Rant 79: Art School Dropouts

I don't know enough about the present state of art school education to be able to answer this with any clarity. I can say that when I did a brief spot of teaching the head of the course told me that he found it very different running a course where students were saying to him "mummy and daddy are paying a lot of money for me to be here so I don't expect to have criticism (ie critical dialogue) - that's not included in getting their money's worth!" and the atmosphere was completely altered in art colleges now for this lack of constructive criticism and exchange. I guess that's where you're going with this rant?

I don't know how much this has fed into the psyche of UK art education but what you are proposing sounds to me to be quite similar to the Room 13 concept - which began in a small and very beleagured primary school in the Western Highlands of Scotland. This has more to do with artists facilitating independance of spirit and fostering creativity than it is about formal teaching/ learning. To my mind it happens anyway just through experience - and I agree that it would be a far more egalitarian approach if art colleges worked in this way than what appears to be happening now where people are expected to buy a further or higher education for themselves or their children - the spoon fed approach? 

When my collaborative partner and I attended Falmouth in the mid 80s it was under threat because it was perceived as too small and specialist (fine art only) to be sustainable. We even had a resident poet ammongst the teaching staff who showed us sex positions and encouraged us to unleash our streams of consciousness in written form and we did wild theatrical productions and made anarchic sets to support them. This may sound naval gazing and decadent now to many younger artists, a halcean unreality that has nothing to do with the commercial art world. But 26 years on from doing our degrees there we are still working, exhibiting and collaborating, as are some very established others from our generation who attended Falmouth, so something about it must have been pretty good.

I would love to see the equivalent of this being accessable in some form or other to new generations because it did foster a certain tenacious, independant mindedness and commitment - qualities necessary to continue with being an artist and being able to withstand and absorb all life throws at us and beyond. Creative thinking and resourcefulness are useful skills to have in any area of life in order to survive.

I don’t have a formal proposal as such - my rant originated from reading the artists’ comments mentioned above and from chats with students, teachers, lecturers and other artists, none of whom seem happy with the situation as it currently stands. I would love to hear readers’ suggestions on how this could be improved.

I have not previously come across “Room 13” – I will go away and read up on it! However, colleges such as Black Mountain and the Bauhaus were fostered in a similar spirit. Speaking in 1964, Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus’ founder, said: “Young people brimming over with new ideas and the desire to realise them… flocked to us from home and abroad, not to design ‘correct’ table lamps, but to participate in a community that wanted to create a new man in a new environment” – it is this idea of participation that seems to be waning in the current system, because of the “spoon-fed” approach that you identify.

Sounds like an interesting course!

I totally agree with you about creative thinking and resourcefulness – in fact, we should be praising current students for doing as well as they are given the stymied circumstances under which society expects them to achieve these goals.

Last Saturday I presented my work and ideas to my peers in a symposium for the final module of the Masters at the Colchester Institute. Strangely perhaps, referencing John Stezaker in the presentation, who I now find has made this statement; which is a little bewildering from my perspective. If art education has died then I have seen no evidence of this, as our whole cohort has benefitted greatly from our experience of art education and I feel that I have made the kind of progress over last two years that I could not have made otherwise. It would seem that there exists great inconsistencies and that implications do arise as policies change. I am more concerned with some of the dubious things that the education secretary says at the moment.

The self-help group sounds interesting though and not necessarily as an alternative but perhaps as an integral part of continued emerging practice.

Personally, I find the current situation pretty confusing. On one hand, art college is little more than an agreement by a group of people with partially aligning interests to attend a venue on a more of less regular basis, under the assumption that someone with more confidence and experience in the areas will at some point speak to them. (I'm aware that universities also contain resources such as workshops, but a quick look at a local Hackspace will demonstrate that such resources can be (more?) effectively managed as a co-op)

On the other hand, the strength of habit or the power of authoritative reassurance keeps sending students to art degrees. At the same time, alternative education systems have a hard time starting and a harder time sustaining themselves.
So there must be something going on with the reality of an art college education that I'm missing. Perhaps that art (education/practice/industry) is actually a lot more conservative than it likes to believe.

My suggestion regarding the value of an art degree is really the same as with most undergraduate programs. Namely, that it concerns learning how to view the world as a particular class. In this case, to view the world as an artist as defined by a university degree. Obviously this is very helpful for anyone who wishes to engage with the other institutions which are shaped by and shape this view, such as teaching, galleries, funding bodies etc. Through the shared experience and perception, everyone in this class can speak the same language.

I'm aware that I am one of those people who Nicola wisely warns against in the final paragraph of the original post. I haven't really got any excuse other than at 18 my school made it very clear that not going to university was a failure, and that it did not matter which subject one took but only the qualification (and, below the surface was the parameter of from which university this qualification came). When I was writing to UCAS, I was doing what seemed to be the only option. I think it's people who have been through this experience’s responsibility to inform those what the pros and cons are (and indeed helping to establish the alternatives...). I know I have tried to inform students in the clearest and most honest manner while teaching on FE courses what university is. Which isn't actually the same as just telling everyone not to go. Which brings me to my final point.

I have actually visited and taught on some amazing undergraduate art courses. But I think the bloated structure of the overall institution lets down even the most amazing department. I think that of all subjects, art is one in which the actual qualification is worth the least, whilst the experience is considered invaluable. I would really love to see art taught in manner that is outside of the university system, where the structuring of this small local and fluid "college" was itself part of the learning undertaken.

Also, thank you Nicola for the excellent original post.

Thanks so much for your posts, Ralph. I think you’ve really hit on something with the idea that “art education/practice/industry is a lot more conservative than it likes to believe”. To take the tried and tested university/further education route to an art career is to play our part in the further development of centuries old institutionalization, whether we like it or not. Though universities may tolerate artists’ and art educators’ rebellious spirit, their structure – to continue your “bloated” analogy – ensures that any rebellion that might undermine the university’s authority promptly gets squeezed out. (For example, the fact that art courses have had the rebellious audacity to demand so much physical space for their students to work in is yet another reason why courses up and down the land are in such trouble. Real estate and studio space are mortal enemies.) I wholeheartedly agree with your penultimate paragraph – perhaps it is time to start rebelling less “conservatively”.

I graduated in Fine Art from UWE, Bristol in June 2010.

To pick up on Ralph Dorey's observation 'it did not matter which subject one took only the qualification' - There were 85 students in my final year. At the end of a talk one lunchtime, to which approx 60 students attended, the speaker asked for a show of hands from all those intending to go on to become practicing artists once they had graduated. 6 of us put our hands up!

Several thoughts flashed through my mind at the time. One of which was 'what was the point in spending so much time and money?; but secondly, and in my opinion more importantly, how many other prospective and potentially dedicated applicants had been turned down in favour of these students sitting around me? It struck me as literally a waste of space.

The primary feeling I gained during the course was a sense of enablement. Not so much a list of the things I learnt, but a change in the way I view and think about the world; and that anything I would like to do is indeed possible, providing I use the right phraseology in the application form and conjour up enough funding.

One you finish the degree there is the inevitable loss of interaction and feedback from tutors and peers. Perhaps there is scope for an artist-run post-grad group/college/school to fill the gap while trying to decide whether we can afford the time and cost of doing an MA?