I think this post will mark the start of my 'chronicles of a part time tutor' on the blog. Kicking the series off with my appearance at the Sheffield Hallam University annual degree show conference - 'What Price Autonomy?'
If art education was in crisis in 40 years ago in 1968, in crisis during Joseph Beuy's free university, in crisis when I left art school in 1999 and is still in crisis now, at what point do we all agree that it has failed, close down the art schools and spend our energies on something else? I spoke along-with writer JJ Charlesworth and artist Becky Shaw and a graduating student called Jade (who wore a fury wolf costume?). The organisers were fantastically motivated young Sheffield artists, inviting me in true style by emailing from Berlin about three days beforehand - which gave me with a good opportunity to test my improvisation skills on the day.

The Sheffield Hallam University are selling their airy, light, spacious, interesting, quirky suburban 1930's art department campus and moving the whole lot to the basement of a inner city modern tower block, no need for windows then? It seems and as JJ Charlesworth eloquently pointed out that basically art students are an expensive asset and their messy studios use more space per person that the average history student who can cram into a lecture theater/ library. This makes art students ripe for 'relocation' and their campuses great for redevelopment - moving only a few arty students and gaining maximum sq footage to cost benefit. After all university is a business that is run by managers and accountants, isn't it, and this is a great opportunity to raise revenue.

The tendency to run education on a financial basis, accepting students to bring in more fees, reallocating spaces, selling assets, creating part time contracts is going on all around the UK. I only hope it is done out of urgent necessity as it certainly is not helping an educational process that was already deemed 'in crisis' before it all began. We discussed the students rights and if their fee's justify them as 'customers', and if the language of commerce is useful or negative in this situation, or was it that they should simply be entitled to good education regardless of their buying power?

Given the widely accepted ineptitude of most institutions to set up a decent structure for their art students/ tutors, I did come out of the conference thinking that privatization and capitalistic models could hypocritically be the only way out of this situation, but on the students side rather than the institutions. One realistic option is for students to create opportunities through their course to make money, running business models such as clubs, shops, cafes that can then fund their own choices for invited speakers/ workshops, trips and exhibitions. An even more radical option as JJ suggested is setting up private art schools from private fees and private collectors patronage (which would alleviate the need for a lot of bureaucracy created by merged institutions).

Currently in most universities there are around 40 students in each year, which must bring in about £160,000. I can only think that if purely spent on their education and tutor contact it would buy a pretty hefty course and some heavy weight intellectual/ artistic tutors. Protoacademy in Edinburgh was by far the best educational experience I have had, set up as a kind of parasitic organisation on the outside of the existing art school, it was funded from research money, however when I think about the costs involved they were low, around £30,000 a year. For this we organised seminars, invited guests, symposia, exhibitions, theory sessions, trips and a space to meet in - all this for only 8 students yearly fee?

It brings to mind two questions - 1. is the formal art degree actually useful at the end of the day in balance with the amount of beurocracy and financial wastage university accreditation creates? and 2. what happens if students run their own course -is this time spend away from studio practice detrimental to their work?

1. Well actually in art a formal degree doesn't seem to be that helpful, its not medicine. Unless you are wanting to go back to college to do an MA (more payout), or retrain in another profession the degree is never ever mentioned.
2. As I was trying to explain in this symposium the possibility of throwing open the running of the course to the students does actually work - as was tried and tested in the protoacademy experiment, it also taught one the necessary real world skills of managing your practice in relationship to organising/ facilitating.  

So although the blog isn't the place to explore this in a more balanced manner, the conference left me with the distinct impression that actually a more pure and total privatization of the art-school could be a good option for art educational reform, casually dispensing with the degree qualification, where groups of like minded people get together under a skeleton staff to run their own 4 year peer led educational experience?

Posted by Bryan