‘Revisiting 'The Fine Art Graduate' 2023 Annual Conference
‘Revisiting 'The Fine Art Graduate': The 'issue' of employability for fine art and other art and design graduates
Date: Friday 15th September
Venue: London School of Mosaic, NW3 2HP London
The 'issue' of employability for fine art and other art and design graduates has accompanied our developments in arts education for a considerable time. There is evidence of lots of good practice in developing and making evident 'employability skills' for our graduates, that we should acknowledge and celebrate. However, the 'turn' to 'the professional employment of graduates, by the Office for Students, makes the issue an urgent one for fine art education to address. The Office for Students now sets part of conditions for registration that "The provider must deliver successful outcomes for all of its students, which are recognised and valued by employers, and/or enable further study." This puts a direct pressure on fine art and related subjects, with a potentially much greater 'threat' and greater challenge.
Considering the pressures driven by metrics surrounding fine art and employability as a topic and the context of the ‘Office for Students’ coming down on subjects which do not offer immediate employment (within 15 months of graduation). What is fine art's reaction to this complex situation and strategies that can be applied to this? Is this about 'fight' or 'flight'-as it were? How do we make the case for fine art education's value in the increasingly starker context of what can be described as 'the monetization of higher education'? How do we still ensure our students do benefit in all ways and senses from the core ‘fine art’ education we seek to provide?
This year’s NAFAE annual conference seeks to share existing good practice, initiatives and solutions that have been already put in place by colleagues nationally in a spirit of collegiality. The aim is to to turn what could be perceived as a challenge presented by institutional pressures around employability into an opportunity for acknowledging how much the fine art subject area is proactively responding in ways that help individual students and society more generally.
Conference sub-streams:
Curriculum: Projects or examples of good practice in which employability and wider transferable skills are explored in the curriculum and beyond. What can Higher Education fine art courses learn from alternative provisions (galleries, alternative art schools, etc.) available to professional practice?
Self-Awareness: How are the often tacit skills and knowledge of a Fine Art graduate made visible to students? How do they speak to their skills? What knowledge is transferable?
Ecology: Importance of the local community/economy in fine art employment opportunities. How does the time it often takes for a fine art graduate to ‘find their place’ that is at odds with an 18 month cut-off for ‘Office for Students’? What ‘fertile’ ecology does a fine art graduate actually need and how does the curriculum prepare a student for this?
Metrics: How might we respond to the metrics? Are there optimum strategies to share and adopt as well as share with our students? What are ways to subvert a metric culture for ways that are beneficial to the fine art subject area and to Office for Students directives?
What contributions we are looking for:
Presentations of 15-20 minutes that broadly focus upon aspects that fall under one of the sub-streams above. Presenters can include those involved in fine arts and related or interdisciplinary education within formal HE or 'alternative' art education, specific education for employment, studio providers/users, alumni, current students, or a combination of these.
Please provide the following for your proposal:
Title:
Type of contribution (paper/presentation/provocations of 15-20 minutes) :
Technical requirements:
Abstract of 250-400 words:
Name, role, institution and contact email:
Proposals should be submitted to: admin@nafae.org.uk no later than 1st May 2023. All proposals will be peer reviewed and response to abstracts will be provided by 26th May 2023.
NAFAE Annual Conference
Making Communities and Making with Communities
Friday 29th April 2022, Birmingham School of Art (in person) and online
One of many observations on the role of the art school and creative practices in contemporary society is that it is frequently employed as a means or tool for bridging a democratic deficit. This is, of course, true of many service professions and not only the arts, but it is noticeable how many and how often practitioners working as creative authors or artists have positioned themselves in a role that can affect or enhance communed experience. My view, from personal history as the key vantage point, is that creativity and creative behaviours have an essential and dynamic function in supporting self-determination within self-defining communities.
The conference will respond to the following themes:
Cooperation and caring for place
A place for art in social change
Art, places, and environment
As a network we are primarily interested in practice and projects; in how people are producing and how educators and fine art practitioners are responding to challenge.
This will be a hybrid event with face-to-face presentations and attendance invited from NAFAE members in person at Birmingham School of Art. There will also be online breakout rooms with attendance invited from non-members.
This event is free for NAFAE members. To register please book on our Eventbrite page. Non-members should join NAFAE (see link below) before booking.
To join NAFAE please visit https://www.nafae.org.uk/membership
Context
The Birmingham School of Art, as partner for this conference, provides a provocative home for this idea of making communities and making with communities. Since its rapid growth in the eighteenth century, Birmingham has long celebrated the diversity of its craft, manufacturing and cultural heritage. As a centre for the anti-industrialist Arts and Crafts movement and heavily influenced by pre-Raphaelitism, Birmingham, the ‘Workshop of the World’, is a city which holds a complex place in the history of British Art - William Morris being notably prompted to state that art should be “by the people and for the people”. Today Birmingham is the youngest major city in Europe, with under 25’s accounting for nearly 40% of its population.
The School of Art itself has roots in the 1843 Birmingham Government School of Design and its current home, the purpose-built Margaret Street, was opened in 1885 as the first Municipal art school in the UK and is situated in the heart of the city. In keeping with the city’s motto of ‘forward’ the courses delivered at the school support the notion of a School for Birmingham, working with communities to create symbiotic relationships with the city and its diverse population. In a time of ever accelerating change; in the age of austerity, Brexit and Covid19; it is increasingly falling to artists to bolster communities, provide creative solutions, engage otherwise unacknowledged audiences and hold an ethical mirror to a fractious society. The School of Art is actively interested in contributing to communities starting within and extending beyond the studio, considering ways that art practice can facilitate and sustain meaningful relationships to people, places and environments that are at once pragmatic and idealistic in exploring the potentials of the expanded role of the artist culturally and socially.
NAFAE is the Subject Association for Fine Art education in the UK. We advocate the interests, promotion and cultural relevance of Fine Art education at Foundation, BA, MA and PhD levels. The Association aims to be instrumental in anticipating and shaping decisions that impact on the enhancement and future development of Fine Art by engaging with a range of constituencies.
NAFAE's annual conference, hosted in collaboration with Birmingham School of Art, will investigate, through a selection of short presentations, papers and provocations, the ways in which educators and fine art practitioners make communities and make with communities. The conference will encourage debate, share best practice and explore case study examples of the ways in which fine educators and fine art practitioners foster democratic cultures of being with and working with others for individual, collective, cultural, civic, social and environmental gain. The conference will take a hybrid approach with delegates having the option to attend in person or to join online.
Invitation to NAFNET (February)
NAFAE is scheduling a monthly Zoom meeting on the last Friday of each month at 1.00pm for NAFAE members to discuss issues of the day.
Topic: ‘The personal to the universal’ with Dr Matthew Macauley
This session invites colleagues to share their experience of how they sensitively engage with students’ personal issues and identities, and how they encourage students to relate the personal to the universal.
Time: Feb 25th, 2022 01:00 PM London
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82851016984?pwd=RTlNSll6L3BQVkF5MWtTcG85STVvUT09
Meeting ID: 828 5101 6984
Passcode: 547331
Invitation to NAFNET (January)
NAFAE is scheduling a zoom meeting once a month on the last Friday of each month at 1.00pm for NAFAE members who wish to discuss issues of the day with other NAFAE members.
NAFNET Open Conversations
Topic: NAFNET
Time: Jan 28th, 2022 01:00 PM London
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82851016984?pwd=RTlNSll6L3BQVkF5MWtTcG85STVvUT09
Meeting ID: 828 5101 6984
Passcode: 547331
COVID Contingencies: Where are we now?
In this session we invite colleagues to share experiences and advice as we prepare for students returning from their Winter Break. With the new COVID-19 Omicron variant spreading but guidance and regulations relaxing,...
how prepared are we?
What are the new challenges?
Is the advice being given clear enough?
Can we finish assessments?
How are we returning to studios (or not)
Are we coping?
We hope the discussion will create an opportunity to consider challenges, share best practice and offer support.
Useful references:
Invitation to NAFNET (December)
NAFAE is scheduling a zoom meeting once a month on the last Friday of each month at 1.00pm for NAFAE members who wish to discuss issues of the day with other NAFAE members.
NAFNET Open Conversations
Topic: NAFNET with Judy Thomas
Time: Dec 17, 2021 01:00 PM London
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85608738562?pwd=VEtXUTgrejRmUEtnOHJtOGxxVEN1QT09
Meeting ID: 856 0873 8562
Passcode: 162117
Ghosts of Past, Present, Future students: Who or what is coming? What do we expect?
In this session I am keen to invite colleagues to reflect on the current studio experiences with students and consider the support they require, and the pedagogy students expect.
Recognising there is not a general set experience, it is anticipated, at the end of a semester, within a challenging and unsettled year, there will be commonalities across the engagement, insecurities, and questions that we encounter in this moment.
Working towards understanding together, it is hoped the discussion/s may create spaces to consider challenges and share best practice.
Also, if time permits, I wish to consider recent changes to Initial Teacher Education (ITE).
Why?
I believe serious changes lay ahead; in the long term, if ITE changes, our future students may require a different kind of pedagogy.
What will that be?
How can our present thinking and reflections equip imagining for the future?
Invitation to NAFNET (November)
NAFAE is scheduling a zoom meeting once a month on the last Friday of each month at 1.00pm for NAFAE members who wish to discuss issues of the day with other NAFAE members.
NAFNET Open Conversations
Time: Nov 26, 2021 01:00 PM London
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85225306513?pwd=MXFLOG1oWllFaEVTa24vUFNVMFE3dz09
Meeting ID: 852 2530 6513
Passcode: 066115
We hope many of you can join us!
‘Becoming normal’ Symposium session 3
Meeting ID: 952 9470 5107
Passcode: 186094
Empathy, improvisation, paradox (how 17 years of teaching fine art online helped prepare for a global pandemic)
Jonathan Kearney is a Teaching Scholar and Course Leader for MA Fine Art Digital at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. Since 2004 he has run a mode of the course fully online with students spread across the world.
Can improvisation help us deal with the deep paradoxes in teaching and learning? Can the online space ever offer a truly empathetic environment? Can affective and cognitive empathy support fine art learning? Building on my experience of running a Fine Art Masters course online since 2004, these and other questions will be explored using some thinking from a diverse range of writers including educator and philosopher Paola Freire, economist Kate Raworth, innovator and social entrepreneur Hilary Cottam, ethicist and theologian Samuel Wells and author, feminist and activist Bell Hooks.
The NAFAE AGM and Symposia 2021 will be on Zoom, and spread over a number of days and evenings in July. The symposia will take the form of a number of semi-curated conversations on the theme of 'Kindness and care', with short presentations followed by open conversation among NAFAE members. The symposia will take place between 5.00 and 7.00 on Friday evenings; please provide your own refreshments.
NAFAE members who would like to contribute a 5-10 minute presentation to the 'Kindness/Care' conversations are invited to send a brief summary of the contribution to admin@nafae.org.uk by 12th June 2021.
‘Creating care’ Symposium session 2
Meeting ID: 952 9470 5107
Passcode: 186094
"Care-full/Care-less?"
Presentation by Dr Judy Thomas, Northumbria University
Designed to consider 'pedagogies of care' within the Fine Art / HE context, this session opens dialogic opportunities to reflect on pedagogic practice and think towards the approaching academic year: 2021/22. Following an unsettled seventeen months of ever-changing uncertainties, we find ourselves at a relevant moment to pause and consider the needs and progression of existing students and how we support the transition of new students into unfamiliar educational environments. The underpinning idea is to focus on what we understand to be ‘care’ and to question how we develop good relationships at such a complex and challenging time, with view to exploring caring teaching strategies and the actions we apply to create inclusive, welcoming spaces.
The aim of this session is to explore what we understand as ‘care’ and 'pedagogies of care’ and to interrogate the spaces we create and strategies we apply to care within them.
The NAFAE AGM and Symposia 2021 will be on Zoom, and spread over a number of days and evenings in July. The symposia will take the form of a number of semi-curated conversations on the theme of 'Kindness and care', with short presentations followed by open conversation among NAFAE members. The symposia will take place between 5.00 and 7.00 on Friday evenings; please provide your own refreshments.
NAFAE members who would like to contribute a 5-10 minute presentation to the 'Kindness/Care' conversations are invited to send a brief summary of the contribution to admin@nafae.org.uk by 12th June 2021.
‘Starting communities’ Symposium session 1
Meeting ID: 952 9470 5107
Passcode: 186094
"Cooking, community and coping: The social role of the kitchen in a virtual learning space"
Presentation by Sarah Byrne, Holly Herzberg and Sarah Zacharek (Wolverhampton School of Art)
Read abstract here
The NAFAE AGM and Symposia 2021 will be on Zoom, and spread over a number of days and evenings in July. The symposia will take the form of a number of semi-curated conversations on the theme of 'Kindness and care', with short presentations followed by open conversation among NAFAE members. The symposia will take place between 5.00 and 7.00 on Friday evenings; please provide your own refreshments.
NAFAE members who would like to contribute a 5-10 minute presentation to the 'Kindness/Care' conversations are invited to send a brief summary of the contribution to admin@nafae.org.uk by 12th June 2021.
NAFAE AGM 2021
Meeting ID: 984 1525 0396
Passcode: 571465
Agenda
Presentations by
Chair: Paul Haywood
Secretary: Jenny Walden
Treasurer: Linden Reilly
Nominations for NAFAE posts
Voting on changes to NAFAE Constitution
Nominations
Please would any member who would like to nominate themselves or another to an Honorary Officer post or the NAFAE Steering Committee email admin@nafae.org.uk by 18th June 2021. If any members would like to start a Regional Network or sub-group addressing a particular theme please email admin@nafae.org.uk.
Officer posts:
Communications officer
Campaigns/advocacy officer
Co-secretary
Co-treasurer
Associate chair
Membership secretary
Steering committee member
Please find here the NAFAE Constitution 2003, and a draft new Constitution. Send any comments or suggestions regarding changes to the constitution to l.reilly8@googlemail.com by 11th June 2021. NAFAE members will vote to accept or reject changes to the constitution at the AGM on the 9th July.
We look forward to seeing you at one of the symposia events or the AGM!
Invitation to NAFNET
NAFAE is scheduling a zoom meeting once a month on the last Friday of each month at 1.00pm for NAFAE members who wish to discuss issues of the day with other NAFAE members. We held prior meetings since January, which focused on aspects of teahcing fien art during
NAFNET Open Conversations28th May at 1pm
Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/91288635024?pwd=WjVUWUNYVm9DWUF4am9qQVJTdko5Zz09
Meeting ID: 912 8863 5024
Passcode: 771066
Future meetings:
Jun 25, 2021 01:00 PM
We hope many of you can join us!
The Artist's Journey: Day 2
The 2nd day is the result of a new partnership between Sheffield Hallam University and the National Association of Fine Art Educators and consists of a series of presentations selected from an open call by NAFAE (National Association for Fine Art Education) relating to the theme of ‘Improfessional’ practices.
This conference aims to shed light on the practices, interest and groups that operate at the fringes of or outside of the ‘professional’ and formal structures of art education. Art schools frequently facilitate or tolerate, groups of students (and staff) that take it upon themselves to meet regularly to produce work or dialogue — to explore or talk about content or means of producing, to share opportunity, to drawing or essay together, put on a show, develop performance, constructively criticise each other’s work, embark on specific enterprise, or to activate public spaces, etc. To share experiences in a way that is not part of the formal curriculum. These groups are part of a long tradition of informal education practices that operate within and often beyond the art school. They are valued for engendering learning that compliments curriculum experiences. They are a means of extending and expanding on the potential outcomes of study; taking the individual into collaborative territories or exploring alternative dynamics that frame art possibilities and interactions with civic society. Such groups often promote initiative. They can have an ambiguous relation to the art school but can form part of the student exit strategy or lead graduates into post-study environments: alumni that continue to meet once a month, effectively maintaining the course culture; studio collectives; non-studio collective; the monthly crit located in and supported by the art school. They locate, at least partially, outside the art school and relate to a broader social and cultural community; often pointing to alternative economies and realities for graduate. The art school can be a porous institution, alive with groups that bubble up around passions and practices. It is a source of new economy and comm with art practices at the core.
Such groups can be framed in terms of communities of practice. According to Wenger and Snyder (2000) communities of practice can be found all over the place and many of us will be involved in a number of them; characteristically they occur when self-selecting members come together around a shared passion, because they get something out of it, and learn, problem solve, develop, enhance, and exchange knowledge and capabilities through interaction with the other members — the group lasts as long as there is interest in maintaining the group. Indeed, NAFAE is a community of practice. Wenger and Snyder propose that in communities of practice members learn to solve problems, develop professional skills, generate economy, create value, and contribute to the developing landscape of an industry. Indeed, should art schools and higher education develop strategies for identifying them, and infrastructure for supporting them? If this is an outcome of the art school that promotes or produces alternative futures does it also require an alternative relationship with the institution? Is there a danger that any formal directive to form or maintain communities of practice might generate empty shells devoid of the members personal interest and passion, their characteristic defining feature — they are communities of passion as well as practice.
The conference will ask about different models of groups, and the strategies evolved within the group that structure members’ interactions. What role can and should the art school play in identifying and maintaining relationships with emerging groups and networks of artists, producers or researchers? What are the models for art schools taking responsibility for nurturing and incubating opportunities for younger artists, activists, designers, and curators?
This call for contributions invites educators, recent graduates, external networks, and artist collectives, and research groups to submit papers, propose workshops or discussions, offer posters, that uncover, invent, and critically engage with models by which art education might foster and promote learning and thriving, and the further development of art education practices. Accounts of innovative learning practices in collaborative and group work are particularly welcome.
References
Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, (1988) ed. Robert K. Barnhart, Edinburgh and New York: Chambers, 1988.
Smith, M. K. (2003, 2009) ‘Jean Lave, Etienne Wenger and communities of practice’, the encyclopedia of informal education,www.infed.org/biblio/communities_of_practice.htm.
Wenger, Etienne, C., and Snyder, William M., (January – February 2000), ‘Communities of Practice: The Organisational Frontier, Harvard Business Review, reprint number R00110.
Chambers Dictionary of Etymology(1988), s.v. im-1 and im-2
Timetable
9:00 – 10:15 Registration
9:30 – 10:00 NAFAE AGM chaired by Paul Haywood and Linden Reilly
10:15 – 10:45 Introductions by Paul Haywood and Rose Butler
10:45 – 11:15 The Artist's Journey: Partner Presentation: "On Curating, Care and Pedagogy" by Kerry Campbell (Mansions of the Future)
11:15 – 11:30 Break
11:30 – 12:00 "Approaching Affective Zero" Andrew Bracey
12:00 – 12:30 "Artivism and/as Communities of Practice: Precarious Workers Brigade (UK) and The Consortium for Postartistic Practices (Poland)" Dr Marsha Bradfield
12:30 – 14:00 Lunch break & a workshop led by Womp Space's Hannah Lamb and Lucy Lound at Hygge Café
14:00 – 14:30 "Temporary Totalities: Reimagining the world through collective fictioning in a contemporary art practice" Lesley Guy [HPO Café] // "FLΔG – A student art collective past, present and future" Katrine Hjelde [MA Studio]
14:30 – 15:00 "The S Project - a 'by proxy' proposition. (two women walking towards each other)" Gudrun Filipska (Arts Territory Exchange) [HPO Café] // "Failing Positively: Cross disciplinary collaboration as an approach to creative freedom" Dr Carla Rees and Caroline Wright [MA Studio]
15:00 – 15:15 Break
15:15 – 15:45 "Routine, Regulation, Resistance: What do the behaviours of artists tell us?" Jo Addison and Natasha Kidd [HPO Café] // Les Monaghan workshop [MA Studio]
15:45 Discussion
The Artists Journey: Day 1
The Artist’s Journey conferences were founded through a partnership with the Art and Design department at Sheffield Hallam University and Yorkshire & Humber Visual Arts Network (YVAN). The conferences provide an annual discussion between individual artists and small-scale, artist-led collectives and organisations addressing (but not limited to) recent graduates and early career practitioners. The conferences build on support, guidance and critical discussion as part of existing courses within the local creative communities national debate. By working in partnership we broaden the conversation, provide a rich, informed and sustainable way forward to enhance the many different routes we might take to establish ourselves as artists.
Art and Design at Sheffield Hallam University is an amazing, diverse community of artists – where staff, students and partners work as equals to deliver real innovation and creativity. Sheffield is home to the UK's largest practicing community of artists and designers outside London, bringing a constant flow of creative energy and activity. We are an integral part of the vibrant and creative city of Sheffield and have a well-established professional development programme.
Bloc Projects is a not-for-profit creative organisation based within Sheffield city centre supporting artists at key stages in their careers through an acclaimed artistic programme of events, workshops, exhibitions and public commissions. Bloc Projects work with other local art organisations, universities and charities to ensure our activities welcome a diverse and intergenerational demographic, removing barriers to access across to all elements of our programme.
Mansions of the Future is an arts and cultural hub in Lincoln brought to life through a public programme of free talks, workshops, communal lunches and family activities, alongside national and international artistic commissions. Working with artists from inception to delivery alongside local communities, the three year programme privileges social, site-specific and collaborative ways of working.
NAFAE is the Subject Association for Fine Art education in the UK. We advocate the interests, promotion and cultural relevance of Fine Art education at Foundation, BA, MA and PhD levels. The Association aims to be instrumental in anticipating and shaping decisions that impact on the enhancement and future development of Fine Art by engaging with a range of constituencies.
YVAN works to be a voice and advocate for the visual arts sector in Yorkshire & Humber, delivering a programme that effects change in the profile, reputation and sustainability of the visual arts and artists in Yorkshire & Humber, and is part of the national Contemporary Visual Arts Network.
The Artist's Journey #3: Day 1
13 February 2020
The first day is made up of invited artist presentations. While ‘professionalisation’ suggests the positive, necessary steps to becoming an artist, there are ‘improfessional’ practices that exist at an off-kilter relation to this imperative. Outside of the professional / unprofessional binary, what else do artists do, feel, or think as they build their portfolio, write their grants, or get on with these obvious tasks? And as both a direct or dissonant response to our art-making lives, what modalities of survival and thriving do we develop? How do we – or don’t we – maintain the balance, health, and motivation necessary to keep going as supposed art professionals?
The presentations will explore these questions in two thematically-based sessions: improfessional organising (morning) and improfessional trajectories (afternoon). The morning session will focus on ways of organising, with contributions from institutional as well as artist-led perspectives. The afternoon session will turn to the different pathways that artists have made for themselves. Both sessions will feature three shorter panel presentations (20 minutes) with a group discussion, followed by a longer artist talk (40minute) with a moderated Q&A.
Timetable
9:30 – 10:00 Registration
10:00 – 10:15 Welcome and introduction
Morning session: Improfessional organising
10:15 – 11:45 Presentations from Eelyn Lee (filmmaker and convener of Social Art Network), Symrun Chatha (musician and co-founder of Café Redhaus) and Anna Santomauro (Programme Curator, Arts Catalyst). Panel discussion chaired by Clee Claire Lee (artist, Material Voice collective)
11:45 – 12:00 Break
12:00 – 13:00 Artist talk by Tram Nguyen (Assistant Curator, Tate and member of Asia-Art-Activism) with response and discussion chaired by Sam Vardy / Paula McCloskey (artists, researchers, and co-founders of ; a place, of their own)
Afternoon session: Improfessional trajectories
14:00 – 15:30 Presentations from Zoyander Street (artist, researcher and critic), Manish Harijan (artist) and Lady Kitt (artist, researcher and drag king). Panel discussion chaired by Dan Russell (artist and committee member of The NewBridge Project)
15:30 – 15:45 Break
15:45 – 16:45 Artist talk by Renata Minoldo (artist and educator) with response and discussion chaired by Sunshine Wong (art researcher and Public Programme Coordinator at Bloc Projects)
17:00 - 22:00 Join Sheffield Creative Guild and Sheffield Hallam University at Sidney & Matilda for an informal event at which you’ll have the opportunity to chat to a variety of small creative business owners and freelancers over a drink or two and some tunes. Meet illustrators, independent book sellers, digital artists and graphic designers and take part in a craft workshop run by our friends at Girl Gang. The workshop and stalls will run from 5pm – 7.30pm after which attendees will be welcome to stay on to mingle to their hearts’ content (or until 10pm). The evening will include a techno performance by Epiploke, a live coding collaboration between artists Heavy Lifting and Yaxu.