nsae conference report 1984

NSAE Conference Report 1984

This notable Annual Conference at Bath was titled ‘Art and Design-Interdependent and Interrelated’ in order to provide a platform for lectures and discussions on the essential nature and identity of our area of education. Some of the ground had already been prepared by a paper produced by the NSAE Standing Committee on Design Education. The paper appears in this number of J A D E under the title, ‘Design, and Art and Design Education’.

The first session commenced with the Presidential Address delivered by NSAE President Michael Yeomans. The Address is published in full herein.

Stuart Macdonald then introduced the Standing Committee’s discussion paper, pointing out that its purpose was to clarify our area of education, not to give definitions of ‘art’, and of ‘design’. He recalled that, at the last Conference, Aneurin Thomas re- ferred to F.L.Lucas finding 11,396 separate definitions of ‘Ro- mantic’ and doubtless there were more of ‘art’ and an amplitude of ‘design’.

However, in general discussion, Macdonald argued, our mean- ing can only be clear if we use the public meaning of words, not particular contemporary private meanings, thus when the discus- sion paper mentions ‘design’, it is not referring to design as a subject for the curriculum, which now has several particular meanings put forward by design educators in England. Most of the primary public meanings of the noun ‘design’ given in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary may be covered by the definition: Design is the arrangement of forms and colours of man-made and natural objects. It is quite clear from this definition that all art and design educators must be concerned with ‘design’-as they always have been.

Historically, right up to date, art and design have been inseparable, and often indistinguishable. Is a carved hawk on an Egyptian temple pylon fine art (sculpture)--or lettering (gra- phic design)+r architecture (wall decoration)? Is it art or design? We could ask the same question about stained glass, carved seats in Gothic choirs, Picasso’s plates, ballet costumes and sets, or Dali’s, and about thousands of artefacts.

It would be unnecessary to affirm the inseparable dualism of art and design were it not a fact that many of the generation who have entered the teaching profession during the last decade believe, because of their own narrow educational experience in either ‘Design’ or ‘Fine Art’, that art and design are separable. It has even been suggested that the N S A E is seeking to tack design on to art for expedient and political purposes. They have always

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Conference Report been an alloy. The introduction of the word ‘Design’ into the title of our new Society, the N S E A D , clarifies the matter.

At some recent conferences the critical speakers who belabour us seem to think of ‘Design’ only in connection with things that mow-machines, including, of course, computers.

During the last year of my war-service, I was in Egypt in charge of constructing miles of perimeter barbed-wire and ave- nues, not of sphinxes and obelisks, but of smart whitewashed petrol cans upon immaculate sand. The three maxims for a trouble-free life for all ranks were: 1 2 3 The third maxim seems to govern the ‘official’ mind in the political world of design education.

Stuart Macdonald concluded by explaining some points made in the N S A E discussion paper, then indulged in the thankless pursuit of questions before coffee break.

The next speaker was the distinguished author, Ken Baynes of the Design Education Unit, Royal College of Art, London. His contribution, ‘Defining a Design Dimension of the Curricu- lum’, was too valuable for abbreviation and it is hoped to publish the paper in a future issue of J A D E .

Before lunch Nicholas Frewing, Principal of Ravensbourne College of Art and Design, addressed the Conference on the subject of the relationship between art and design in the higher education sector. In particular he referred to recent events at Ravensbourne that had resulted in the closure of the fine art degree course and the consequent establishment of a college of design. It was emphasised that this action resulted from very special circumstances and economic expediency rather than a desire to enhance the design area at the expense of fine art. In Frewing’s view, these events should not be seen as a precedent for the demise of fine art elsewhere in the country.

The afternoon session commenced with an illustrated talk by Robin Child on the work of the art school at Marlborough College. His talk and the work shown on his slides were of such quality that they provided a high spot of the Conference, and it is hoped he will produce an illustrated article for J A D E in the near future.

Before tea the speaker was John Phillipson, Head of Art and Design at Priory School, Portsmouth. His account of the organi- sation of his department provided an important and necessary reminder of the problems of attempting to achieve some measure of integration in the secondary classroom.

After tea Peter Young HMI gave the delegates his views upon design education in England. He recognised that there were some examples of good practice to be found in both art and design and C D T departments. However all too often, despite exaggerated claims to the contrary, much of the work in both subject areas failed to provide a balanced, worthwhile design experience.

If it doesn’t move, pick it up. If you can’t pick it up, blanco it. If it moves, salute it.

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Thursday’s final speaker in the Conference chamber was Robert Clement Art Adviser for Devon, and President-elect of our new society, NSEAD. His paper ‘Developing Craft Activities in School’ is published in this number of JADE.

Following the Thursday’s session the Annual Dinner took place in the Pump Room at which the ~sAE/Berol Bursary award was presented to Katy Macleod. The toast to the NSAE was given by Hywel James, Registrar for Art and Design,

James declared that ‘one feature feeds and sustains my interest above all others in my job as Registrar for Art and Design of the Council for National Academic Awards, and that is the existence of the broad spectrum of practical and theoretical activities encom- passed by the phrase ‘Art and Design’.

It’s a sad fact however that some people, even those directly involved in education (who ought to know better), seem to believe that a rather more tidy job might be done if, to put it in simple terms, design were to be ‘hived-off from art.

It occurs to me that rather like the profitable parts of some nationalised industries have been sold to the private sector in recent years, design is spoken as if being in some way financially sound, likely to prove of direct benefit to British manufacturing industry, relevant, and so forth. Art, by contrast, is regarded as expensive, even wasteful; of little immediate value except per- haps as a recreation for the unemployed (or the unemployable!) self-indulgent and requiring to be cut back.

These sadly economic and even political arguments are now a commonplace: a sort of ‘real-politik‘ of education taken up by those individuals and some national bodies who feel that if you cannot maintain art and design (because the money’s short), drop it quick but hang on to design at any price. The educa- tional value of the relationship, the broad spectrum of which I have spoken, is almost always disregarded in the search for immediate cash savings.

Arguments have been assembled in the last two or three years to encourage design education largely at the expense of art. You may already be aware that the very word ‘art’ is being removed from the titles of certain validating bodies and colleges. I am sure you will remember how, some twenty years ago, the word ‘craft’ was similarly dropped, along with so many valuable activities in that field in higher education.

It is part of the same British disease really-like French and Geography when I was at school. Justified in the short-term as part of a specialised approach to professional education: divide things up, so you can do them really well. Isolate studies from one another, and their inter-relationships will become clear . . . later. How much later? Well, only time will tell.. .

It has always seemed to me that the study of art without design quickly becomes formless and in real danger of becoming turned-in upon itself; usually because in isolation it lacks a frame of reference by means of which its position in historical, critical

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Conference Report and methodological terms can be gauged and precisely located on the part of teaching staffs and students.

In much the same way, Design removed from art frequently falls prey to sterile, quasi-scientific rationalisms, where method- ologies replace thought and systems replace personal originality. The teaching of architecture in the last thirty years or so, and its evident effects in the environment, provide a warning example of such isolation.

One of the great strengths of the subject board and committee structure of the C N A A is the recognition it gives to the existence of groups of academic disciplines and their mutual inter-depen- dence. When the former National Council for Diplomas in Art and Design was merged with CNAA in 1974, its committee and board structure was taken into the Council complete. One new board was added to the existing portfolio and that concerned photography. When this Board was added it led directly within a few years to the approval of a number of degree and postgradu- ate courses in the fields of photography, film, television and video. This, in turn, led to proper recognition being given to such activities already taking place in degree courses in art and design.

The amalgamation of N C D A D with C N A A also led to proper recognition being given to work in business management, tech- nology and communication and cultural studies being fostered and encouraged in degree and postgraduate courses in art and design.

The overall effect then was one of development and not, as had been feared in the early 1970’s, to a submerging of art and design into an organisation whose main concerns were consi- dered to be with science and technology in polytechnics. Areas such as fashion and textile design and graphic design were to benefit from being brought into proximity with subject boards in computing and informatics, and related technologies. Fine art and three dimensional design, in association with the Health and Medical Services Board encouraged the development of degree and postgraduate courses in art therapy and design for disability.

Nevertheless, the central issue remains (as a strength) that art and design are properly recognised by the Council and most of its associated institutions as having a family relationship where features and resemblances are traceable to common origins, and where together they can best cooperate with each other and collaborate with work in new and developing fields.

I believe that the division between art and design which is being promoted now in a number of quarters is being argued on the basis of short-term economic expediences and is not moti- vated by educational or academic imperatives.

Geoffrey Chaucer’s words, ‘Misfortune makes foes of friends’, ring clearly and truly in the present economic climate of re- straint and retrenchment in higher education, and epitomise many of the arguments now being put forth. Arguments in favour of division or specialisation are often advocated by those

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whose acquaintance with education in these fields is at a con- siderable remove from the studio or workshop. As part of my responsibilities with CNAA, I Visit a great many art schools and polytechnic faculties each year and I talk to staff and, more especially, students. For much of the time the integruting experi- ence of being part of a continuum of practice where one activity feeds directly from another is constantly expressed, and where the recognition of the cognate relationship between work in Art and Design provides the stimulus and the courage to break into other, developing fields of activity+ven, sometimes, into show business!

Promotional design as part of a Fashion Marketing course associated with work undertaken on an experimental film area in a Fine Art course at a Polytechnic led recently to students going directly into the enormously successful pop video industry fol- lowing graduation. And who is to say that after a period of rather ephemeral activity, such students might not next be making another ‘Brideshead’ or ‘Chariots of Fire’?

It needs perhaps to be recalled that design as such, does not form a coherent group of activities. On the contrary, it consists of an association of (originally and fundamentally) craft skills, loosely bound together by a common methodology.

Art, you may recall, was usefully (if rather disarmingly) described as an ‘attitude’ in the 1970 Joint Summerson/Cold- stream Report. And while issue might well be taken with this lack of specificity-the very lack of it provides a key to the relationship between Art and Design, that is: a means whereby a wide range of activities may be made coherent and provided with a practical and philosophical frame of reference.

Art and Design together provide an arena within which a whole series of quite diverse, sometimes, even bizarre, activities can take place: not captive to quaint notions of Art on the one hand, or baldly utilitarian definitions of Design on the other, but freely-moving and inter-connecting. Art and Design together provide an element in education which is capable of developing those qualities identified by Tyrrell Burgess in Education After School, (Penguin Books 1977) as being of paramount impor- tance: competence and independence. At its best a broad education in Art and Design promotes such qualities, whereby people (at any age) can make things intelligently and take a justified pride and pleasure in the making of them. At the same time they can also assume the confidence and skill to earn a living by them, if they so wish.

May I conclude by inviting you to raise the Toast to a body which has fully earned its current high reputation in the field of education and which has striven over the years to maintain a vital link between the fields of Art and Design education: The

Friday morning’s session opened with an illustrated talk by Althea McNish, the well-known textile designer who talked about her work, methods and sources of inspiration. The slides

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Conference Report of her fresh and brilliant fabric prints, which seemed to glow with an African spectrum, brought a flood of colour into our monochrome environment and provided a welcome relief from words (a strange thing for the Editor to say, but he has always preferred the visual to the verbal). In a way this talk was a high spot of the Conference, and it is hoped that Althea McNish will provide JADE with an illustrated article in the future.

The next speaker, Sue James of the Epsom School of Art and Design described the difficulties inherent in the present struc- ture of art and design education, and the challenge to cope with change. On the question of school-leavers entering DATEC and Foundation Courses, Sue James commented, ‘A frequent prob- lem in interviewing school leavers for a DATEC diploma course in three dimensional design is that school options have forced a choice between art and woodwork, woodwork and metalwork, art and CDT. Art usually means two-dimensional work mainly concerned with expression, c DT invariably involves laborious, problem-solving exercises meticulously recorded on cartridge paper with pencil-line borders.. . . School timetables are complex and one can sympathise with the pressures which produce crude divisions; with specialist further education it should be possible to redress the balance.

Unfortunately things can and do get worse, many Foundation courses cannot wait to divide students into classified groups. Six months full-time study could just provide a balanced core of fundamental art and design education but too often valuable time is wasted on inappropriate and misunderstood specialised work steering students towards ‘graphics’, ‘textiles’ or ‘fashion’. The other extreme is to direct the whole experience exclusively towards ‘fine art’ which at least has the advantage of a closer relationship with the interests and experience of the staff con- cerned.

All students require a basic experience covering a broad range of attitudes and approaches to art, craft and design, together with a comprehensive selection of materials and processes. Many students have to make choices too early with insufficient experi- ence, resulting in selection or rejection by unsuitable specialist courses.. . .

We are in a period of economic, technological and social change which will inevitably require changing educational pat- terns. If the response is to re-trench and retreat to fewer, smaller, isolated specialist ghettos then sterility and atrophy will result. Inbreeding produces increasingly exaggerated characteristics and extinction’.

After outlining the necessity for the integration of the whole spectrum of thinking in art and design education and for ‘wholeness and flexibility’, Sue James concluded with the sugges- tion, ‘A future pattern may be the provision of a broad basic education with some skills developed in depth, providing a sound fundamental attitude to Art and Design and the ability to apply and adapt this through “topping up” at later intervals

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with short “post-experience” education. This is equally appli- cable to those working in industry or education and may indeed provide the cross-over facility’.

The next speaker was Eileen Adams of the Design Education Unit, Royal College of Art, whose paper ‘Art and design: the multi-faceted role of the art teacher’ further developed her concepts of this role in relation to aesthetic and design aspects of environmental study. Her presentation concentrated upon the art teacher’s attitudes towards and possible contributions to, design education. In addition to this Eileen Adams described her experience at Pimlico School, where she ‘learned of the need to consider a wide range of concerns in art education in addition to studio practice, in order to establish art in all its dimensions within the general education of every pupil in the school’.

‘Working within different timetable slots’, she said, ‘I suffered no loss of integrity, nor experienced any devaluation of my subject discipline. It was not regarded as a servicing agent or as a soft option. It merely provided an appropriate and challenging framework for study. I continued to work as an art teacher, but in different contexts, my work took different directions or had a different bias, depending on the pupils, their needs and expecta- tions. If an art teacher accepts and exploits this situation, then collaboration with other teachers need not necessarily pose any threat. It might be in the context of the expressive arts, where an art teacher might work with a drama and a music teacher; or perhaps in environmental design, an art teacher working with geography and social studies teacher; or media studies, in coop eration with English and social studies teacher; or media studies, in cooperation with English studies teachers. And of course, there is the experience of the art teacher working on his own with a group of pupils, when interaction with others is unneces- sary and undesirable’.

The interesting viewpoint which Eileen Adams has developed on the art teacher’s contribution to the curriculum is manifest in ‘Curriculum Development in Art and Design Education: a Per- sonal View’, an article which appears in this number of J A D E .

The next presentation was by Jim Flood of Loughborough University, Department of Creative Design. In a highly enter- taining talk, well illustrated by practical examples, Flood identi- fied the distinctive features of design and technology and went on to comment on how our formal education system has re- sponded to it as an aspect of our culture.

Flood expressed the view that ‘art and design’ and ‘design and technology’ have “a broad interface but quite distinctly different procedural strategies, and further, that much instructured de- signing and making is justified on an erroneous understanding of the activity of art and design.

As an educational strategy ‘design from first principles’ is disastrous. Students, if they lack adequate practical and knowl- edge resources are likely to produce a very poor response. They are not, as some teachers will claim, learning to design; they are

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Conference Report learning to fail and to typify themselves as ‘not very good at designing and making’-and girls in particular are prone to this response. The teaching of design and technology requires struc- tured experiences in using practical skills and knowledge skills. It is also necessary that students experience success in order to typify themselves as ‘good as this’. We need designers who can interest and excite other people with their ideas-and such confidence rarely comes from negative experiences”.

Friday afternoon’s session opened with a showing of ‘SEA, SEE, C’ a videocassette by Alan Sekers and Roger Elsgood (ILEA). The merits of this exciting film are described by Dr Anthony Hobson in the Book Reviews’ editorial in this number.

The film was followed by a stimulating talk by David Buchan, General Secretary of N ADE (National Association for Design Education), an association which includes teachers of art, craft, technology and CDT as well as architects and engineers.

‘Everybody manipulates the environment in some way’ said Buchan, ‘and in this sense, we are all designers and artists. We all identify problems, use what is available to try to solve them and to assess the extent to which our effort has succeeded or failed.

Often within the act of production itself we enter into a dialogue with the materials, tools and the problems we encoun- ter on the way. The painter sees the result of his painting and is unhappy, makes alterations and is (or is not) better pleased. The engineer, similarly faced with the acid test of reality, runs his machine and is dissatisfied; he adjusts, remodels and modifies all or part, examines, scrutinises and readjusts until he is better pleased. Each eventually reaches a point at which he is reason- ably satisfied. He does not reach a point at which he has arrived at the solution. He will seek refinement, enjoy the sensation which comes with the production of something which, though far from perfect, (it is not given to us to be perfect) suffices elegantly-and which contributes worthily, in however, small a way, to human community. In carrying out this process (and I must stress here that I do not subscribe to the notion of a linear process like a production line-a ‘design process’) both the engineer and the painter have gained in experience-they have learnt by their experimentation. We live and learn.. . ’

After developing his theme on learning from experience and interaction with our environment, Buchan continued, ‘Art and design are aspects of the same process and inseparable parts of a proper educational enterprise. The total environmental and the things we put into it affect both sensibilities and intellect for good or ill whether we like to or not.

The excellent discussion paper produced by the Macdonald committee makes mention of certain great personalities: Morris, Gropius, Mackintosh and Crane (I believe Morris to be the guiding star) none of whom saw art and design as separate entities. All artifacts have aesthetic effect, planned or not. All affect the senses. Art teachers are rightly concerned that art

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should not be set apart as something obscure and precious to be contained within galleries (‘Salon Art’ as Gropius called it), in his How we Live and How we Might Live (1888) Morris writes:

. . . that word Art leads me to my last claim, which is that the material surroundings of my life should be pleasant, generous and beautiful; that I know, is a large claim, but this I will say about it, that if it cannot be satisfied, if every civilised community cannot provide such surroundings for all its members, I do not want the world to go on; it is a mere misery that man has ever existed, and in “Art and Society”. ‘What business have we with Art at all unless all can share it?’

Morris sees art as ‘aesthetic quality’ in life and in one’s approach to work, the quality which turns work into joy and its own reward (it is a sad comment on our society and times that it is slightly embarrassing to say such things-it is to risk being thought a romantic fool!) also the quality which makes the environment rich and elevating to the spirit. Gropius defined an architect as one who will turn deserts into gardens’. . . I heartily concur with the final remark of your discussion document which calls for:

. . . a much broader attitude embracing many aspects of art, craft and design.. . to retain and increase the importance of, and respect for, our area in public education.

This broader attitude, both in advanced vocational courses and in general education is necessary because it seeks to nurture characteristics and potentials which are essentially human and upon which the quality of human society depends.. . .

Buchan concluded by asserting that the capacity for thought, judgement and responsibility which art and design cultivate ‘is something we neglect at our peril’.

The final speaker at the Conference was Stroud Cornock of the School of Fine Art, Leicester Polytechnic. He reflected upon the end of ‘the Coldstream Era’ and argued that, during that era, ‘we set out to treat our work as involving nothing but the tradition of practice; it is this ‘nothing but’ approach which has produced such a serious imbalance, and one which we must redress.. . . Not only do we need to examine what it is that the best practitioners R n m , so that their experience can be tran- slated into knowledge available to education, but we further need to make explicit the principles embodied in educational practice. . .

In a discussion paper circulated at this conference it was suggested that: ‘Drawings are often a surer guide to a designer’s thinking and the quality of that thinking, than verbal analysis’. So that, in some circumstances, drawing can be regarded as a ‘language of thought’: however, the discussion document also suggests that, ‘there has been an over-emphasis on “expres- sion“ . . . (and) the public do not regard art and design as a serious cognitive subject in the curriculum’. In other words, if the electorate and elected paymasters cannot be given a reasoned

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Conference Report account of the nature and value of the core of our work (which is of course tacit), then we may cease to have a recognizable system for art and design education in Britain’.

Cornock put the view that obstacles to change included the anti-academic instincts, ‘the hostility to knowledge’ common to art and design staff in Higher Education, who are appointed as ‘practising artists’, and whose main interests and commitments are not educational: thus knowledge which is essential basis for growth is neglected.

‘If the first obstacle to change is hostility to knowledge’, continued Cornock, ‘then the second is the absence of the research which might generate it’. He then stressed the need for a ‘do-it-yourself development of research in departments of art and design, since at the moment there was now no framework nor provision for it’.

The Conference ended with a forum chaired by the President, Michael Yeomans. With representatives of NADE present, in- cluding the President Bernard Aylward, the main thrust of the discussion was concerned with how to advance the issues raised in the past three days. It was agreed that the time had passed when individual subject-based initiatives were likely to have any great influence on curriculum development. It was felt that a high-level seminar devoted to the place of art, craft, design and technology in the curriculum, perhaps convened by the educa- tion department in a major institution or by the Confederation of Art and Design Associations would be beneficial.

John Steers, NSAE General Secretary, agreed to make avail- able a conference report containing transcripts of all the papers presented at the Conference.

A number of excellent exhibitions were on display throughout the conference. These included ideas for a new logo for the NSEAD by Higher Datec students from Taunton College of Art and Technology, ‘Current Work in Schools’ organised by six MA students at the Royal College of Art, Design Education Department and a fine display of primary and secondary school work related to Katy Macleod’s 1983/84 NSAE/Berol bursary project. Art and design education videos from Ken Baynes’ Channel 4 series ‘Design Matters’ were on view.

The whole Conference was superbly organized by John Steers, the General Secretary, in the manner the Society has come to expect.

Stuart Macdonald

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