Alternative Art Education (Slow) Marathon

In the wake of Covid-19 the event ‘Festival of Alternative Art Education’ that was due to take place at Conway Hall on 27th March was postponed, and then adapted to suit the current climate and be hosted on Zoom as a 7-hour event. Through previous research and conversations on of the main topics that kept arising was this idea that alternative art schools could become digital in the future, with obvious questions as to how this impacts the programme, inclusivity, etc. I was interested in how different schools have approached this, and how quickly they’ve been able to adapt as this move has been forced upon them.

The session started with a quick introduction and the launch of Urgh! Zine by artist Chloe Cooper.

After which we had a zine making workshop from Lu Williams and Bella Street Fenn who are participating artists as TOMA, were they went through the history of zines and the impact they’ve had on the art world as well as where to find collections of zines. We were all then given a quick introduction as to how to make a beak book, and what kind of information could go into the zine. I’m not a massive zine fan, I’ve found they’ve either been incredible objects or boring, unfortunately mostly the latter. But zines have seen a huge increase in recent years due to its ability to be self-published, more accessible to readers through its lack of academic language and cost.

We moved swiftly on to the Alternative art school + peers support group jamboree which was facilitated by Emma Edmondson. I’ve already spoken to Emma about TOMA (The Other MA) which she runs and you can find that here. Sophie Chapman started us off with Into the Wild, which is a yearlong programme which focuses on recent BA graduates. This year they have 14 artists, with a 50/50 split between those in London and those not, with a travel bursary for those who are coming from outside of London. They’ve recently created MESH which is a wiki page dedicated to knowledge sharing or knowledge mobility, and they’re running a wiki-hackathon on the 5th August which I participated in, something which if it hadn’t been for zoom I wouldn’t have been able to do before.

We then had Amy Pennington who was part of Islington Mill Arts Academy during 2008 and 2012, but whose now gone on to create the Solidarity Syndicate in light of the Arts Councils grants during lockdown, and this repetitive retort from funders that this is a competition, Solidarity Syndicate recognise that it shouldn’t be a competition its about supporting one another through an incredibly difficult time, and to do what artists do best and self-organise. The idea of breaking down the competition put in place by funders is echoed throughout the event, and who does this rationale really help? Certainly not artists, nor would I argue does it help visitors, participants and those wanting to experience the arts, as the scope of what is funded becomes so shallow due to tick box exercises.

Miki Shaw introduced us to Juggernauts, which is an artist peer support group which started out with a number of artists, but as with most things became a core group of just a few who frequently meet in London. Groups like this can be great, during lockdown myself and others from a bookbinding group have created our own group and have been making throughout, it can be quite closed off to others though, not much chance of the group expanding, but on the other hand you gain valuable peers who know your work.

Next up was Rabbit Road Press which is runs ‘Curriculum’, a series of artist led lectures and workshops, as a means to drive critical engagement outside of academia. It runs in conjunction to their riso print studio and publishing press. The education section is free to attend, and this is something that is brought up by a lot of the formal education programmes – to charge or not to charge. 

Feral Art School have an overview of how they started – a university building burned down, and they found themselves without a building base, so were using flexible spaces which allowed them to become agile and flexible, having a textiles and fashion studio. Feral Art School is run not for profit however they do charge course fees and run as a co-operative of professional artists and educators. They also provide prison support for ex-prisoners, which was an interesting facet to this school, it would have been good to have heard more about this as it not something I’ve heard about from other schools.

Matthew Noel-Tod introduced us to Conditions which is based in Croydon. Conditions was started up in 2018, so relatively new. One of the founders, Noel-Tod, has been a lecturer since 2010, although not mentioned a comparison between how the programme at the university and Conditions are ran, and what impact that has had on both sets of students. Conditions is run as a studio programme for artists, they have three open plan shared spaces which can house 26 participants. There is a cost to participants, however the space is financially supported by Croydon Council. As a space they want to examine art education and also art production, and this will be redefined by the participating artists.

Elle Reynolds is an academic researcher looking at autonomous art schools and alternative models of art education. I’ve made a note that states “fighting against own institutionalisation” which I think most of us who have been in formal education and then come into alternative education are probably having to do. As an extension of this research she also looks into spaces / materials / actions that have the potential for learning, I think this is perhaps an overlooked aspect of education – we usually talk about facilities, buildings, teachers as being the cornerstones of education yet its been proved that there are so many other factors that can stimulate and produce alternative learning outcomes.

From Brooklyn we were joined by John Ros who is a Director of Studio Ell a space for higher education that offers both online and physical courses, residencies and programmes. It was founded in London in 2015 as an offshoot of galleryELL, which ended in 2016, and continues on with a focus on studio practice. This is another place that is run as not-for-profit and is also artist-run, there is also a scholarship program in order to help with accessibility.

School of the Damned was discussed by current participant James. The model for this educational platform is intriguing as its completely re-formed every year – no participants or teachers carry on into the next year or oversee the program in anyway. It was formed in 2014 when tuition fees in the UK were at £9k a year, the increasing financialisaton of Higher Education is noted by most alternative art schools as being a motivating factor. This year they have 30 students who meet up at various locations across the UK each month, these meetups include talks, visits to galleries and meeting local artists. They work on the basis of labour exchange and in working with the public wish to make transparent their pedagogical values and activities.

Some of the overarching themes that came out of the jamboree where the fact that the art world shouldn’t been seen as a competition, this is an agenda pushed by funders for the most part, but it really goes against what a lot of people in the arts stand for. In terms of funding for the alternative schools themselves this was really mixed. Should the students pay a fee to attend? Should funding be found elsewhere, but then what strings are attached to that funding? How does paying a fee change the dynamic? Personally I think charging a fee, even if it’s a small one and doesn’t cover all of your costs, will ensure that people turn up and engage with what’s happening, whether we like it or not we’ve been raised in a capitalist society where we place importance on items that cost money. Across all of the schools the models have had to adapt and change due to the pandemic, and this really is one of the great things about alternative art schools is their ability to adapt quickly. Part of this is down to flattened hierarchies, which most of them do, though there is still that divide between participants and those who run the schools, those who engage with the school as a student themselves seem to have been able to flatten that hierarchy as far as it will go. 

At this point we broke off into two groups, one of which was the art/science reading group and the other was Microworld with Genetic Moo. I didn’t pre-book so I ended up doing the Microworld, this was an interactive piece of work whereby all participants could create a sprite through open source coding and watch it interact in a virtual world that was projected onto the workshop leaders walls. It was fun to play around with, although the time allotted was two hours and it started to get tedious at the end. I did think it would be great to do with kids, especially during lockdown.

There was a specially created Z-Crit session, these are aimed to be very quick (3 minute) online crits. Artists who applied got to introduced and were then able to talk about their work for 3 minutes. After which in a private breakout room they were provided with feedback. I did feel that as a viewer we missed out on hearing the feedback, I think this could have perhaps been quite interesting for other people to hear, even if we as the audience couldn’t provide feedback ourselves. Or perhaps that would have been even more interesting, to get feedback in the chat from those participating in the event – it would have opened up a whole range of feedback, a moderator could go through the comments and check to ensure that they are appropriate.

I was a bit disappointed to see how many of the people involved are from the south, specifically London. Whilst there is a higher concentration of alternative art schools in London, there are peer led organisations across the country, but we appear to have gone down the London centric route again, which can be very easy to do, but given the technology available it would have been easy to open this up across the country.  When we talk about accessibility to the alternative education, which was brought up time and time again during the event, it becomes somewhat ironic that to access these facilities and organisations you need to be based down south, which financially is quite restrictive for people.

Now that the possibilities of working remotely and creating events that can be viewed around the world, it would be interesting to see how this develops in the future. Personally, I would really like to see alternative schools from across the world come together to present and event, possibly looking at how technology can connect us like never before. The scope of possibilities has been broadened by the pandemic, and it would be great to see alternative schools do what they do best and adapt to these new ways of working and bring forth something new.

For more info on the event: https://videomole.tv/slow-marathon/