Have Some Imagination: Towards a manifesto for arts education will be a free, international conference addressing the transformational value of creative learning for envisioning and sustaining collective futures. It is being organised by the Baltic x Northumbria University Institute and will be held at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, UK on Friday 7th & Saturday 8th February 2025.
As a result of educational policy changes and the impact of austerity on arts spending over recent decades, the delivery of arts education in schools, colleges, and universities has been pitched into an unprecedented crisis. Across geo-political contexts, a narrowly financialised discourse of the arts has come to predominate in public culture, often remaindering arts education as comparatively unworthy of investment when compared with other disciplines supposedly leading to better monetised outcomes and job prospects.
How else might we assess the value of an arts education? How important, even transformative, are the imaginative, world-making capacities of creative learning for society, the planet, the economy? And how should a changed understanding of what or who we think art education is for affect the way in which it should be delivered?
Have Some Imagination will bring together academics, schoolteachers, artists, community activists, students, policy makers and leaders of the creative industries to address present-day challenges. Activities will involve talks, workshops, keynote lectures, and a collective envisioning project to strategise for an arts education of tomorrow.
If you have a contribution to make to this event please send:
Presentations may include academic papers, position papers, field reports on teaching, artist's presentations, utopian or visionary plans, policy considerations, histories of art education, pedagogic theories, and community perspectives.
Deadline for submissions: 6pm Friday 27 September 2024.
Shortlisting will take place after the closing date and successful proposals will be notified by Friday 4 October 2024.
Proposals and questions about the conference should be sent to ronniem@balticmill.com
The Baltic x Northumbria Institute is a collaboration between Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and Northumbria University. It supports experimental artistic and curatorial practice, promotes collaborative research and facilitates the exchange of innovative ideas in accessible ways.
