What are the indictors?Financially rewarding Careers? Prizes?Not really.It’s a question of participation. To participate in the international art world an art school needs cultural capital to trade. Itneeds to to expand its values by basing them on what I would call a‘democracy of creative experience’.It essentialto understand and nurture thesevalues globally. This necessitates fostering a confident and sustainable art ecology in Edinburgh from which to connect with the world.
• #9: eca art graduateswho have participated in this way are successful, the world just doesn’t know!For example:Could you name any influential alumni from eca in the 21st century?Where do they show and how do they practice?Here are a few:
• #10: Jon Owen and Will DanielsBoth studied painting at eca.THERE ARE A VARIETY OF PRACTICES – SOME OF WHICH ARE RECOGNISABLY IN TRADITIONAL MEDIA SUCH AS PAINTING, PRINTMAKING AND SCULPTURE
• #11: Keith Farquhar and Robert MontgomeryBoth sculpture THERE ARE A VARIETY OF PRACTICES – SOME OF WHICH ARE RECOGNISABLY IN TRADITIONAL MEDIA SUCH AS PAINTING, PRINTMAKING AND SCULPTURE
• #12: Karen Cunningham studied photography….Luca Frei did painting…Neither practice in their specialism….– YET FEW OF THE PRACTICES THAT ARTISTS ARE NOW ENGAGED IN COORESPOND TO THE PROGRAMMES THAT THEY EMERGED FROM
• #13: Ellen Munro and Kate Owens both did painting,Kate went to do a Sculpture Masters at the RCAEllen often facilitates participation based worksYET FEW OF THE PRACTICES THAT ARTISTS ARE NOW ENGAGED IN COORESPOND TO THE PROGRAMMES THAT THEY EMERGED FROM
• #14: Katie Ortondid SculptureRabiyaChoudhry did paintingTHIS IS BECAUSE THEIR PRACTICES ARE OFTEN CONCERNED WITH OR INFORMED BY COLLABORATION AND PARTICIPATIONBY A DEEP INVOLVEMENT IN THE DIY ASPECTS OF THE ARTWORLD
• #15: Babak Ghazi did paintingPeter Donaldsondid painting (Both working in video.)THIS IS BECAUSE THEIR PRACTICES ARE OFTEN CONCERNED WITH OR INFORMED BY COLLABORATION AND PARTICIPATION BY A DEEP INVOLVEMENT IN THE DIY ASPECTS OF THE ARTWORLD
• #16: Katie did TapestryIntermedia artist mostlyTHIS IS BECAUSE THEIR PRACTICES ARE OFTEN CONCERNED WITH OR INFORMED BY COLLABORATION AND PARTICIPATION BY A DEEP INVOLVEMENT IN THE DIY ASPECTS OF THE ARTWORLD
• #17: Painting, Tapestry and Sculpture graduatesAll work in live and participatory manner.THIS IS BECAUSE THEIR PRACTICES ARE OFTEN CONCERNED WITH OR INFORMED BY COLLABORATION AND PARTICIPATION BY A DEEP INVOLVEMENT IN THE DIY ASPECTS OF THE ARTWORLD
• #18: This raises two considerations:1) IT MAKES US THINK OF THE Importance of BANDS AS A METAPHOR - of ‘live’ and group-based working methods.2) IT MAKES US REALISE THAT such graduates are the best advocates for what any art school can offer. Their actions generate value virally.
• #19: Learning from the magnitude of achievements of more recent alumni might be used strategically.It might help emphasise the importance of engagement and participation – the educational value of their achievements rather than their place in a linear star system.Making their personal imagination social in this sense issomething that all art students must fully engage with.This means encouraging a higher standard and more frequent public-facing exhibitions and projects!
• #20: Crucially, in terms of the learning resources, an integrated school must be engaged directly with the enormous wealth of contemporary art infrastructure that we are lucky to have in Central Scotland.Invite important guests as often as possible…..Make strategic links with this ecology and work together in strategic partnerships.This will make a major contribution to the programmes by injecting fresh energy.
• #21: Becoming Visible: Get OutWe need to encourage an understanding of the unique economy of the arts…….. it is based on reciprocal altruism. Professionally speaking, reputation cannot be bought for all the money in the world.DIY is crucially important here : artists generate their own structures and values
• #22: Becoming Visible:A genuine understanding involves understanding our relatedness to others. This is the value of education.Staff should be valued as artist/educators as well as professional artist/researchers.There needs to be a shift of thinking in terms of what art students do, they need to be very ambitious and engage with the world around them.There can be not art without an audience, artists need to find their public, to find new ways of connecting with new audiences.
• #23: A Vision needs a Strategy to make it happen.Strategies are often concerned with managing risk. However art practice is about risk taking.So how to you encourage and manage risk at the same time?
• #24: What does ‘risk taking’ involve? Art learning is kinetic, it is acquired by doing. [many of the terms we use are action-based: to sculpt, to perform,to paint, to write, to mould, to edit, to cast, to print]Learning is a process of trial and error = Art knowledge is tacit and embodied. Art practice is a continuous cycle of processes.We need to rethinkwhat these processesare and base the curriculum on them. Learning through these processes produces the learning outcomes - this is what needs to be decided first and foremost.Only then can we think about how to structure the learning experience.
• #25: Specialist: Award Disciplines Need for unstructured time to make and play. Focus on learning rather than teaching. The practice should be led by what the student wants to learn.Discipllinarity is a lens or filter - defined by the philosophy and approach of art staff in relation to practices.This is what determines the unique learning outcomes of each programme.This may involve mediarelatedlearningbut should not be constrained by media. Students should be supervised by specialist studio tutors who are best suited to their particular practice.
• #26: Conversational practice is core to what we all do - we talk with one another.We need consider what core issues we’re having conversations about.This might mean thinking about what goes into an art practice.………and what comes out of an art practice.Having a shared conversation in this way helps to generate the educational values of the School.I’m interested in art students having a holistic knowledge of what they might need to become artists.Research and Visualisation– variety of methods and approaches including drawing, thought experiments, modelling, casting, field work, photography, etc.Documentation, Exhibition and Events - Should provide students with tools to exhibit their work, to promote it, and to document it, including how to write about and publish their practice. – In these areas we need to present a united front, one art school showing what they do the world.
• #27: Staff need to be able to demonstrate their research in and through theireducational practice.What’s taught has to be led by the latest staff research in eca.Art students should participate in this new research to ensure that it is continually updated.A Workshop model of electives would enable this to happen, complimenting play with purpose.
• #28: Electives - Workshop basedCombination oftheory and practice.Examples of what might be written and taught jointly.
• #29: The personal tutor, based in the programme philosophy, will help their students to determine the best pathway for them through the elective choices that might be available.
• #30: The personal tutor will also be able to ensure that the core is related directly to their student’s practice.
• #31: This enables a model that embeds core artistic values alongside the more specialist focus that each student needs.
• #32: To summarise:Art students are not customers; they are active rather than passive. A contemporary art education can’t be consumed, it’s something that involves doing, it demands participation. Art students are unique in Higher Education in that they are people who want to think and act. Students deserve programmes that encourage them to think about their contribution to the world- and to help them totake action.