PUBLIC DEBATE
What is the Future of Art Education?

A debate about the future of art education is raging on the pages of Art Monthly. In September and October readers will have the opportunity to come along and put their questions to one of two panels of educational professionals and policy makers. The debates will take place in London and Birmingham.
The panels will debate the future of art education - is further privatisation, corporatisation and instrumentalism inevitable or are there alternatives?

Saturday September 27 2008, 1-6.30pm
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Mall, London, SW1Y 5AH
This event is part of a one day conference; day tickets £15/12/10.
To book call 0207 930 3647 or visit www.ica.org.uk.

Monday October 6 2008, 6.30-9pm
Ikon Gallery
1 Oozells Square, Brindleyplace
Birmingham, B1 2HS
This event is free but booking is recommended.
To book call 0121 248 0708.

EXTRACTS FROM THE MAGAZINE

1968 and all that
Will the 40th anniversary of the 1968 protests inspire today's students to demand radical improvements in art education? Students at the London College of Communication have had enough and have officially registered their dissatisfaction by demanding the return of their fees in protest at staff shortages and the lack of organisation. Staff, for their part, are over-burdened by bureaucracy, rising student numbers, low pay and low self-esteem. Vice chancellors, meanwhile, are focused on corporate-style branding and the commissioning of gleaming new buildings. The legacies of St Martins School of Art in the 60s, or Goldsmiths in the 80s, should serve as reminders that it is not buildings that make for a dynamic teaching environment but people.
Read the April editorial.

Mayday Mayday
The sad truth about art education today is that New Labour has finished what Thatcher started.
Ironically, Thatcher's plans for factory-style education were only to be truly achieved under New Labour. It was the setting up of the dreaded inquisition, the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), by the first New Labour government in 1998, barely one year after the election, which made the institutionalisation of what Stephen Lee in his letter aptly describes as 'educational Taylorism' possible. The QAA, and its spawn, the Teaching Quality Assurance (TQA), became the means by which the product, broken down into bite-sized pieces as a result of the imposition of American-style modularisation, could be tested. Since the government had already begun to refer to the arts as the 'creative industries', a term first coined when Labour was still in opposition, this must have seemed like a perfect fit between the so-called 'aims' and 'outcomes' of an art education.
Read the May editorial.

Acronymophobia
Art departments brace themselves for the TQAs
Art departments, like all departments in universities and colleges around the country, are bracing themselves for the next round of TQAs (Teaching Quality Assessments), poring over the latest directives from the QAA (Quality Assurance Agency) in order to try to fit their own practices into the approved criteria. A perfect score of 24 for artistic impression in the QAA, allied to a maximum score of five for technique in the RAE (with required elements including a triple toe-loop, double lutz and back flip), boosts recruitment and guarantees the department concerned all the perks of funding, resources, research time and institutional status that accrue - to the detriment of low-scoring departments within the same institution. Unsurprisingly, art departments in regional and less high-profile institutions find it difficult to compete with, for example, Goldsmiths College, which scored highly in the last TQA round.
Read the editorial.

FROM THE ART MONTHLY LETTERS PAGES

'Can't Get No Satisfaction'
Anyone considering studying fine art (at undergraduate level) in England and Wales should google the National Student Satisfaction Survey, particularly the Results By Institution. Six of the bottom ten are or were art schools. Bottom of the survey, that is to say the 'least satisfactory', is the University of the Arts London. This will come as no surprise to anyone who has studied or taught there recently.
Read Graham Crowley's letter from the April issue.
Read Colin Maughan's letter from the May issue.
Read Peter Suchin's letter from the May issue.
Read Michael Crowther's letter from the May issue.
Read Stephen Lee's letter from the May issue.
Read William Gaver's letter from the June issue.
Read Sophie Baker's letter from the June issue.
Read Rob Gawthrop's letter from the July/August issue.
Read Andrew J Stooke's letter from the July/August issue.

FROM THE NEWS PAGES

Report about the Dartington/Falmouth merger.
Will Maidstone be another merger victim?
Dartington memorials
Sheffield art department moves to city centre
All change at Goldsmiths

FROM OTHER SECTIONS IN THE MAGAZINE

The Hornsey Sit-in
David Briers reviews Hornsey 1968: The Art School Revolution by Lisa Tickner:
Usually cited as a contrast with the perceived or supposed passivity of today's fee-paying art students, the Hornsey sit-in has become one of the cultural myths of the 60s. With the LSE sit-in the year before as a model, in May 1968 Hornsey students ousted the principal from his office and took over direct control of the college for two months. ... Localised grievances interacted with equivocation about countrywide structural changes in higher education to provoke a demand for an 'analysis of art education nationally and the relations between artists, designers, and society', and thus 'opened onto political territory'.
Read Briers's article

Polemic

JJ Charlesworth on art education, autonomy and opting out of state provision:
'It's your world. What will you change?' It sounds like the heady rhetoric of liberation or collective revolution that harks back to the days of May 68, where anything seemed possible. It is in fact the strapline of an advert for Middlesex University's Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, run in last month's Art Monthly, and it's ironic that it followed directly on from the troubled debate on the state of art education in Britain. It reminds us that higher education has become a business, a business that does not necessarily sell knowledge, but rather the potential experience of individuated, personal transformation, which reduces learning to no more than a set of purchasable access points to the development of a secure, professional career.
Read Charlesworth's polemic

Report

Frederika Whitehead reports from a debate on the government's new strategy document Creative Britain: New Talents for a New Economy:
Estelle Morris posed three questions for debate. 'Will the structure in the paper - with all its committees - actually damage creativity? Will the accountability mechanisms jeopardise risk-taking? And, will mainstreaming discourage some people from wanting to work in the creative sector in the first place?'
Read Whitehead's report

Artlaw

Life after Art School
In his regular column this month Henry Lydiate reflects on the way that professional practice is taught in art departments and how it could be improved.
Read Lydiate's Artlaw column

GET INVOLVED

We are interested in hearing the views of as many people as possible on this subject.
Please send letters for publication to editorial@artmonthly.co.uk or you could upload a video to www.youtube.com
A selection of the videos will be screened at the debate.
Guidelines for making and uploading videos to www.youtube.com:
1. The youtube group address is www.youtube.com/group/ArtMonthlyDebate
2. Short and to the point is good. Most videos should be around 1-2 minutes in length.
3. Filmmakers are free to say what they like about contemporary art education, but might wish to address some the following questions: What is the future of art education? What was your experience of art school? How did you manage financially? Were you satisfied with your education? Should the RAE or QAA be scrapped? If so, what mechanisms should replace them?
4. Documentary or reportage films representing your particular art school would be most welcome.

Other Art Monthly events