Art school as a transformative locus for risk in an age of uncertainty

TL;DR: The authors reframes risk as fundamentally located and dialogic, an autonomous cooperative and collective action, underpinned by critical thinking and disobedient pedagogies, in an expanded mode of design in which the student members of the Alternative Art School are considered as critical agents.

Abstract: Risk is not a neutral term even in (western) contexts of art and design pedagogic practice, where risk-taking is entwined into the matrices of the academy from the macro to the micro: from institution to studio to tutor to student. Neither design education nor practice exist in a vacuum, so the conditions and contingencies of risk in contemporary design pedagogy are unpicked, in relation to place, process and people, as inter-connected (though often fragmented) components of study. Art school is examined as a transformative locus for risk: a conceptual-architectural site for knowledge but also a temporal space of subversion, within which the studio provides students with a relatively safe setting for risk in individual and collective formulations. Neo-liberal policies of standardization and competition are as embedded in educational institutions as they are across all levels of society: the resultant loss of agency is felt individually and collectively. This article reframes risk as fundamentally located and dialogic, an autonomous cooperative and collective action, underpinned by critical thinking and disobedient pedagogies. This is a transformative educational process anticipating change in an expanded mode of design in which the student members of the Alternative Art School are considered as critical agents, employing creative reflexivity as an antidote to the neo-liberal stifling of risk.

Summary

Introduction

• Risk is not a neutral term even in contexts of art and design pedagogic practice.
• Neither design education nor practice exist in a vacuum, so the conditions and contingencies of risk in contemporary design pedagogy will be unpicked, and considered in relation to place (a campus; a studio/classroom; socio-economic context), process (pedagogic practices; hidden curriculum) and people (social actors including tutors, students, managers).
• As a transformative process and space of learning the creative campus cultivates critical discourse to encourage a curiosity in students, to challenge common assumptions and push the boundaries of practice in the pursuit of (new) knowledge.
• In an example of pedagogic risk-in-action the Alternative Art School (2013-19) will be outlined as an autonomous co-created 'school', which has set out to resist the constraints of academic conformity, and institutional hierarchies, disrupting curricula and prescriptive modes of teaching.

Art School as a Transformative Locus for Ambiguity

• The moniker 'art school' will be used in this paper, despite an inherent bias towards the discipline and its mythical cultural status, as an over-arching term for the creative campus (Patterson and Sharman, 2014) , due in part to the recent reclaiming of 'art school' nomenclature by universities originally formed on principles of industrial competition.
• Here students can study more freely than physically located institutional hierarchies permit, echoing the optimism of Ivan Illich's (2002) fluid processes facilitated by educational webs, expanding the opportunities for each student to transform their learning in social contexts, for instance.
• 51) puts it, "Not only does neoliberalism undermine both civic education and public values and confuse education with training, it also treats knowledge as a product, promoting a neoliberal logic that views schools as malls, students as consumers, and faculty as entrepreneurs", also known as As Giroux (2014.
• By embedding the brand value of the art school within its newly designed studios, cafes and lecture theatres the academy has shifted attention away from what occurs in the learning environment to the signifying status (commodity value) of the building itself.
• As recent events in the power structures of social media and surveillance have demonstrated, the same technologies that once offered a techno-utopian emancipation (Illich, 2002; Poynor, 1997) have now become tools for control (Berardi 2013).

Transformative and Transitional Pedagogies

• In the transition from school to HE traces of hidden strategies, such as grade coaching to sustain acceptable league table results, and reduce the stigma of failure at school, lurk as an insidious resistance to risk-orientated methods and ideas of freedom.
• In addition to seeking 'clarity' students entering higher education often prefer the more prescribed teaching and learning techniques which have guaranteed success at secondary school level (Vaughan et al., 2008) .
• The implicit rather than explicit value of ambiguity in art school teaching and learning practices "creates vagueness and insecurity for many of their first year students who have expectations based on the concrete and the certain" (Vaughan, et al. 2006: 1) .
• The competitive individualism of capitalist society is mirrored in the nation's classrooms and studios, pitting students against their peers, to attain the cult status of the singular hero in the arts.

Locating Risk in the Art School

• 1) education always involves a risk "not the risk of failure due to lack of diligence, poor planning, but because education less about filling a bucket and more about lighting a fire", also known as For Biesta (2016.
• Finding points of agreement, managing disagreement or disappointment, and being open to unexpected directions (Sennett, 2012) . hooks (1994) argues that the best way to enhance the potential for creativity and innovation is for staff to take more risks in the pedagogic practice with students.
• For Patterson and Sharman (2014: 1): As educators the authors have a responsibility to co-generate [my emphasis] opportunities for risk, encourage encounters with it, and inculcate unfamiliar learners to its discomforts and rewards.
• 11) identifies the studio as a relatively safe setting for risk in individual and collective practices (Schön, 1983), also known as Donald A. Schön (1992.
• Here meaning itself is in motion while a more accessible mode of learning is designed to cater for those with the least power and capital.

The Alternative Art School (AAS) // a Community of the Possible

• As a nomadic 'school' within a School within Kingston School of Art, the AAS represents a fluid notion of art school, a temporal learning environment, a floating signifier, in which to exploit the pedagogic and symbolic opportunities of the academic community "as an exchange in which the participants benefit from the encounter" (Sennett, 2012: 5) .
• Dialogic discourse emerged as the core process of the AAS and has become a valued product for the students, representing a "shared belief in a spirit of intellectual openness that celebrates diversity, welcomes dissent, and rejoices in collective dedication to truth" (hooks, 1994: 40) .
• 13) argues, a community of practice can be viewed as a social learning system, in which a theory of "social practice address[es] the production and reproduction of specific ways of engaging with the world.", also known as As Wenger (2004.
• To inspire change and transformation in themselves and each other.
• By removing the need to work for the purpose of high grades, she was forced to think about what she really wanted to do with her time in the elective.

Conclusions

• In an increasingly complex world students need to seize the attributes of the unexpected through agile thinking, critical design practice, and dialogic discourse.
• As tutors who were trained in an incomparable socioeconomic landscape, the authors must acknowledge that the contemporary dominance of neoliberal policy has ramifications for today's students.
• New discursive spaces (physical, intellectual and creative), critical approaches and conceptual tools appropriate to the complex territory of contemporary design education are proposed as alternatives to the risk-averse status quo.
• Underpinned by critical pedagogy, students are invited to more actively engage in their learning, defining risk in the most pertinent terms for their own learning needs.
• A new collective position such as that invoked through AAS gives students another perspective, challenges them to fight conformity and embrace alternatives to crisis culture and competition within an academic marketplace.

Full text

This is not the version of record. The published version of: Gale, Cathy (2020) Art school as a
transformative locus for risk in an age of uncertainty. Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education,
19(1), pp. 107-118. can be found at: https://doi.org/10.1386/adch_00016_1

Title // Art School as a Transformative Locus for Risk in an Age of Uncertainty
A
bstract // 211 words
Risk is not a neutral term even in (Western) contexts of art and design pedagogic practice, where risk-taking is
entwined into the matrices of the academy from the macro to micro: from institution to studio to tutor to student.
Neither design education nor practice exist in a vacuum, so the conditions and contingencies of risk in
contemporary design pedagogy are unpicked, in relation to place, process and people, as inter-connected
(though often fragmented) components of study. Art school is examined as a transformative locus for risk: a
conceptual-architectural site for knowledge but also a temporal space of subversion, within which the studio
provides students with a relatively safe setting for risk in individual and collective practices (Schön, 1983).
Neoliberal policies of standardisation and competition are as embedded in educational institutions as they are
across all levels of society: the resultant loss of agency is felt individually and collectively. This article reframes
risk as a fundamentally located dialogic pedagogy, an autonomous co-operative and collective action,
underpinned by critical thinking and disobedient pedagogies. This is a transformative process anticipating
change in an expanded mode of design in which the student members of the Alternative Art School are
considered as critical agents, employing creative reflexivity as an antidote to the neoliberal stifling of risk.
K
eywords (5) // Art School / Transformative / Neoliberal University / Dialogic / Risk / Critical Reflexivity

Title // Art School as a Transformative Locus for Risk in an Age of Uncertainty
Words // 4,922
Introduction
Risk is not a neutral term even in (Western) contexts of art and design pedagogic practice. It is also
fundamentally located in the idea and socio-physical framework of the art school: in the studio, the curriculum,
module descriptors, project spaces, review and assessment systems. As a conceptual-architectural site for
knowledge the creative campus, thus, forms a synthesis of the physical and socio-economic in a temporal mode
of discovery: a transformative locus, which embraces the unknown and is infused with productive ambiguities.
Paul Elliman argues (2011) that a school just a building with a school in it, as open to interpretative use or
destruction as any other, inferring that its concrete and glass learning environments should be abandoned in
preference for an emancipated university of the internet. In this context, risk-orientated design practice and
education drives students to explore the edges of the knowable, to challenge norms and patterns of learning
itself, and in so doing to break new ground through which new perceptions of the discipline and designer can
emerge. A situated pedagogic practice, which Dennis Atkinson (2018: 2) advocates as an “adventure in which
modes of learning and their outcomes may be unclear, but which need to be addressed”. Innovative discovery is
infused with experimentation and risk, by definition of being unfamiliar and new, so what are the constraints
and conditions for this in contemporary academic institutions?
Neither design education nor practice exist in a vacuum, so the conditions and contingencies of risk in
contemporary design pedagogy will be unpicked, and considered in relation to place (a campus; a
studio/classroom; socio-economic context), process (pedagogic practices; hidden curriculum) and people (social
actors including tutors, students, managers). The inter-dependent, though often fragmented, components of
study in the art school are determined by a matrix of forces including neoliberal agendas (austerity and
competition), which facilitate or delimit risk. While a certain level of social responsibility is necessary, the
implementation of risk in academic contexts reveals a plethora of administrative obstacles to creative expression
and autonomous social experiences (dominated by health and safety concerns), including training courses for
the use of a ladder or changing a lightbulb, and banning anything pinned to studio walls and corridors, such as
artworks.
Transformation is essential to thinking and growing in the academy: “without the capacity to think critically
about our selves and our lives, none of us would be able to move forward, to change, to grow” (hooks, 1994:
202). As a transformative process and space of learning the creative campus cultivates critical discourse to
encourage a curiosity in students, to challenge common assumptions and push the boundaries of (their) practice
in the pursuit of (new) knowledge. By contrast neoliberal policy-makers “want education to be strong, secure
and predictable… to be risk-free at all levels” (Biesta, 2016: 1). From the tutor who proposes, frames and
facilitates risk to the student who resists or embraces its benefits, each stakeholder in the educational contract
perceives risk in different ways, within a shifting socio-economic landscape. In a discursive but also
‘disobedient’ pedagogic process (Atkinson, 2018), adaptable to the territory of each student’s abilities and
potential, risk is examined as a collective action through which greater critical agency can be invoked

underpinned by critical discourse. bell hooks (1994) suggests that the best way to enhance the potential for
creativity and innovation is for staff to take more risks in pedagogic practices with students.
In an example of pedagogic risk-in-action the Alternative Art School (2013-19) will be outlined as an
autonomous co-created ‘school’, which has set out to resist the constraints of academic conformity, and
institutional hierarchies, disrupting curricula and prescriptive modes of teaching. In a mode of productive
ambiguity this elective is underpinned by an embrace of autonomy, risk, and revolt in a rejection of a crisis
culture that feeds on fear of failure and difference (Fisher, 2009, Sennett, 2012). As an idea open to reinvention
and reconfiguration the art school is deconstructed and reconstructed in a process of critical interrogation.
Art School as a Transformative Locus for Ambiguity
The moniker ‘art school’ will be used in this paper, despite an inherent bias towards the discipline and its
mythical cultural status, as an over-arching term for the creative campus (Patterson and Sharman, 2014), due in
part to the recent reclaiming of ‘art school’ nomenclature by universities originally formed on principles of
industrial competition. The mythical heritage and symbolic cultural value of the art school allows a certain
amount of cognitive and critical play with its physical framework and pedagogic practices. This study is limited
to the UK to enable closer interrogation and understanding of how contemporary neoliberal policy has
infiltrated the academy affecting all participants, creating a messy landscape of paradoxes and pressures. From
cuts in funding, to risk-averse behaviour as a means of guaranteeing success, this is a topical but unavoidably
partial analysis.
In his essay ‘A School is a Building with a School in it’ Paul Elliman (2011: 148) suggests that notions of art
school are underpinned by connectivity to diverse resources and contexts of meaning, forming “a provisional
base from which to filter the world we live in, a place to reflect on basic principles or to invent new ones”. He
questions the need for learning in conventional classrooms and architectural sites of learning, proposing instead
a
‘University of Nowhere’, ‘Wild School’ or ‘Other School’ (Poynor, 1997). The digitally mobile space is
envisioned on the basis that new technologies offer opportunities for a broader demographic of students. Here
students can study more freely than physically located institutional hierarchies permit, echoing the optimism of
Ivan Illich’s (2002) fluid processes facilitated by educational (digital) webs, expanding the opportunities for
each student to transform their learning in social contexts, for instance.
For Elliman (2011: 144) “the very notion of school has become, in neoliberal terms, a concept for just another
commercial product, forced to compete along with everything and everyone else for a place in the market”. As
Giroux (2014: 51) puts it, “Not only does neoliberalism undermine both civic education and public values and
confuse education with training, it also treats knowledge as a product, promoting a neoliberal logic that views
schools as malls, students as consumers, and faculty as entrepreneurs”. By embedding the brand value of the art
school within its newly designed studios, cafes and lecture theatres the academy has shifted attention away from
what occurs in the learning environment to the signifying status (commodity value) of the building itself. Once
relegated as an annexe to the main academic campus building, the art school has gone through a transformation
from adapted (but not very heated) Victorian school to glossy show-home. Several university campuses appear

to have been designed for future use as shopping malls with a central atrium and glass-fronted studios
resembling retail units ready for adaptation by the market when the incumbent franchise (education) is forced to
move on or close. The ‘openness’ of the contemporary design school’s glass studios forms an illusion of
transparency and accessibility, however. The introduction of card swipe machines has increased ‘security’ while
simultaneously tracking students (and staff) measuring their attendance and, in the process, restricting
movement between courses and communities of practice by blocking entry without significance bureaucratic
intervention. As recent events in the power structures of social media and surveillance have demonstrated, the
same technologies that once offered a techno-utopian emancipation (Illich, 2002; Poynor, 1997) have now
become tools for control (Berardi 2013).
Risk and the Neoliberal University
Risk, in the form of new methods, untested techniques, and challenging opinions/questions, may incur fewer
financial penalties on the creative campus than in the corporate sector, but other pressures, such as targets,
league tables and increased student numbers represent similar punitive threats/constraints for the tutor and
institution. Impelled to raise ‘standards’, increasing League Table status and student satisfaction while
producing world leading research, academics/managers have resorted to grade inflation and more prescribed
learning. Quality assurance and curricular planning now more concerned with the “effective production of pre-
defined ‘learning outcomes’ (Biesta, 2016:2) than changing the world through (risky) design strategies. As
Mark Fisher (2009: 26) argues, “Far from being in some ivory tower safely inured from the ‘real world’,
[education] is the engine room of the production of social reality, directly confronting the inconsistencies of the
capitalist social field”.
The insatiable needs and demands of ‘industry’ reduce notions of employability to conformist attitudes in
professional design practice in which ‘fitting in’ rather than a rebellious transformation of mainstream culture
and working practices is the ambition of our most talented graduates
1
. Employability is increasingly framed as
industry-ready. Yet, on graduating, the new designer must immediately join the ‘creative industries’ if they are
to survive in urban centres (or move if the institutional location presents a lack of opportunities) constrained by
ever-inflating studio and home rents while paying off debts accrued over a minimum of three years in HE. The
type of work that young designers (feel pressured to) produce, is therefore dominated by corporate aesthetics
and market-based strategies leading to what Sennett (2012: 8) describes as a “cultural homogenization…
expressing a neutrality-seeking view of the world… arising from an anxiety about difference, which intersects
with the economics of global consumer culture”. Now risk-aversion pervades contemporary education,
reflecting inflated perceptions of danger in the social sphere fuelled by a fear-mongering press (Patterson and
Sharman, 2014). Since the War on Terror began, Mark Fisher (2009) argues, there has been a ‘normalisation of
crisis’ and instability has become a constant in the ‘real’ world. Simultaneously, academic curricula have
become more rigid, more surveilled, more measured as administrative responsibilities have multiplied.
Entrenched competition between institutions, faculty staff and students delimits risk in its focus on winning at
all costs. The singular correct outcome is sought rather than critically engaging with the ambiguous realities and
1
Derived from level 5 and 6 exit interviews with students in the highest grade banding at Kingston School of Art.