without a master

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Without a Master: learning art through an open curriculum.

Joanne Lee, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, Nottingham Trent University.

Having been involved in contemporary art and the Higher Education sector for

the last twenty years - as an artist/writer and as a student, lecturer and course

leader - I have witnessed just how persistently my discipline has been

engaged with debates around pedagogic tradition and innovation, and indeed

how ideas of education now pervade the production and curation of

contemporary art.1 In the last few years alone, a host of books on the subject

have been published (with 2009 a particular high-water mark) and were you to

read even a few of these, you would quickly acknowledge the diversity of

approaches practiced within the contemporary field.2 In the UK it seems that,

despite the existence of government approved subject benchmarks, it is hard

to find agreement upon what should be taught or how the teaching might be

1Paul ONeill and Mick Wilsons editorial Introduction in Curating and the Educational Turn offers

a useful list of such projects: Daniel Buren and Pontus HultnsInstitut des Hautes Etudes en Arts

Plastiques, 1996; the Platforms ofDocumenta 11 in 2002; the educational leitmotif ofDocumenta 12

in 2007; the unrealizedManifesta 6experimental art school as exhibition and the associated volume,

Notes for an Artschool; the subsequent unitednationsplaza andNight Schoolprojects;protoacademy;

Cork Caucus;Be(com)ing Dutch: Eindhoven Caucus;Future Academy; The Paraeducation

Department; Copenhagen Free University;A.C.A.D.E.M.Y.;Hidden Curriculum; Tania BruegherasArte de Conducta in Havana;ArtSchool Palestine;Brown Mountain College;Manoa Free University;

and School of Missing Studies, Belgrade. They go on to note a range of sometimes short-lived

institutional models in galleries and museums: Maria Linds work at Kunsverein Mnchen; Catherine

David at Witte de With in Rotterdam; Maria Hlavajova at BAK in Utrecht; Nicolas Bourriaud and

Jrme Sans at Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Vasif Kortun at Platform Garanti Contemporary Art in Istanbul;

and Charles Esches museum model at Rooseum in Malm. (London: Open Editions, 2010) p. 132

An indicative reading list might include such examples as: Heike Belzer and Daniel Birnbaum (Eds)

kunst lehren/teaching art: Stdelschule Frankfurt/Main, (Kln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther

Knig, 2007); Brad Buckley and John Comonos (Eds),Rethinking the Contemporary Art School: The

Artist, the PhD and the Academy, (Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design 2009);

G. James Daichendt,Artist-teacher: A Philosophy for Creating and Teaching(Bristol: Intellect, 2010);

James Elkins, Why Art Cannot Be Taught(Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2001); Steven

Henry Madoff (ed)Art School (Propositions for the 21st

century), (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press,2009); John Reardon and David Mollin (Eds) Ch-ch-ch-changes: artists talk about teaching. Interviews

by John Reardon (London: Ridinghouse, 2009)


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approached; perhaps the only consensus is that there is no consensus. 3 This

chapter will summarise key developments in the history of UK art education

through which such uncertainty has been amplified, as well as exploring

examples of the educational projects where art practice has itself made critical

propositions about pedagogy. In such instances there has often been a

concern with the power relationships at play within teaching and learning, and

with questions of critical mastery: given the focus of the current volume on the

role of art history for artist-teachers, I will consider the often-vexed

relationship between art practice and historical and critical studies within

these debates. I want to conclude by showing how the Fine Art course at

Nottingham Trent University (where Ive worked since 1997) has sought to

respond to these questions, informed by reflections upon the utility of Jacques

Rancires suggestion that learning can take place without a master. 4

3The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education acknowledges something of this reality in its

Subject benchmark statementfor Art and Design, remarking the richness and diversity of art and

design higher education

http://www.qaa.ac.uk/Publications/InformationAndGuidance/Documents/ADHA08.pdf(2008) p. 14

Jacques Rancire, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, translated

by Kristin Ross (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991) The work was originally published in

French in 1987. Rancires proposition resonates through many of the recent publications and events

Ive listed in the first footnotes to this chapter. Whilst much of hiswork has drawn upon the political

significance of aesthetic and philosophical theories from Kant and Schilleret al, The IgnorantSchoolmaster, with its ideas of equality and self-emancipation, owes more to the critical pedagogy of

Freire, Illich and their ilk. Rancire has become one of contemporary arts pre-eminent theorists,

appearing at academic conferences and art fairs alike; indeed so ubiquitous did he become for a time

that in 2005 Artforums online diary Scene and Herdwas able to cast him as the art-world darling du

jour See http://artforum.com/diary/id=9695 Mum's the Bird 10.26.05 His reputation has been built

through such works as The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, The Future of the

Image, The Emancipated Spectator, and The Aesthetic Unconscious and he has been set to work in the

contemporary art academys re-thinking of what might constitute research: the journal Art and

Research devoted an issue to Rancire With and Around Jacques Rancire, Art & Research,Studio

55: Centre for Research in Fine Art Practice Volume 2. No. 1. Summer 2008

http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/v2n1/v2n1editorial.html Tirdad Zolghadr (one of the key participants

in unitednationsplaza) characterises matters nicely, in a wickedly funny description of art seminars:

You sit in a circle because its less formal, someone quotes Barthes, someone criticizes relationalaesthetics and then you all agree on reading RanciresIgnorant Schoolmasterby next week. See

ONeill and Wilson, pp. 162-3.


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The major reforms of British art education in the 1960s laid the groundwork

for what subsequently became todays undergraduate courses in Fine Art.

Charged to develop and formalise an agreed curriculum for art and design,

the government committees led by Sir William Coldstream and Sir John

Summerson debated with key figures in the world of art, industry and higher

education. Their discussions resulted in the introduction of the Diploma in Art

and Design (Dip AD), a qualification devised to be equivalent to the standard

undergraduate university degree, thanks in no small part to the required

inclusion of a written dissertation in art history. The government papers of the

era acknowledge the limited number of academics qualified to teach this new

art history component, as there were only a few courses teaching the subject

as either a major or minor study at university: indeed, committee members

seem to have regarded the role of teaching art history to art students as

something of a job creation scheme for the graduates of these courses, the

effects of which, they hoped might be to further develop art history as a

discipline itself. 5

For me, the most interesting aspect of these reforms is that, just as a

nationwide curriculum for art and design was agreed, something of a wild

card was introduced in the form of the complementary studies element of

each course: this aspect, aimed at broadening the students education, might

include whatever the institution saw fit psychology, sociology, economics

5The teaching of the history of art will need teachers qualified in the subject. First rate teachers are

rare but we believe that the supply will increase with the growth of the subject in the universities. The

introduction of courses in art schools [] will indeed create a new demand and thus promote supply.First Report William Coldstream/Ministry of Education,First Report of the National Advisory Council

on Art Education, Ministry of Education (London: Her Majesty's Stationary Office, 1960) paragraph 25


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and was not to be examined or assessed.6 The provision of such

complementary subjects, which were initially peripheral to the core curriculum,

increasingly came to inflect art and its education, such that these days, the

very heterogeneity of the academic discipline owes a great deal to their

impact.

The Dip AD developed into a Bachelor of Arts degree and Fine Art education

increasingly came to be provided within polytechnics rather than autonomous

art schools. Under the aegis of the Council for National Academic Awards

(polytechnics being unable to award their own degrees) the necessity to

establish parity of esteem across awards given by universities, polytechnics

and colleges began to affect methods of teaching and learning, as art schools

found themselves sharing physical and conceptual space with those from

other disciplines. Polytechnics were also often at the vanguard of

modularisation, which saw the Fine Art curriculum split into discrete aspects,

whose relationship was not always made clear to students.7 In 1992, the

transformation of the polytechnics into new universities, each with their own

degree-awarding powers, brought Fine Art courses into a yet more explicit

relationship to the wider academic culture from which much of the subject had

6Notes prepared for its Chairman Nicolas Pevsner, the National Council for Diplomas in Art and

Design History of Art Panel offer the following comment: Hence quite a variety of subjects are

possible, and we do not want to limit them in any way. Psychology might be suitable, or sociology, or

more factually economics. But one college suggested regional studies, i.e. the geology, geography,

history, archaeology, architecture, economics, etc. of their own region, and that also seems an excellent

scheme. See National Council for Diplomas in Art and Design History of Art Panel (6/63) Sixth

Meeting 22 May 1963, Appendix Paper: Agenda Item 4, pp 4-6, held in the National Archives Kew.7

Some staff also found modularisation to have destroyed the unity of arts education and many found

its structures perplexing. Olivier Richon, currently teaching at the Royal College of Art, recalls this era

critically: The teaching became fragmented and turned into distinct teachable modules with aims and

objectives, and that basically doesnt work with art John Reardon and David Mollin p. 304. Michael

Corris, also interviewed in Reardon and Mollin, describes how many of his then colleagues at OxfordBrookes University found the modular system to be so complex that, like Einsteins Theory of

Relativity [] only a handful of individuals at the university understood how it worked p. 91


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hitherto maintained its distance.8 Meanwhile, the Research Assessment

Exercise (and its successor the Research Excellence Framework), whose

demands have clearly shaped many new academic appointments, has had

the effect of creating Fine Art staff teams who have been encouraged to focus

increasingly upon academic research rather than professional art practice.

(The effect of this upon student experience and aspirations could form the

subject of a chapter in itself.) Right now, if the Bologna Declaration is

accepted, we will see models of education and accreditation (largely following

the UK model) standardised across Europe: it is clear how compliant with

university culture UK art education has become and how far we are now

removed from the art schools of Europe.9 In the UK we have seen a gradual

erosion of the remaining independent art school sector: schools have joined

together because of the need to create economies in the scale of provision,

and many have been incorporated into new or existing universities.10

In this shifting educational landscape, it seems that change has gained

momentum, such that there is relatively swift and seemingly perpetual

8Even whilst the CNAA had sought to ensure parity, art and design courses frequently ploughed their

own furrow. It was indicative that this began right from the moment that students wished to apply for

such courses as they had to do so via the Art and Design Admissions Registry (rather than UniversitiesCentral Council on Admissions or Polytechnics Central Admissions Service)9http://www.ehea.info/Uploads/Declarations/BOLOGNA_DECLARATION1.pdfFor very many art

schools/academies in Europe, the coming standardization of teaching and qualification through the

Bologna process are seen as entirely inadequate for artistic education. A great many of the contributors

to Paul ONeill and Mick Wilsons Curating and the Educational Turn denounce the anticipated

changes.10

For example the formerly independent colleges of Central St Martins (itself an amalgamation of two

once-separate art schools), Chelsea, Camberwell, Wimbledon, London College of Communication and

the London College of Fashion now form a federation as University of the Arts London; and via

intermediary mergers into The Surrey Institute of Art & Design and the Kent Institute of Art & Design,

colleges at Canterbury, Epsom, Farnham, Maidstone and Rochester finally became the University of

the Creative Arts. A few independent colleges remain: as well as the Royal College of Art, there are the

Arts University College at Bournemouth, Cleveland College of Art and Design, University CollegeFalmouth, Hereford College of Arts, Leeds College of Art, Norwich University College of the Arts,

Plymouth College of Art, Ravensbourne.


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reinvention of what should be taught, and how it might best be done. In part

this is driven by a customer-focused approach, concerned with the impact of

student fees upon recruitment and the need to make courses commercially

viable: some have preferred to develop named routes, continuing the tradition

of degree courses in a single media, such as painting, or perhaps innovating

new titles, which they hope will prove attractive in the increasingly competitive

student market, whilst others have emphasized broad-based, interdisciplinary

study, popular amongst students who do not want to specialize at that stage.

As I suggested earlier, despite government initiatives requiring subject areas

to develop Benchmark statements describing their curricula and approaches

to teaching and learning, it seems that there is still apparently little agreement

as to what exactly should be taught. A 2004 Guardian article reported: A

survey this week shows colleges and university arts departments in Britain

agree on very little when it comes to the curriculum for future artists, except,

bizarrely, black and white photography and silkscreen printing. 11 Meanwhile,

that same year, Paul Shakeshaft of Anglia Polytechnic University asserted in

a letter to the Times Higher that Fine Art courses are comparatively formless,

and asked Is there any other degree regime less specific in its objectives,

curriculum or criteria? 12

Across the last decade or so, the debate about art education from school to

university has been marked by a repeated concern with the perceived

11See http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2004/apr/27/newuniversities19922012.highereducation

The survey reported in this article was developed as research for Paul Bonaventura and Stephen

Farthing (eds),A curriculum for artists, (Oxford: The Laboratory, Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine

Art, University of Oxford/New York: New York Academy of Art, 2004)12http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=188089&sectioncode=26 16 April

2004


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difficulty of teaching the subject. The Impossibility of Art Education focused

upon conceptual and political difficulties within the context of the UK National

Curriculum for schools,13 whilst the series of short case studies in Why We

Make Art and Why It Is Taught, demonstrate that family histories and

experiences outside the classroom were seemingly as important as any

aspect of formal teaching in developing artistic inclinations and practices.14 In

John Reardons book of interviews with artists who teach, opinion is divided

between those who feel that art can be taught and those who dont, believing

instead that what they are providing is an environment or set of conditions

within which students may learn to make art or become artists.15 James

Elkins, in his assertively titled book Why Art Cannot Be Taught, admits to

being pessimistic about what happens in art schools and claims that whilst

interesting and valuable things happen in studio art instruction [] I dont

think it involves teaching art. John Baldessari, meanwhile, who was involved

with both Cal Arts and UCLA, makes a similar view plain in an interview with

students of Frankfurts Stdelschule. He says: I dont think art can be taught. I

really dont. But I do think that one of the advantages of an art school is that

the student gets to meet artists, other artists who are practicing.16

Even setting aside such major philosophical or conceptual issues, practical

questions emerge as regards curricula and teaching methods now that

contemporary art itself is an increasingly diverse field, within which a huge

13Geoff Cox, Howard Hollands & Victoria de Rijke (eds) The Impossibility of Art Education, (London:

Camerawords, 1999)14

Richard Hickman, Section Two: Conversations and Reflections Some Mini Case-Studies in Why

We Make Art and Why It Is Taught(Bristol: Intellect 2010) pp. 69-10315

John Reardon and David Mollin (Eds) Ch-ch-ch-changes: artists talk about teaching. Interviews byJohn Reardon (London: Ridinghouse, 2009)16

See Belzer and Birnbaum, p 122


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and sometimes contradictory range of ideas, media and histories are being

explored.17 The contemporary art scene appears to be so preoccupied with

ideas of mobility, itinerancy and the ephemeral as is manifest in the current

culture of projects, residencies, workshops, biennials, art fairs, festivals and

the like - that the very discipline itself seems in flux.18 In this climate, how

might we agree what kinds of skills and knowledge are needed by students?

Given the subject of this current volume of essays, which asks about the

importance of art history for art education in the UK, how can the subject be

brought to students in such a way as to be relevant to those engaged in such

diverse practices and approaches? Given the very limited teaching time

available within the average critical studies module, and the rather meagre

amount of credit points awarded for such study, it is hard to see how a survey

course could be anything other than perfunctory in its coverage; even a

course focusing instead upon certain very particular themes would find it

difficult to map the territory satisfactorily. And yet, with the increasing

heterogeneity of contemporary art and the hybridisation of cultural forms,

there is an argument for dealing with the still broader conceptions of visual

culture, cultural studies and so forth, though here the scale of the field even

more clearly exceeds the timetable. In terms of equipping students with useful

knowledges that would aid their studies one can recognise a plethora of other

17Alex Farquharson demonstrates this range rather neatly when he lists artist Carsten Hollers diverse

activities: zoologist, botanist, paediatrician, physiologist, psychologist, occupational therapist,

pharmacist, optician, architect, vehicle designer, evolutionary theorist and political activist Before

and After Science,frieze. No 85. 2004 p. 9318

In 2011, for example, Pirate Camp set up its Artists Itinerant Campsite at the Venice Biennale

http://www.pirate-camp.org/ and a series of On The Road events across Europe focused on cultural

mobility http://www.on-air-mobility.org/timetable/on-the-road/ whilst the Artists in Transit project

tried to explore what mobility really meant for artists today http://blog.igbk.de/about/ and the Identityand Itinerancy symposium at National Galleries of Scotland considered the rootless, peripatetic nature

of art practice http://www.axisweb.org/dlForum.aspx?ESSAYID=18150


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options, from aesthetics and philosophy through reception theory and the like,

or one might take a more radical tack and suggest an exploration of

contemporary science and its intersection with art, in order to allow a clearer

understanding of the increasingly technologized world. Maybe a study of

economics might skill students to deal more effectively with funding structures

or the art market; or, perhaps as a counter to perceived capitalist excess,

should we now focus instead upon ideas of sustainability and

resourcefulness? The only thing that seems clear is that there is a grab bag of

histories and theories all of which couldoffer something relevant, useful or

challenging to the contemporary art student. Faced with such practicalities,

what on earth should we teach?

Such questions are increasingly emerging through art projects, the

development of which seems to suggest a sense of dissatisfaction in the art

world with art education as it is. One key example was the cancelled

Manifesta 6, which sought as part of its agenda to create an independent art

school in Cyprus, and which transmogrified into unitednationsplaza, an

exhibition as school: initiated by Anton Vidokle, and running in Berlin

between 2006-07, it developed out of a the tradition of Free Universities, and

involved over a hundred artists, writers and theorists in its seminars and

events.19 It continued in a new manifestation in Mexico City, as well as the

year-long Night Schoolproject at New Yorks New Museum, which began in

January 2008.20 Vidokle provided the informative appendix An Incomplete

Chronology of Independent Art Schools at the end of his essay Exhibition as

19http://www.unitednationsplaza.org/

20http://museumashub.org/node/48


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School in a Divided City, which set out the rationale behind the Manifesta

project, and it is clear that the range and diversity of the listed

independent/experimental art schools and collaborative educational projects

demonstrates a recurrent preoccupation with pedagogy that is rarely seen in

other disciplines.21 Even within the formal higher educational sector, a host

of cells, think-tanks and symposia have debated the seemingly temporal,

mobile and global future of art/art education: Edinburgh College of Arts

Future Academy project has appeared in Tokyo, Mumbai, Melbourne and

elsewhere, and the Stdelschules Gasthofproject, which invited students

from outside the institution to come and stay as if in a guesthouse, involved

cooking and similar shared activities.22 Whilst there is a recognition of

historical precedents, (as in Vidokles list of independent schools) there is, it

seems, a paucity of specifically art historical reference points; the discursive

focus of such projects is frequently upon philosophical and political

approaches instead. The masters here are not old ones, but the new masters

of contemporary theory, from a variety of disciplines.

This, then, is the context within which I have found myself teaching Fine Art.

For the last fourteen years, Ive worked at Nottingham Trent University, on a

broad-based, interdisciplinary course where the students work alongside

each other in studios and workshops involved in painting, sculpture, print,

installation, where they make live work, films or photography, and where they

deal with process, materials or form, or perhaps pursue conceptual or

curatorial practices without the production of artefacts. The course has

21

http://manifesta.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/NotesForAnArtSchool.pdf22http://www.futureacademy.info/and the catalogue edited by Dirk Fleischmann and Jochen Volz

Gasthof 2002, (Frankfurt am Main: Staatliche Hochschule fr Bildende Knste - Stdelschule, 2003)


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around two hundred and seventy students across three years, the majority of

whom have had a years foundation study between school and university,

though we also have mature students who arrive with a variety of prior

learning experiences. When I first began working there, the course structure

was quite standard for the UK, comprising the usual mix of modules in studio

practice alongside smaller modules in historical and critical studies

(something that we had titled Studio Theory in what was a relatively vain

attempt to get students to understand the links between such study and their

studio practice), as well as modules in workshop skills (covering the more

technical aspects of making) and professional skills (focusing upon CV

writing, how to prepare proposals and the like).

I was initially employed to teach in the studio in relation to practice, offering

one-to-one tutorials, group critiques, and so forth; to run workshops in

photography and also to deliver lectures and to run group seminars dealing

with historical and critical aspects of photography, moving image and print, an

area initially defined as being my area of expertise. This latter kind of

teaching was mirrored by some members of staff who also gave lectures, set

and marked essays, supervised dissertations, etc., but others had no

involvement at all in the specific delivery of historical or theoretical ideas, a

situation that had developed over time out of some perception of variations in

our expertise. Already by the time I joined the staff, the notion of a basic art

historical survey course had disappeared from the curriculum, largely because

it was believed that this was something the students would have encountered

at foundation level, but also because the shift of contemporary arts interests


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towards visual culture, cultural studies and studies of identity (through

psychoanalysis, feminism, queer theory, postcolonialism, etc.) had changed

the emphases in what it seemed necessary for students to encounter. The

curriculum was a veritable tangle of art history, philosophy and critical theory.

Change initially came about, as so often in education, because of

contingencies: staff members retired or moved on to jobs elsewhere, new

people joined the team, and as the personnel changed we continued to

debate the relationship of practice to history and theory. In part, this focused

upon the not always positive impact of the dissertation: we found that this

relatively modest essay of around five or six thousand words always seemed

to disrupt the students studio practice such that they stopped making for

months in their crucial final year of study - not because they were really

concentrating upon the research and writing, but usually because they were

simply worrying about it. For what was a relatively minor component of their

final years study (being worth a mere twenty credits out of one hundred and

twenty), the majority of students would become deeply anxious, and in this

state, many would elect to write about topics barely related to their own work -

despite advice to the contrary - perhaps because they believed that there was

some easily accessible material available on certain ideas which could be

easier to work on. Often, having read around their topic in books and journals,

they would then adopt a pseudo-academic voice that seemed utterly divorced

from their own concerns. Within this context art history could thus ultimately

become an obstacle rather than a support to art education counter to the

originally conception of educational reformers like Coldstream. We became


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aware that the existing models did not serve our students well in terms of

building skills in thinking critically and productively about their work and its

place in the world. We undertook staff development activities to try to change

this, working with colleagues from projects such as Writing PAD (Writing

Purposefully in Art and Design) and the Centre for Learning and Teaching in

Art and Design; subsequently, we ran research and writing workshops to skill

the students and raise their confidence, but gradually a sense emerged that

more fundamental change was necessary if we were to develop a properly

symbiotic relationship between practising and theorising art in a learning

environment.23

It would be a poor pedagogic strategy that relied wholly upon ones own

experience as a student, whether this be a reaction to the perceived failings of

the system one had personally encountered, or indeed a replication of its

apparent successes: the disciplinary field shifts over time and current

students expectations and backgrounds do not replicate ones own. I have

found, however, that some issues seem to persist, most notably in terms of

the relationship of history and theory to practice. Speaking to art students in

contemporary institutions, it is still not uncommon for many of them to ask

why, as practitioners, they have to engage with such stuff at all, and it seems

that Fine Art courses rarely make a convincing case in reply. My own art

education (at Sheffield City Polytechnic) was marked by a perceived lack of

23Writing PAD exists to promote the adoption of models of good practice that encourage inclusive

approaches to the purposes and possibilities of writing. Such models will bridge the gap between

studio-based practice and academic theory that frequently characterises Higher Education in Art &

Design. See http://www.writing-pad.ac.uk/ . CLTAD operates as part of University of the Arts London,in conjunction with the Royal College of Art to provide professional development activities for staff

working in art and design higher education http://www.arts.ac.uk/cltad/ .


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transparency in this respect: whilst there were notable exceptions, many staff

were not at all clear in articulating their own view of the matter, let alone

suggesting ways in which artists at the beginning of their career might

approach it. The uncertainty was increased by the division of the curriculum

into aspects taught by discrete teams: one was sent elsewhere to non-studio

tutors for lectures and seminars (in my case to a department of the history of

art, design and film), where I rarely encountered any attempt to discuss the

material studied in terms of its utility for practitioners. Despite being the sort of

student who was excited by critical ideas, I confess I did not find the

theoretical curriculum compelling or relevant to my emerging practice, and of

course the situation was exacerbated for those students who were already

disinclined to engage with such material.

At Nottingham Trent University, the opportunity to address these persistent

issues came with the request that all courses within the School of Art &

Design undertake a process of re-design, in which we would reconsider our

module structure and curriculum in light of the changing demands of

education in the twenty-first century. It also coincided with our internal

agreement that, in order to make sense for students of the relationship

between the various aspects we thought they needed to study, allstaff on the

course would teach allparts of the curriculum. Thus, we created a new course

structure in which the formerly discrete aspects of practice, technical

workshop skills, professional practice and historical and critical studies were

combined in holistic modules with assignments that made clear the inter-

related nature of all the above for artists. The new structure manifests the


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approach we were previously struggling to create, and demonstrates the

relationship of making, thinking and working professionally.

The programme does not offer a specifically art historical lecture series, but

alongside the regular seminars, workshops and tutorials, all students attend

weekly Contexts sessions, where staff explore the various professional,

historical, critical and theoretical contexts within which our own work is made.

They also participate in the Live programme, a weekly public talks series

presenting visiting artists, critics, theorists, activists, curators, etc., where art

history and critical thinking are in dialogue with diverse contemporary art

practices. We try to ensure that they encounter diverse voices and differing

opinions, frequently using various forms of team teaching, and students are

encouraged to recognise the critical feedback from their peers as being

equally as important as that from staff.

Rather than producing traditional essays, students address a cumulative

series of shorter assignments, which are brought together into a body of work

for final assessment. These develop the thinking through their practice in

relation to historical and critical contexts, as well as the current professional

environment. 24 They begin with a statement of intent setting out both the

practical and conceptual intentions for their work; it requires they develop an

annotated bibliography of the exhibitions, books, articles, films, web

resources, etc., which they plan to explore in support of their practice. Other

written assignments include critical reviews where students examine

24Emma Cocker, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University, reflects upon the place

of writing in this strategy on the a-n website: http://www.a-n.co.uk/students/article/1219014


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exhibitions or events relating to their own work, and a series of linked pieces,

in which students present and interrogate the historical and critical contexts

for their practice, before positioning themselves in relation to those contexts.

The timing and content of these tasks are designed to support the students

development as a reflective practitioner. They are gathered for assessment in

a Research Portfolio, which also brings together Documentation of their

completed artwork; an articulation of their Practical Research process

(making); tutorial reports (where they record, reflect and suggest the action

they will take as a result of tutorial/seminar feedback) and evidence of group

projects through which they have planned and realised exhibitions or other

events. 25

At the heart of our course philosophy is a concern for the students to

determine their own learning: we provide a structure that will enable them to

explore, through practice and through theory, those ideas that they

themselves find interesting and suggestive. This open curriculum isnt no

curriculum: the curriculum is negotiated throughout the students study, with

each person defining whatthey will explore, and howthey will go about it. The

assessment criteria, as defined by our module learning outcomes, are as

rigorous as might be found on any other higher education programme, but the

specificity as to exactly how those outcomes are reached can be quite

different for each student. These individual approaches are brought back into

the course as a whole: although they receive some one-to-one tutorial

25The 2011 report from External Examiner Mo Throp (Chelsea School of Art: University of the Arts

London) recognises the strengths of this programme which approaches the unit holistically and

describes how the Research Portfolio acts as supportive research for the ongoing developing practice.It demands that the student identify the context for their own ideas and that they are able to think

critically and analytically about their own development as artists. http://www.ntu.ac.uk/cadq/


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support, the discussion and feedback largely takes place through group

sessions of various sizes and constitutions, involving staff and members of

the students peer group. In these sessions it is not just the person presenting

work who is learning: staff and students come together collectively to share

ideas and discussion. Kiyoshi Okutsu, Professor of Aesthetics at Japans

Yamaguchi University formulates these principles well: At university [] it is

not a matter of someone who has knowledge conveying it to someone who

does not. When I teach, I try to work together with students to jointly get to

know something.26 In this approach there are no masters (old or otherwise)

but rather a group of people in dialogue with one another, and with

professional, historical and critical questions.

All of which brings me finally to Jacques Rancires The Ignorant

Schoolmaster, with its insistence that learning can and should take place

without a master. This curious book tells the story of one Joseph Jacotot and

his nineteenth-century pedagogic experiments, but, as its translator Kristin

Ross points out in her introduction, readers often experience a real sense of

uncertainty concerning the identity of the books narrator: The reader [] is

not quite sure where the voice of Jacotot stops and Rancire begins.

Rancire slips into Jacotots text, winding around or worming in; his

commentary contextualizes, rehearses, reiterates, dramatizes, elaborates,

continues Jacotot.27 For Ross, the uncertainty caused by this ventriloquism is

26Kiyoshi Okutsu Metronome Think Tank Tokyo in Clmentine Deliss (ed)Metronome No. 11 What

is to be done? Tokyo (Paris: Metronome Press 2007) p. 24527

Kristin Ross Translators Introduction in Jacques Rancire, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five

Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), p. xxii I have chosenas a result to name both protagonists in the formulation Jacotot/Rancire wherever the uncertainty

persists.


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productive: being unclear as to who exactly is speaking, the effect is of

science-fiction time-travel, serving to bring Jacotots revolutionary ideas once

more right into the present, ourpresent, via Rancires own philosophical

relation to the ideas and events of 1968, from which context the book

emerged.

The Ignorant Schoolmasteropens with our introduction to Jacotot. An

esteemed figure in post-revolutionary France, he had been an artilleryman, an

instructor in the Bureau of Gunpowder, secretary to the Minister of War,

substitute for the Director of the cole Polytechnique, had risen to become a

deputy in the French government, and had also been a lecturer in rhetoric,

analysis, languages, mathematics and law, amongst several other subjects.

His success was disrupted, however, with the restoration of the Bourbons,

after which he was forced into exile in Belgium. In receipt of a half-pay

professorship in French literature at the University of Louvain (Leuven), he

found himself in the challenging situation of having a host of students who

wanted to study with him, but with whom he had no common language: he

spoke French and they, Flemish. Rather fortuitously, however, a bilingual

edition of Fnelons 1699 work Tlmaque had recently been published in

Brussels, and with this thing in common Jacotot taught his students French.

Or, more precisely, he gave them this book with instructions (via an

interpreter) to learn and repeat the French text over and over until they could

recite it. As a result, without any further instruction and without a teachers

explication, they managed to learn the language, such that subsequently they

were able to write essays (in French) expressing their opinions of the book


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and its ideas. It was later reported by his contemporaries that Jacotot had

wondered: How could these young people, deprived of explanation,

understand and resolve the difficulties of a language entirely new to them?

[] And how surprised he was to discover that the students, left to

themselves, managed this difficult step as well as many French could have

done.28

At the heart of this anti-method was an understanding that the desire to learn

was crucial: Jacotot asks himself if wanting was all that was necessary for

doing 29 Most art students arrive in colleges and universities with exactly such

a desire, but I have tended to agree with the psychotherapist and essayist

Adam Phillips who, following Freud, suggests that education is not always

enlivening. 30 I have seen how often students interest is lost or compromised

upon encountering a subject in higher education. This can happen for a

number of reasons: sometimes students are required to study modules they

feel (perhaps wrongly) have no direct relevance to them and this can erode

their interest in the whole subject; in other cases, encountering the rigours of

higher level critical thinking and its challenge to what students have come to

believe is accepted wisdom can seriously disturb their confidence such that

they feel that they cannot now trust their own opinion without having

completed extensive, seemingly overwhelming reading/research.

In order to maintain students interest, and thus enable their wanting to learn, I

would argue we benefit from thinking differently about teaching. Recent

28

Rancire, p. 229Rancire, p. 2

30Adam Phillips, The Beast in the Nursery, 2nd edn (London: Faber and Faber, 1999), p. 23


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research in the US, funded by the Teagle Foundation, has explored a range of

so-called open curricula within liberal arts colleges, and has found that

students exercising their choice about what to study become more active

learners (to use the jargon), who develop unusual levels of individual

motivation and a demonstrable passion for learning.31 The way in which this

happens seems to rely upon the relatively simple mechanisms of doing,

questioning and exploring, and whilst some students surveyed admitted they

avoided aspects of the curriculum perceived as more difficult, on the whole

the students confidence is such that they feel more able to deal with

unexpected or challenging material.

Jacotot/Rancire recognised that young children find out about the world

around them by noticing things and asking questions of/about those things.

Similarly, the Flemish students had attended to the comparison of the French

and Flemish texts and were able to learn the new language as a result of

considering and questioning what they had noticed, extrapolating verb

conjugations, sentence structures and so forth from the repetitions, patterns,

similarities and differences they could see. As Rancire comments: Lets call

the act that makes an intelligence proceed under the absolute constraint of a

will attention.32 He continues: It makes no difference whether the act is

directed at the form of a letter to be recognised, a sentence to be memorised,

a relation to be found between two mathematical entities, or the elements of a

31The Foundation supports the development of innovative curricula and pedagogies with a specific

focus on liberal arts education. A Teagle Foundation Working Group White Paper, The Values of the

Open Curriculum: An Alternative Tradition in Liberal Education (June 2006) The report is available athttp://www.teaglefoundation.org/learning/pdf/2006_brownwg_whitepaper.pdf32

Rancire, p. 25


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speech to be composed.33 The Ignorant Schoolmasterasserts: Whoever

looks always finds. He doesnt necessarily find what he was looking for, and

even less what he was supposed to find, but he finds something new to relate

to the thing that he already knows.34 Learning is thus all about making

connections between that which is already known and that which one is

encountering for the first time. Rancire goes on to suggest that we use our

attention and artistic research (he uses this term even when speaking of

broader conceptions of learning) in relation to that which we wish to know.35

He advises that we should then attempt to recount how we feel about what we

have found, and in expressing this to others allow them to feel it also, despite

the inevitable arbitrariness of language.36

Earlier, I indicated that Jacotot/Rancire even went so far as to suggest it is

possible for someone who was ignorant of a subject or language to teach

another person that subject, and Jacotot ran classes in piano and painting,

two subjects of which he was notably incompetent.37 For Jacotot, explication

is the myth of pedagogy, because he realised that people had long been able

to learn things without the intervention of a teacher to explain them indeed

one might go further and say people learn mostthings in their life without

direct explanation.38 The book gives the example of an illiterate mother

teaching her child to read: whilst the mother does not herself know the words,

she knows how to see in his eyes, in the childs features, when he is doing

33Rancire, p. 25

34Rancire, p. 33

35Rancire, p. 70

36

Rancire, p. 7037Rancire, pp. 14-15

38Rancire, p. 6


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work, when he is pointing to the words in a sentence, if he is attentive to what

he is doing.39 That is, she knows whether or not the child points to the same

word on the page and says the same thing each time: she knows whether he

is fooling about and trying to pull the proverbial wool over her eyes! According

to Rancires formulation, The ignorant one himself will do less and more at

the same time. He will not verify what the student has found; he will verify that

the student has searched. He will judge whether or not he has paid

attention.40 So, whilst there is a subject being learnt (in this case how to

read), the teacher merely confirms the students attention, rather than the

content of that learning.

Such an approach is at odds with the apparent role of a university lecturer,

who is, of course, usually employed because of their subject knowledge - but

the situation does not need to be considered in such binary terms. As a

lecturer, I am not ignorant of my subject (though I recognise my knowledge is

not comprehensive), but as I have already indicated, I prefer to see my

relationship with students as being dialogic, conversational even; together we

explore, with interest, our existing knowledge/s and together we try to make

sense of the new things we encounter. For Jacotot/Rancire, if masters

explicate the content of a book to their students there is always an innate

power relationship at work. The system, in effect, is self-perpetuating: there is

a promise that tomorrow, if you, the student, listen well to your masters

explications, you will understand more, you will take another step along the

road to knowledge, but you will always remain behind, the masters superior

39Rancire, p. 31

40Rancire, p. 31


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position. What especially interests me about Jacotot/Rancires method is that

it productively flattens the hierarchy between lecturer and student, teacher

and learner. Such a project enables a critical debate between staff and

students about what is to be learnt and about the state of knowledge in the

contemporary field, such that effectively all involved are simultaneously both

teachers and learners. It excites me that such a situation makes possible a

frank exchange about current (and future) art, and its place in the world.

At conferences and in publications devoted to questions of teaching and

learning, it is now not at all unusual to see the approaches I have been

describing being embraced across a variety of disciplines as examples of

good and innovative practices.41 When students devise their own projects

they are more inclined to learn independently and deeply; they learn through

doing, which mobilises both practical and conceptual skills; they often have to

liaise with other people as collaborators or audience; the learning itself takes

place through practically testing things out, and through a mix of critical,

intellectual consideration and play or intuition: such approaches allow for

different learning styles and cater for multiple intelligences.42

41See the resources gathered at The Creativity Centre, University of Brighton, which make clear how

creative inquiry is of relevance whatever the discipline.

http://www.brighton.ac.uk/creativity/resources/index.php 42SeeHeather Fry, Steve Ketteridge, Stephanie Marshall,Handbook for Teaching and Learning in

Higher Education, (London: Routledge 3rd

Ed ,2008) pp. 18-21 where learners are defined as Activists,

Reflectors, Theorists and Pragmatists. The Higher Education Academy also offers a summary on its

Engineering Subject Centre site: http://www.engsc.ac.uk/learning-and-teaching-theory-guide/learning-

styles Howard GardnersFrames of Mind: The Theory ofMultiple Intelligences, (New York: Basic

Books 1985) proposed that each person has a unique cognitive profile involving eight primaryintelligences: Spatial, Linguistic, Logical-mathematical, Bodily-kinesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal,

Intrapersonal, Naturalistic.


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Of course there are problems to overcome. Some students find independent

learning very difficult: many have become accustomed to being taught to the

test and they would honestly prefer to be told what to do rather than doing the

difficult work of thinking for themselves. Such students dont want to be

intellectually emancipated, they simply want to get a good degree, which

means being told exactly how to succeed at a rather superficial level, rather

than the deeper learning we would advocate. 43 With the Browne Reviews

emphasis upon universities as engines of economic prosperity and its

assertion that, students are best placed to make the judgment about what

they want to get from participating in higher education, there is clearly work to

do in articulating the value of an open curriculum. 44 We could start with the

contention from Gordon Brown (the former Dean of MIT, rather than the

erstwhile Prime Minister) that, we are not preparing students for the world of

today, or the world that teachers have grown up in; we are preparing students

for a world that we can barely imagine 45 Developing students own abilities to

learn (and then to be critical about what they have encountered) seems a

better long-term bet than focusing narrowly upon a canon of current

knowledge.

43Colin Bryson of Nottingham Business School writes: The need to get a 'good degree' makes

assessment the main driver for students - there is too much focus on the narrow purpose of attaining a

grade, the magical 2:1. The key purpose of assessment - learning - gets lost. See

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=401576 For Peter M. Senge: When

education is driven by incessant pressures to perform on standardized tests, get good grades, and get

into the right college, in order to get a good job and make lots of money, then education reinforces the

consumerism and economic orthodoxy that drive the present global business system. Id argue that

part of the duty of education is to discourage students from simply accepting this status quo. Senge in

Education for an Interdependent World: Developing Systems Citizens in Andy Hargreaves, Ann

Lieberman, Michael Fullan & David Hopkins (eds) Second international handbook of educational

change, Volume 2, (Dordrecht: Springer, 2010) p.13544

Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education: An Independent Review of Higher Education

Funding and Student Financehttp://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/corporate/docs/s/10-1208-securing-sustainable-higher-education-browne-report.pdf p2545

Quoted in Senge p. 134


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One has to start from where the student her/himself actually is, and for me

this means forgetting about expectations of where they ought to be in their

learning. If one actually talks with students, one swiftly realises that they have

a whole host of skills, knowledge and interests, and these may well differ from

the ones I might have been expecting, which in turn challenges my own

conceptions of what it might be important to learn right now. Working without

a relatively fixed canon of knowledge empowers myself and the students;

together we negotiate the shifting necessities of a world that is in flux, and

formulate future options. Anton Vidokle offers a neat summation: The actual

activities that typically take place in an art school experimentation,

scholarship, research, discussion, criticism, collaboration, friendship

contribute to a continuous process of seeking out and redefining the potential

in practice and theory. 46 This willingness to explore and test out are echoed

in the Teagle Report suggesting that students who have experienced an open

curriculum display a sort of fearlessness about encountering new ideas and

problems. 47 I cannot think of a better goal in education (art or otherwise) and

I remain convinced that it can, and indeed must, be achieved without a

master.

46Anton Vidokle Education to School: unitednationsplaza in Paul ONeill and Mick Wilson (ed)

Curating and the Educational Turn, (London:Open Editions2010)47A Teagle Foundation Working Group White Paper, The Values of the Open Curriculum: An

Alternative Tradition in Liberal Education (June 2006) p. 8