Mark Hulson and Alex Shady set of performance / workshop ‘This is an Art School’ at Tate Exchange with CSM…
A new art school has opened set up by students, staff and alumni of Central Saint Martins. It explores what the future of arts education in the UK might look like and its open to all, new students are welcome to enrol. There is to be no selection or interview process, simply a requirement that you commit to action. Drop in to access timetables, workshops, seminars, studio-making and lectures in a school designed, built and run in public view – but where the standard orthodoxies have been questioned and upturned.
While this cacophony of creativity may offer a utopian ambition for arts education, there is a pressing point at its heart. We are concerned that in the current economic and political climate there is a systematic assault on arts education in the UK.
Dejan Mrdja performance: Chasing Synchrony part of Sounds and Spaces mmm… 13th January, 12.00- 16.00
Project background and context
Art is increasingly isolated in the school timetable. Creativity is dismissed as peripheral and not included in the proposed Ebacc with preference given to the STEM subjects of science, technology, maths and engineering. Indeed, as pupils feel pressure to study Ebacc subjects we are seeing fewer choosing to study the arts. Outside of school, cuts to local funding puts galleries’ educational and outreach programmes at risk and raises the future possibility of an end to free entry.
It is in this cultural climate that we want to place Art School in the museum to examine it. In recreating and reconsidering an art school at Tate we want to think about what forces are currently threatening arts education and what resistance we can offer.
Tate Exchange Switch House, Level 5 Tate Modern Bankside London SE1 9TG 9th–15th January 2017 at 12.00–18.00
Dannielle Hodson Paper casts part of Annihilation Event/Prototype 11th January 12.00- 18.00
