Turncoats - Art School Is Dead
Creativity is what makes us human. Learning how to be creative = big business..
Test Unit
Turncoats debate
THU 21 June 2018
8pm - 9:30pm
The Glue Factory
15 Burns Street
Glasgow G4 9SE
With Prof. Ken Neil, Deputy Director, Glasgow School of Art, Lewis Prosser, School of the Damned and Ethel Baraona Pohl & César Reyes Nájera, dpr-barcelona and chaired by Ambrose Gillick
It’s time to cash in for art schools. Yay! Exponentially increase the number of fee-paying students. Develop more courses with innovation in the title. Place schools at the heart of new cultural regeneration projects. To get an art design or architecture teaching job you need a PhD, to get a PhD you need to pay the institution you’re going to work for. The loop is complete. Bloody great.
As education becomes the product, the objectives of HE institutions have silently shifted – to focus on business growth, efficiency and remaining competitive in the open marketplace of higher education.
Arts education is a process enhanced through generosity, experimentation and critique – fundamentally underpinned by the relationship between creativity and the taking of risks. This is at direct odds with the business model it exists within.
Is it not time to recognise that the institutional art school is dead and new models need to emerge?
About Turncoats
Turncoats is a debate format that invites four speakers to debate each side of an intentionally polemic motion. It creates an atmosphere that is both playful and provocative. It allows and encourages audience and panel to speak candidly and polemically without fear of offending. The coup is to have a liberating enjoyable evening while confronting critical subjects head on with gusto and vigour. Like a film, each event splits into three acts each with their own energy.
