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 making arts education seem unworthy when contrasted with disciplines with supposedly better monetised outcomes and job prospects.
The conference will feature an array of performative lectures, round tables and interactive workshops designed to ignite meaningful dialogue, innovative thinking and strategise for an arts education of tomorrow. Together, we can envision and create a more inclusive, imaginative, and impactful landscape for arts education, ensuring that every voice is heard, and every perspective is valued.
The full conference schedule, including keynotes, activities and detailed session times will be announced in early January 2025. Lunch and refreshments provided.
Please book single tickets for each day of the conference you wish to attend.If you are no longer able to attend the conference please return your ticket or contact us on communicationsteam@balticmill.com
9.30 – 10.45
Opening Provocations – Main Space
Jesse Darling
Bolanle Tajudeen
11 – 12.30 – Session 1
How Does an Artist Learn (Panel 1 of 2) - Main Space
Graham Ellard, How to Work Better – the crit, examined.
Hestia Peppé, Neuroqueering at Art School
Judith Winter, Full Circle: Reclaiming the Foundation Course for Uncertain Times.
Claudette Davis-Bonnick and David Cross, Beyond Sight: Transforming Creative Arts Education for Vision-Impaired Students
Education for Creative Industries (Panel) - Cinema
Emma Coffield & Katie Markham, Re-thinking the deficit model of employability
Dave O’Brien, The class crisis in access to creative higher education
Tamsyn Dent & Tessa Read, What works for increased EDI in creative higher education? Introducing Making the Creative Majority (2023) the APPG for Creative Diversity report on post 16 creative education in the UK.
Kate Shorvon, Producing ‘job-ready’ creative graduates. Do Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) reinforce inequality in the creative economy or offer models of transformation/resistance?
How Artists Learn: a Lexicon (Performance Lecture) - Cube
Richard Allen
School Play / Sensorial Spectors (Performance Lecture) - Level 1 Studio
Owen Parry, Marc Hulson, Pat Naldi & Erika Tan / Corin Sworn
To creatively co-produce a manifesto for arts education (Workshop) - Level 2 Art Studio
Judy Thomas & Florence Darling
12.30 – 13.30 – Lunch Break
13.30 – 15.00 - Session 2
Rethinking National Curricula (Panel 1 of 2) - Main Space
Bex Harvey, Creative Teaching V Creative Facilitation: Drawing positive elements from both to form a new art curriculum approach.
Mim Monk & Fiona Crouch, Leading and collaboration: empowerment in action
Beverley Briggs, “Meeting them where they are at” – recognising and building upon children’s invisible literacies.
Jill Duncan, Engagement for all - the impact of gallery engagement upon the student experience and classroom practice.
Experimental Culture: Then and Now (Panel 1 of 2) - Cinema
Robin Deacon, Licence Fee as Tuition Fee: Screen-Based Acquisitions of Cultural Literacy on the BBC and Channel 4 (1982 – 1993)
Kate Sloan, IndustryCollaboration and Radical Learning: Sonia Sheridan’s Generative Systems Course and 3M
Heike Roms, Event as parallel institution: The changing fate of the workshop
Ground Plans for a School of Future Performance (Workshop) - Cube
Adrian Kear, Richard Allen & Sian Rees
Exploring and Articulating Imagination (Workshop) - Level 2 Art Studio
Helen Burns & Sara Pastore
Mani Kambo: In Conversation, Level 2 Exhibition Space
Mani Kambo & Donna Chambers
15.15 – 16.45 Session 3
Learning in Cultural Institutions (Panel) - Main Space
Rebecca Huggan, Responsive and Peer-led: The NewBridge Project
Chris Roberts & Gabriel Birch, Learning in Cultural Institutions: Foundation beyond the Studio
Emma McGarry & Amy McKelvie, What if it’s not about what ‘works’ but what ‘matters’?
Imagining Alternative Worlds (Panel 1 of 2) - Cinema
Lizzie Lovejoy, We Are Culture
Steve Klee, Predicting Imagination: Without Creative Activity, There Is No Imaginative Ability
Ruth Beale & Natasha Bird, The Hundred Club: towards a collaborative ethos for exploring social justice issues and child led creativity
Melisa Maida & Bex Mather, Creative Sanctuaries
The Neoliberal Academy (Panel) - Cube
Campbell Edinborough, Spaces of Ambiguity and Resistance: Arts Practice in the Neoliberal University
Amelia Jones & Benjamin Nicholson, System Failure: The Neoliberal University and Teaching in the Arts and Humanities
Tero Nauha, Heterodox proposal to challenge austerity in arts and culture
Distraction in Action (Workshop) - Level 1 Studio
Moyra Derby & Flora Parrott
Sustainable Arts Practice (Workshop) - Level 2 Art Studio
The Young Producers
17.00 – 17.30 - Session 4
Have Some Imagination (Reflection Session) – Main Space
Sarah Munro
Gavin Butt
17.30 – 19.00
Drinks Reception in Riverside Terrace – Ground Floor
9.30 – 10.15
Opening Provocations – Main Space
The Young Producers
10.30 – 12.00 – Session 1
How Does an Artist Learn (Panel 2 of 2) - Main Space
Lukasz Jastrubczak, The Games of CentrumCentrum
Kate Liston, Observing learning: approaches for HE art from infant ‘educarers’
Oreet Ashery, A Placeholder
Andrew Bracey & Laura Onions of Speculative Matterings, Speculative Matterings: Re-imagining the Art School Studio
Experimental Cultures (Panel) - Cinema
Marion Harrison, outtakes, outcomes, takeouts and hangouts: an artist presentation on lessons learned for the future from 25 years teaching fine art in HE
Sarah Edith James, When Art could Change the World: Learning from Alternative Art Schools under Socialism
Sophia Yadong Hao, It’s a whole space and a world
Arts Education Towards Criminal Justice (Panel) - Cube
Deidre O’Neill, Film as a radical creative tool
Aylwyn Walsh & Sarah Bartley, Justice, Abolition, and Imagination: arts education in communities affected by the criminal justice system
Alice Myers, Prison Arts Education and the Practice of the Interstice
Theatricalizing the Classroom / Learning to Act: Making Sites of Making (Performance Lecture) - Level 1 Studio
Paul Stewart / Beth Kurkjian
Towards (re)assembly of education (Workshop) - Level 2 Art Studio
Sarah Bailey & Kate Houlton (Heart of Glass)
12.00 – 13.00 – Lunch Break
13.00 – 14.30 - Session 2
Imagining Alternative Worlds (Panel 2 of 2) - Main Space
Izzy Finch, Art Is A Right, Not A Privilege
Marianna Tsionki, Reimagining Arts Education in Times of Crisis: The Case of the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA)
Haorui Yu, Rewiring the Artistic Mind: AI, 'Chineseness', and the Evolution of Creative Learning in the Digital Age
The Value of Arts Education (Panel) – Cinema
Pauline Moger & Sophie Ward, Should we continue to teach arts subjects in schools?
Lorraine Yang, Arts Education as Self-Critique: A Troubled Reaffirmation of Bildung
Victoria Jaquiss, Arts for Art’s Sake, Creativity right across the Curriculum
Health and Aesthetic Education (Panel) - Cube
John Cussans, From the Education of the Senses to Creative Health: Reimagining Aesthetic Education for the 21st Century
Garry Nicholson, Simple Lines, Solid Outcomes: The Health and Wellbeing Benefits of Adult Community Art Classes
Chris Bogle, Embracing A.D.H.D. and a neurodiversity informed approach to practice as research
John Quinn, The Impact of Collaborative Storytelling through Movement and Visual Art
Learning from Feminist Archives (Panel) – Level 1 Studio
Rebecca Fortnum & Marita Fraser, Teaching, Practicing, Researching for a Feminist Future
Catherine Grant & Althea Green, Working with Women’s Art Library
followed by a round table
Leap then Look (Workshop) – Ground Floor Exhibition
Leap then Look
14.45 – 16.15 Session 3
Rethinking National Curricula (Panel 2 of 2) - Main Space
Mary O’Neill, Learning Alongside and Negotiated Learning Outcomes: A strategy, perhaps?
Jason E. Bowman, Perpetrating Pyrexia: Sweating The Degree Show
Kat Cutler-MacKenzie, Building an Art School for the Future: working with students and communities to co-develop the curriculum as work of art
Kara Chrstine & Janet McCrorie, Generate: Experiential learning that acts upon the unique skills of young people for greater educational belonging.
Arts Education for Whom? (Panel) - Cinema
Tanveer Ahmed & Jane Trowell, Art education beyond anti-racism: A Manifesto to Dismantle Whiteness
Edwin Mingard, Who Gets To Be An Artist And Why It Matters
Can You Draw It? Between Visualcy and Literacy (Panel) - Cube
Ellen O’Gorman, The Joy of Sketch: Exploring a tension between assumed visualcy of students and an inhibition to draw.
Yeonjoo Cho, Home in Home: Drawing Workshops with a Refugee Art Group
Chris Koning, Drawing as an Academic Literacy
Developing Superior Vision: Exploring Artists' Experiences of 'Therapeutic Supervision' with Cognitive-Behavioural Psychotherapists - Level 1 Studio
Elena Joy Miller, Matt Stalker, Dawn Williams & Louise Wicks
16.30– 18.00 - Session 4
Art Education Redrawn (Closing Session) – Main Space
David Burrows & Dean Kenning
