Who will go to art school?

The question Who will go to art school? needs further unpacking. Firstly, there is the issue
of who, the future scenario imagined in who will go to art school, also raising questions
in relation to who went to art school, and who goes to art school now. Art school: past,
present and future tense. To whom do we refer when we talk about art students? How has
the prospective art student changed? How are they changing? How does an art education
both accommodate and challenge this new demographic? Secondly, there is the issue of
opportunity, the sense of who will go to art school overshadowed by the implication that
there will also be those who wont and dont, a suggestion of inequality and exclusion.
Perhaps we might ask how has the economic, political, social and cultural climate
impacted on arts education and learning at different historical moments? How have the
opportunities changed? How are they changing? How might they be actively changed still,
and by whom? What are the different factors that encourage or indeed prohibit
participation, for economic barriers and incentives speak to just one facet of the problem?
Thirdly, there is the issue of art school itself. What do we mean when we say art school
do we refer to the few remaining autonomous arts schools, the various art courses
forming part of a broader portfolio of university education, or the proliferation of
alternative art schools? Indeed, the response to these various questions will depend on
individual perspective, even outlook.
The pessimist: Who will go to art school? The future indeed looks a little doom and gloomy.
The current political and economic climate is one in which the privileged benefit,
seemingly at the benefit of the less well off. The introduction of higher and higher fees for
higher education creates the conditions of exclusion and elitism, an increasingly
prohibitive situation in which the prospect of a lifetime of debt in exchange for three years
of art education might seem less and less desirable. Education is presented as investment
for the fortunate few, those whose schooling will ensure a higher yield salary in years to
come. However, according to some recent reports, more than half of UK university leavers
are working in non-graduate jobs.1 Furthermore, engagement in an arts education has
been shown to have an inverse relation to future earnings; an arts graduate might well earn
less on graduation than their non-university schooled contemporaries. So, why go to art
school? Arts and culture in the UK would seem to have been systematically eroded
through the cuts and austerity measures of recent government. What incentive is there for
a prospective art student, when the opportunities and support for arts and culture seem
increasingly impoverished? How might the prospective art student be nurtured, when art is
increasingly excluded from the school curriculum? A pervasive neoliberal model of
education has made clients of students, focusing their attention towards the attainment of
grades rather than of education, the quest for the improvement of mark rather than
knowledge.
Even as early as 1972, Ivan Illich argued for a radical rethinking of education, criticizing a
system in which the pupil is schooled to confuse teaching with learning, grade
advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to
say something new. His imagination is schooled to accept service in place of value.2
Illich goes on to argue how, Health, learning, dignity, independence and creative
endeavor are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim
to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more

resources to the management and other agencies in question.3 For Illich this
institutionalization of values leads inevitably to physical pollution, social polarization and
psychological impotence.4 Against this context, how can the art school remain indeed
how do the arts as a higher education subject survive the increasing instrumentalization,
bureaucratization and commodification within the education sector, the increasing
pressure of its various systems of measurement, reportage, reward or punishment: the REF
(Research Excellence Framework), the proposed TEF (Teaching Excellence Framework),
the NSS (National Student Survey) the list of acronyms proliferates. Moreover, how
does regional art education compete with the expansion of provision in the capital, or
even, how does the old art school compete with the proliferation of new alternatives? In
these terms, will there be an art school of the future?
The optimist: Who will go to art school? Art is one of the most fundamental expressions of
human capacity, creativity and questioning. There will always be artists, there will always
be art, and therefore there will always be a need for some form of art education. Art as
often exists in spite of, rather than because of. Even in the most politically, economically and
socially challenging contexts, art finds a way of prevailing, for it is often through modes of
creative and imaginative expression that the potential of resistance, of critique but also of
hope might be voiced. Art is a history of insurgents, risk-takers and advocates, of voices
spoken up and against an oppressive norm. In the late 1980s and 1990s the rise of the
alternative, artist-led scene in the UK emerged as a distinct rebuff to the Thatcherite claim
that there is no alternative. There is always an alternative. For the first time in a long
time, there is the possibility of a real alternative within the UK political landscape,
moreover, the shapings of an opposition that actively values the role and impact of
education, art and culture. Tides indeed can turn. Contemporary arts education has
changed from the old art school model, and there is both loss and gain. The elitism and
even misogyny of the old regime is hopefully a relic of the past. At NTU, for example, NSS
scores report 100% positively on the passion and enthusiasm of teaching staff; there is
commitment to innovative research-informed pedagogy; embedded professional practice
opportunities prepare students through the cultivation of both real-world subject specific
and transferable skills; the successful retention of fine art alumni in the city has created a
vibrant artist-led scene establishing a context for prospective students to see art, show art
and participate in the artistic ecology through intern experiences and social networking.
Graduates have not only left the art school become SME (small to medium size
enterprises) but have also initiated and now manage key artistic infrastructure within the
city. More broadly, in recent happiness surveys, artists are reported to be amongst the
highest scoring. Monetary measures and economics are not the only way of determining
success, for setting civic and social values. Perhaps, as a health and wellbeing agenda gains
pace, it is not inconceivable to imagine graduate success measured in reported happiness,
through engagement in meaningful work, as much as according to a statistical account of
paid graduate-level employability. In these terms, it could be argued that contemporary
society needs more art schools. Indeed, why would you not want to go to art school?
It is the cusp of a new academic year, and whilst I recognize the reality of the pessimists
model, I know that despair is no foundation upon which to enthuse a new generation of
artists. Admittedly, I am inspired by the tone of the opposition leaders message lets do
hope not despair. Now is not the time for nostalgia, for bemoaning change; instead, let us
look to the future of the art school. But, lets not confuse hope with blind faith or

delusion, the optimists it will be alright, the hope that things will change. The
problem with both the pessimists and optimists views is that both are relatively passive;
both look towards the current situation the as is as a given, the difference primarily
being one of perspective, Is the glass half empty or half full? Between these two poles,
perhaps it is possible to conceive a middle way, closer to the meliorist belief that the world
can be made better through human effort. In his Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy and
Civic Courage, Paulo Friere differentiates a form of active and activist hope, from false
optimism and vain hope.5 He laments the immobilizing ideology of fatalism which
insists that we can do nothing to change the march of social-historical and cultural reality
because that is how the world is. 6 Against this neoliberal tendency which conditions
the individual to passively adapt to a situation they have no hope of ever changing he
offers a radical form of resistance: critical curiosity. He argues that, one of the essential
tasks of progressive educational praxis is the promotion of a curiosity that is critical, bold
and adventurous. 7 He describes such Curiosity as restless questioning the curiosity
that moves us and sets us patiently impatient before a world that we did not make, to add
to it something of our own making.8
Art school actively cultivates critical curiosity, and now more than ever we need such an
education, its training in the curious capacity to ask what if or imagine an or, to nurture
the possibility of thinking otherwise. At its best, art school offers a radical rite of passage
or even de-schooling, capable of overturning the passivity and fatalism often perpetuated
within contemporary neoliberal education. You only have to look to the artist-led scene in
Nottingham to recognize the relation between a fine art imagination and the capacity for
affecting change, for making a difference, for making a scene.9 So, as artists and
educators, how might we affect rather than bemoan change? Who will go to art school is
in part dependent upon our advocacy, our insistence on the value of the arts and of arts
education. Moreover, the future of the art school is dependent on the will of the future art
student. Who are they, how will they make and shape the future of our artistic landscape?
Investment in an arts education is not just about progressing ones own practice, but an
investment in the cultural capital of our society. Alongside, Who will go to art school?
we might add, Who is willing go to art school? This is not a question, but rather a rally
cry.
Emma Cocker, 2015
Reader in Fine Art, Nottingham Trent University
This short provocation was presented as part of the event Who will go to Art School?
(24 September, 2015, New Art Exchange, Nottingham) curated by Niki Russell and
Rebecca Ounstead, as part of the wider contextual events programme for New
Contemporaries, 2015. Other panelists were Anna Colin (Open School East), Paul
Goodwin (Black Artists and Modernism (BAM), and Emily Pope (School of the
Damned).

1

For example, by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. See

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-33983048
2
Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society, 1973, p.9.
3
Illich, 1973, p.9.

Illich, 1973, p.9.

Paulo Friere, Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy and Civic Courage, Rowman &
Littlefield, 1998, p. 26.
6
Friere, 1998, p. 27.
7
Friere, 1998, p. 38
8
Friere, 1998, p. 38.
9
See also Emma Cocker, On Making, Making it and Making a Scene, in New
Contemporaries exhibition publication, 2015.
http://www.newcontemporaries.org.uk/publications-and-editions/publications/bloombergnew-contemporaries-2015-catalogue
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