Back to work

Monday and Tuesday saw me back into work. As I’m in phased retirement I don’t have to spend my summers timetabling and writing schemes of work and all those ARPs, APEs and other reports are being written by others, thank God.

However this does not mean I escape planning and preparation all together, and as this type of work is essential to any successful art educational experience, some reflection on the issues are perhaps needed. Suffice it to say that this has always been for me the least enjoyable part of my work in the Art College, and paradoxically because I have been in charge of several departments has been one that I have had a lot of experience with. Timetabling in particular was and still is a nightmare because it is often taken out of your hands, even though it appears at first sight to be something you can control. For instance I went to the HR department before I left for a break to let them know I was teaching contextual studies to 2 groups of Fine Art first year students every Monday all day, every week this coming year. They took down the information and were pleased that I had made my request timely. However I come back to find that the rooms have now been booked to someone else, who has argued priority. I have no status anymore and so what was a simple operation has now become a troublesome time consuming worry. I may find myself in a totally inappropriate room, don’t know how I will manage the group size, am not sure of availability of ceiling projectors etc. All have knock on. The later you get to find out what room you are in the less time you have to book equipment. I can see the “Why didn’t you order a projector earlier on?” question being asked me in a couple of weeks time as I’m desperately chasing round trying to solve something I thought I’d solved at the end of last year. Even after all these years of teaching things like this really stress me out.

The other issue is of course how does everything it together? The course is re-structuring and we are moving towards a system of 4 pathways. I have mentioned this before, but they are: Painting and printmaking; sculpture; drawing and finally media. I’m sure this will be interesting and will allow for different types of focus to develop, whilst hopefully maintaining an awareness that Fine Art practice is now multi disciplinary and that practitioners are much more mobile with their concepts. Sometimes making a film, sometimes a painting and at another time creating a performance. An artist like Frances Alys being typical of the contemporary practitioner. At one moment drawing, at another film-making and at another we might find him making exquisite small oil paintings. Quite a challenge of course to decide what the focus would be. The real driver being perhaps his conceptual engagement with the world and therefore I’m reminded how important the contextual studies part of the course will be. It will be the context that will often drive the enquiry, no matter which strand the student is in, their own sensibility will be what initially suggests which strand they move into, but they will need to inform that sensibility and at times challenge it.

In order to manage the new strand system, studios will become mixed year studios for the first time. The second and third year students initially moving in together in the 4 designated areas and 1^st years moving into the strands after an introductory diagnostic first term. The logistics of this will need lots of fine-tuning, because no matter how much you plan in advance reality will rear its ugly head and un-thought of scenarios will develop. My main worry would be numbers. What if all the students in year one wanted to paint? How would we persuade three-quarters of them to go into strands they didn’t initially think of as being suitable. I had a lot of experience of this with electives. It was a choice based system, but with only so many places on each option. I eventually developed a system whereby there was a part ‘lottery’ element to the system, which operated as an escape valve for those students who felt they had ‘missed out’. They only had the system to kick out at rather than an individual. However in the fine art case I suspect students will be told which strand they will go into if choices become unbalanced. We shall see.

Each year has different needs and planning how to serve these, as well as merge the work spaces is very difficult. This is particularly worrying during a time when we are taking 80 first years, effectively almost doubling numbers.

I shall try not to focus on these things as I don’t want to get too involved with management but I’m sure that at times they will create issues as the year progresses. My main issue however has been when do I have to deliver and what. After our various jaunts and happy sessions during Freshers week , I shall be kicking off the first years with a lecture and a ‘Transformations’ brief. I shall be examining how ideas can travel across cultures, times and practices. Looking at how similar forms and concepts reshape themselves as materials change, artists find alternative approaches and culture or society shifts value sets. Then students will put up a display of what they were doing before they came to LCA and this will become the starting point for a series of transformations, both intellectually and materially. (It also allows us to get lots of students through workshop inductions as well). This will all kick off on the 30^th September and then the following week I will give an introductory lecture into the critical studies area of the programme, again with first years. (Looking at my timetable, I will only work with the 1^st years this first semester.) The key practical module that I will be supporting will be ‘The Individual and the Social’. I will be re-introducing Modernism/formalism Greenberg etc and the move towards sociological interests, Berger/Clark etc. and cover the rise of Feminist practices, the male gaze etc. all to be fitted in during this first semester of 8 lectures and associated seminars. Students will give presentations in December and in order to do this I will need rooms for two days. A long way off but already a worry considering how hard it is to find a room for one day. Semester two will cover issues relating to the various strands, but I wont be preparing lectures for those until the Christmas break. I have taught contextual studies across several programs here and for a while was head of the contextual studies department but so far this blog has not really touched on this. I will try and open out the issues as they arrive., in particular the thorny problem of how to make a synthesis between practice and theory. Praxis.