International Journal of Art & Design Education

2003 - Volume 22: Number 2

The Artist-Teacher Scheme as Postgraduate Professional Development in Higher Education

ADAMS, JEFF

Volume 22.2

The Artist-Teacher scheme has been established in recent years to encourage, revive and maintain the creative practice of visual arts teachers. Higher education institutions providing postgraduate qualifications have completed their pilot phases of the scheme, and the first postgraduate certificates and degrees have been awarded. This paper describes and illustrates work of students on these courses, and the relationship of their renewed creativity to their experience as professional teachers. The information was drawn from interviews with students, staff and initiators of the scheme, as well as student evaluations. There is a summary of the history of the scheme and a description of its recent manifestation in the pilot postgraduate programmes. The paper also includes a discussion and analysis of features of the Artist-Teacher scheme: the gallery collaborations, the relationship of theory to practice and to pedagogy. Students¹ responses to the scheme are discussed and, finally, emerging evidence of the positive impact that the Artist-Teacher scheme is having on classroom performance is considered. Although ATS continues to exist in a number of forms, such as summer schools and day/ evening classes and part-time postgraduate certificate/Masters degrees, it is the mainly latter that is the focus of this paper.


A Short Genealogy of Ersatz Love

CASELY-HAYFORD, AUGUSTUS

Volume 22.2

Over the last century hundreds of appliquéd Ghanaian flags have found their way onto the market of the large western auction houses. In this paper, Augustus Casely-Hayford traces the trajectory of these objects as they have changed hands and value, to reveal how significance and meaning are traded, how the reading of these Asafo flags has profoundly altered over time and across cultures, how Western epistemologies can re-categorise and re-define other cultures to make them like their own and how the commodification of these objects has not only obscured their meaning for people in the West, but has changed the meaning of these flags for those who create and use them.


Chrisi Bailey Award

DEWDNEY, ANDREW

Volume 22.2

The Arts Council run Chrisi Bailey Award for young people¹s photography in schools is now entering it fifteenth year. The spirit of the award remains that of Chrisi Bailey¹s own view of photography as, an active medium of participation, through which the child can make discoveries, record and communicate about themselves and the world around them. This paper uses the work of the Chrisi Bailey Award as a kind of historical record, an archive, which can now be looked at in terms of changes in photography, representation and education. It asks three related questions. What view of creative, educational practice is present in the school projects? What view of representation is encoded in the selected images? What view of photography and its technologies are embedded in the children¹s practices? Through answering these questions the paper attempts to chart continuities and changes in our understanding of the cultural politics of self-representation and the effects of digital technologies upon photographic practice. The paper reflects upon the tradition of photography in education and attempts to update its agendas.


Making a Difference? An Evaluation of Professional Knowledge and Pedagogy in Art and ICT

LOVELESS, AVRIL

Volume 22.2

The paper presents a research perspective on a Secondary school-based project, Art on the Net, which explored the interaction between practising artists, students and teachers using digital technologies in the visual and performance arts in school settings. The study illustrated the role that art education plays not only in providing an authentic context for the use of digital technologies, but also in offering insights into conceptualising the nature of ICT capability. The analysis for this paper highlights key themes arising for participants engaged in such intervention projects and illustrates the interaction between professional knowledge and pedagogy in Art and ICT.


Gallery Education

MÖERSCH, CARMEN interviewed by SHARP, MARIAM

Volume 22.2

This paper takes the form of a conversation about gallery education between Carmen Möersch and myself Mariam Sharp. It will draw from in-depth research by Möersch who is currently undertaking a PhD comparing Gallery Education in Germany and England and considers the differences in England and Germany and to some extent Europe generally. The article touches on Carmen's role as an artist and relates to the role of the artist in socially engaged arts practices. In England outreach practices extend the work beyond the gallery and Möersch's research explores case studies in the UK that develop these models of working. The conversation started at the Engage conference at the Baltic in Newcastle in November 2002 and continued into early 2003 via email and was informed by my experience as the lead officer for gallery education at the Arts Council of England's National Office.

Art in Question

RANEY, KAREN

Volume 22.2

Art in Question is one of the outcomes of the Arts Council¹s research into visual literacy. The book was launched on 11th March, 2003 at Bloomberg, London, with a conversation between the author and two of the contributors to the book, writer Sadie Plant and Professor of English and Art History, WJT Mitchell. This article is an edited transcript of that conversation. Plant and Mitchell begin by talking about points of uncertainty in their work which moved it forward. They go on to discuss the so-called 'pictorial turn', and ways in which contemporary art and film have taken on the subjects of bio-engineering and the electronic revolution. Referring to images from Poussin and Dada, to a WWI recruiting poster and Jurassic Park, the conversation suggests that both technological and political developments are posing fresh challenges to the visual arts.

The Role of Artists in Sites for Learning

REISS, VIVIENNE & PRINGLE, EMILY

Volume 22.2

’Artists excavate the unconscious of our culture and act as seismographs, recording subtle tremors long before they are felt more widely in our community’ (Corrin, 1999).

Socially engaged, participatory and educational arts activities have been recognised by artists as a legitimate area of creative practice for a considerable time. Current policy initiatives around social inclusion and life long learning demonstrates that this government has a keen interest in the transformative nature of creativity and participation in arts activity. This paper explores the significance of the Arts Council¹s Artists in Sites for Learning Scheme and a related piece of research within the context of recent cultural agendas and governmental policy initiatives. The research examined the ‘forms of engagement’ that occur between artists, participants and others and concludes that the role the artist inhabits within this form of creative practice is multifaceted and highly sophisticated. This paper also raises key issues concerning the ‘value’ and critical assessment of this form of practice and the need for appropriate support for (and evaluation of) it in the future.


Young People, Photography and Engagement

STANLEY, NICK

Volume 22.2

Over ten years research into photography and education has been undertaken at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design in collaboration with the Arts Council of England, West Midlands Arts, and local community photography agencies. A range of case studies were undertaken to explore how young people used photography, particularly in self-empowerment. These ranged from students in Further Education challenging conceptions of visual stereotypes of disability, young lesbian, gay and bisexual people constructing their own website, and individuals and groups creating and modifying their own images in a shopping centre. A democratic action research methodology was developed to enable the young people to establish their own agenda and generate standards for evaluating their work. A particular feature of the later research was a self-reflective journal that was shared between the researcher and everyone engaged in the project. This resource has considerable potential in photography and elsewhere in art and design education.


Vivarium

WAUGH, MARK

Volume 22.2

This contribution is an introduction to an online forum, Vivarium, at the new opened web site. The site will be accessible to an audience of: educationalists, artists, producers, development agencies and funding bodies. The forum will discuss the artist as educator, the culture of art in education, and explicitly Live Art as tool for rendering social issues for exploration in the classrooms of the future. In an era of global ecologies of information, offering users data on everything from hydroponics to Derrida¹s text The Truth in Painting, fertile knowledge is increasingly accessed through non-hierarchical networks. In such a terrain, a new post-pedagogical approach to creativity appears essential if we hope to excite, channel and challenge young people.

This paper charts a series of critical issues that readers are invited to develop and discuss online, but perhaps more importantly signifies potential topics that might return in a series of subsequent dialogues commissioned by the Arts Council England for Vivarium. The broader aim of Vivarium is to create a context to frame potential initiatives that might be delivered through Creative Partnerships, the unprecedented Arts Council England initiative, promoting cultural and creative activity for young people.