On 11-12 September I attended the Art School Educated conference at Tate Britain which represented the culmination of a five year AHRC funded research project investigating the impact of the art education on artistic production from the 1960s to the present day and its relationship to the wider themes of education, culture and society.
The conference structure offered a brilliant dialogue between past and present by presenting panels shared between researchers and practitioners, many of whom were able to respond directly to the research questions of the project by reflecting on their own lived experience. Some interesting examples of this occurred in discussions of the 1968 Hornsey protests, important exhibitions including This is Tomorrow at the Whitechapel gallery in 1956.
Perhaps inevitably, the word Coldstream punctuated almost every paper in the conference in some form or other and I was surprised to learn that this man, who has gained a rather towering reputation in British art and design history for his radical changes to the education system in the 1970s, was actually warm, humorous and generous in character. A number of the papers promoted this view, including one by Professor Eileen Hogan.
It was also perhaps inevitable that nostalgia should have featured as such a prominent mode of discussion at the conference, since many of those speaking, including Andrew Brighton, had been part of the ‘heroic period’ of art school education in the 1960s. This nostalgia did at times cloud the conversation and make me wonder about the role of research and history in perpetuating certain myths about both the figure of the artist and the romanticism of the art school.
However, a final panel discussion dispelled some of this mysticism and focused clearly on the here and now. Professor Victoria Walsh chaired a panel discussion between Juan Cruz, Judith Mottram and Bruce Brown on ‘Structural Dilemnas: Art Schools and the FE/HE System’. Citing Director of the RSA Matthew Taylor’s work on the ‘twenty-first century enlightenment’ Bruce Brown gave a powerful presentation on the ‘well-crafted mind’ as a new direction for art education. By this, he referred to the ‘intellectual scaffolding’ art school can provide students to cope with complexity in life. It was a powerful idea and one which centered on a new vital role of creativity over utility, meeting the needs of the ‘second industrial revolution’ of the digital era. One first step in this direction, it was suggested from the audience, might require the writing of a shared curriculum to support this. Another audience member, while supportive of the sentiment, reminded us that the current government appears to be moving the role of art and design education in completely the opposite direction. A sobering thought.
By the end of the day, most of the people in the room seemed to have arrived at some kind of ideal over the role of an art school education. This was, therefore, a unique conference event: grounded in thorough and fascinating research about what being art educated has meant while provoking some sense of urgency what it should be.
Are the papers presented at this conference accessible? I am currently writing about The Coldstream Reports and would like to read what was presented.
Like the comment above, I am also interested in the shadow the Coldstream reforms projected on the future of education (in design). Is there a way to obtain the papers presented at the conference?