SCHOOL: an ART SCHOOL salon

What is an art school today? 

On Tuesday 24 March, UCA Canterbury School of Art, Architecture and Design hosted SCHOOL, our latest salon. Part of our ART SCHOOL public programme, the salon focused on the historic form, contemporary relevance and future role of art school education, asking the following questions: What subjects do we teach at art school? What and who should be teaching? What can the history of art schools teach us about arts education now? Should we be encouraging radical new forms of art and practice or training people for jobs and industry? And, do we need to attend formal education to be creative practitioners anyway?  

We had a fantastic range of speakers to help us explore these questions and a host of others. Hadrian Garrard, Director of the William Morris Gallery, opened with a historical reflection on the formation of art education, its 19th century development through the guilds and the birth of more egalitarian models of education in the 20th century. Hadrian made clear that education is always political, always a reflection of socio-economic hierarchies even as it attempts to destabilise them. 

Educator and curator Anna Colin spoke next, detailing her experience co-founding the independent art school Open School East. Starting in east London, before moving to Margate on the Kent Coast, OSE offers a community-engaged programme foregrounding the acquisition of skills, knowledge and experience, often for people who have often not had a formal arts education. 

Titus Barker and Ollie Goodwin from online educational disrupters School of the Damned, described their punk-teaching ethos, a decentred, migratory and non-institutional art institution where each year’s cohort start over with a new curriculum and a new set of ambitions.  

Former Director of the London School of Architecture Neal Shashore came next, detailing his approach to an architecture education linked closely but creatively to a sense of social responsibility and ethical construction. Citing the Grenfell disaster as a lesson still not properly learnt, Neal described how his planned School of Building curriculum will draw on historic examples of craft-based teaching as well as engage  creatively with legislative frameworks, ideas of social responsibility and cultural needs.  

Our final speaker, Cathy Gale, Course Leader for MA Graphic Design at Kingston School of Art, addressed the new financial landscape of higher education and the trebling of tuition fees that occurred under the coalition government in the 2010s. Cathy’s establishment of the Offshore Art School within the course offers a space inside the formal institution for radical, self-directed work, intended to empower students to act independently and with creative freedom in an increasingly marketized education system.  

Through the presentations and discussion, two parallel themes emerged: on the one hand the idea of the art school as somewhere that fosters and encourages radical new ideas, an anarchic and free-ranging concept of creativity that resists the totalising effect of the institution; and, on the other, a recognition of the importance of historical knowledge, the development of craft and other skills and an engagement with the political and civic role of the arts.  

Inevitably there was not enough time to get into all the themes and ideas this rich subject area raises. But the conversation that continued in the foyer after the formal event had finished and the pedagogic questions it raised will continue to be discussed at UCA Canterbury and will help to define what we teach and why.  

As usual we were assisted in putting on the salon by the school’s technician team, our student helpers Kanako, Vidisha and Jaweria, and our graphic designer Devanshi. 

Thanks to UCA for their ongoing support for ART SCHOOL, our speakers and all those who joined us in person and online.  

A recording of the event is available below.