Meaningful work: a reflection on ‘Occupation Workplace’

Abstract

In the UK, fine art education is argued to be an instrumentalised system that is preoccupied with learning outcomes and quality process. The author argues that this is detrimental to the education of students, especially given the unpredictable, translocated global nature of employment in the contemporary knowledge economy. This article describes a project called ‘Occupation Workplace’, inspired by the ‘occupy movement’, which attempts to disrupt the normal processes of fine art education in the hope of engaging students in new forms of conversation with their learning experience. Contemporary fine art can take many forms, such as a performance, an action, a song, an event or a conversation. This project proposes an alternative to the studio-based model of fine art education to introduce students to these dialogic, relational, collaborative practices in a non-hierarchical environment. The article narrates some of the success and limitations of the project and makes recommendations for future work.

Notes on contributor

Jane Ball M.A. is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art and member of the Visual Arts Research Group at Coventry University and is on the steering group for the National Association of Fine Art Education (NAFAE). As a visual artist who is interested in observing and documenting relational practices and reflecting on the artist's role in contemporary society, Jane has worked with both privately and publicly funded organizations and has exhibited and presented her work across Europe. The recipient of many bursaries, Jane has most recently been awarded a grant by UnLtd to initiate the ‘In–Service: Artists Placement Programme’ from Big Lottery Funding.

Notes

1. A letter from G. Crowley appeared in the April 2008 edition (AM315) and in October 2008 Art Monthly devoted an entire issue to ‘The Future of Art Education’.

2. Art Monthly held regional symposiums including one at the Institute of Contemporary Arts London, and the Ikon, Birmingham. The Glad conference in September 2008 considered the student experience in art and design. The symposium ‘Fine Artist as Public Performer: Implications for Curriculum Design in HE’ (July 2008), hosted jointly by the Coventry School of Art and Design Fine Art course and the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (Ball was the convenor and Mc Leer a delegate), debated the shift in how fine artists were engaging with audiences and contexts, and applied this debate to a higher education context, to question how fine art students could be introduced to a type of professional practice that was genuinely authentic and relevant to contemporary fine art practice. It was attended by academics from Coventry School of Art and Design, Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, representatives from Institute of International Visual Arts, Ikon, Arts Council England and recent Fine Art BA and MA graduates. This event informed the call for papers for the National Association of Fine Art Education AGM and symposium entitled ‘Pedagogies and Practices’ (2009). Developing these ideas further, Out-takes (Ball, Mc Leer) was a proposal for a project devised to investigate sustainable models of integrated creative and professional practice projects for undergraduate fine art students, through collaboration with a range of external partners. In 2011 the symbiotic relationship between art and education was debated in Education, published by MIT and the Whitechapel Gallery in its Documents of Contemporary Art Series.

3. This article is an expanded version of a pecha kucha by Ball and Mc Leer selected by an international review panel for presentation at the 6th edition of the European League of Institutes of the Arts (ELIA) Teachers’ Academy (Mc Leer and Ball 2013).

4. Occupation Workplace comes as a result of a proposal written by Ball and Mc Leer that was submitted to the Mead Gallery in 2013. This section of the article is an abridged version of that document. We would like to thank the exhibition curator, Fiona Venables, and the gallery for kindly hosting us.

5. The participants were academic staff Brigid Mc Leer and Jane Ball, graduates Craig Cooper, Jake Watts, Sam Kelly, Corey Hayman and current students Lauren Heywood, Reece Kennedy and Rachel Hopkinson.

6. See http://www.languagemonitor.com/global-english/top-words-of-2011.

7. From a sociological (Marxist) rather than primarily educational perspective, Bowles and Gintis (1976) suggested that all US schooling has a hidden curriculum dictated by the demands of a capitalist economy (Atherton 2003).

8. The Algonquin literary set was an informal group of American writers, journalists, critics and artists who met regularly from 1919 onwards at a round table in the Algonquin Hotel, NY. The group became known for its sharing of lively conversation which informed much of their work. The core group included the poet, writer, critic and campaigner for social justice, Dorothy Parker with the extended group reaching up to twenty four members.

9. B. Mc Leer, private correspondence with the author, 2013.

10. Taken from personal notes made by the author at a lecture delivered by Gielen entitled ‘Biotope of the Hybrid Artist’ at the ELIA conference in Utrecht, 2013.