The Student Placement Scheme: teaching and learning post-studio practice

Abstract

This article is concerned with the context, development, implementation and potential benefits of ‘post-studio’ teaching and learning on the BA (Hons) Fine Art Critical Practice course at the University of Brighton. The article aims to address two questions: (1) What and where is the studio – where are students making their work? (2) How are the changing spaces of fine art education affecting students and the staff who teach them? At Brighton we currently offer five separate BA (Hons) Fine Art courses; Critical Practice, Painting, Performance, Printmaking and Sculpture. There are a number of advantages to this structure, but its success is dependent on each course offering a distinctly different philosophy, experience and outcome for students. On the Fine Art Critical Practice course, our second year students are required to work without a studio for the entire academic year. The idea of formally incorporating a post-studio situation into the curriculum came about through shared interest in the activities of the Artists Placement Group (APG) and their claim that ‘the context was half the work’. Academic staff were also keen to challenge the institutional orthodoxy of studio-based art teaching within art education. The Student Placement Scheme has also assisted us in further differentiating Fine Art Critical Practice from the other fine art courses on offer at Brighton and elsewhere.

Notes on contributors

Matthew Cornford is the course leader for Fine Art Critical Practice and Professor of Fine Art at the University of Brighton. Working in collaboration with David Cross since meeting at St Martins School of Art in 1986, graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1991. Cornford & Cross have exhibited in the USA and Europe, in London their work has been exhibited at the Camden Arts Centre, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Photographers' Gallery and South London Gallery. In addition to a number of site-specific projects in England they have exhibited at Aspex Gallery, De La Warr Pavilion, Exchange Gallery, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, and Wolverhampton Art Gallery.

Matthew Cornford is also working in association with John Beck, University of Westminster on a project to find and document the former art schools of Britain. In April 2012 the Journal of Visual Culture published their article entitled ‘The Art School in Ruins’ and in 2014 the Centre for Useless Splendour at Kingston University published their book The Art School and the Culture Shed.

Susan Diab is the Senior Lecturer responsible for leading the second year of the Fine Art Critical Practice course and coordinating the Student Placement Scheme. She has been teaching in higher education for nearly three decades. She studied languages at Oxford University and went onto study for a degree in Fine Art Sculpture at the University of Brighton. Since then she has worked as an artist in a number of different contexts, including residencies, gallery education and arts ‘outreach’ in collaboration with public art galleries mainly in the South East of England. In addition to her teaching, she spent several years mentoring other artists through the artists’ advisory service, arc, set up by Aspex Gallery in Portsmouth.