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Freelands Foundation

Selected by Freelands

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SHIFT: Paul Morrow
Artist and educator Paul Morrow issues a powerful call to action for educators to enact anti-ableist pedagogy in the art classroom, presenting an introduction to its liberatory ideas alongside practical tools for its application.

Offering an introduction to anti-ableist pedagogy, Paul Morrow presents ideas and practical tools to challenge the notion of ‘normalcy’ that conditions our current educational system.  He positions the art classroom as a powerful space for change, where both students and teachers can pursue opportunities to see and engage with the world differently; and where young disabled people are empowered to view themselves as active agents and producers of culture. Similarly, Morrow presents contemporary art practice, and its application within the classroom, as a framework for enacting anti-ableist pedagogy through the development of an inclusive cultural canon.
9-min watch
transcript available (pdf)
listen
Art Schools, Place and Policy
A conversation about the impact of place and policy on teaching and art practice with Dr Silvie Jacobi and Dr Matthew Macaulay, chaired by Paul Haywood.

Since the 1960s, fine art higher education in the UK has undergone dramatic changes to the way it is delivered. Initially, it was a vocational practice rooted in making. However, since its amalgamation into the university system in the early 1990s, it has become increasingly theoretical. “Art Schools, Place and Policy” draws from a historical and socio-geographical exploration of how policy and societal contexts have shaped art education. It investigates how an examination of the relationship between art schools and place can advance our understanding of the value of fine art education today. In their cross-disciplinary doctoral research, artist and geographer Dr Silvie Jacobi and artist and lecturer Dr Matthew Macaulay explore how these changes have shaped the current fine art curriculum. Matthew's work is concerned with how the shifting UK higher education policy environment has impacted painting education since the 1970s. Silvie explores the relationship between art schools and place and the emergence of art scenes by juxtaposing British and German art school systems. The conversation is chaired by Paul Haywood.
100-min listen
transcript available (pdf)
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Championing making practices in UK art schools
A reflection on five years of thinking, teaching and practicing painting in UK higher education by Freelands Foundation.

In 2020, as part of the Foundation’s ongoing research into approaches to art education, we established the Painting Prize. The award was about developing an understanding of what is happening in the tertiary sector, specifically around the teaching and learning of painting.  The higher education sector has gone through incredible changes over the past half-century. In 1971 the painter Patrick Heron wrote an article for The Guardian newspaper entitled, “The Murder of the Art Schools”. Responding to then recent government legislation and the introduction of polytechnics, Heron argued that the policy change would result in art schools disappearing, replaced with faculties in multi-subject institutions, and led by non-artists. Successive changes, including the 1992 act enabling polytechnics to become universities, have meant that many of Heron’s rather pessimistic predictions have come true. Now, a quarter of the way through the 21st century, art schools have all but disappeared as discrete institutions and the landscape is utterly changed. Nonetheless we knew that, in the faculties of Fine Art that have largely replaced them, outstanding teaching and work was going on, and the Painting Prize was a way for us to investigate where and how to showcase the results. Alongside these legislative and organisational changes, the 1970s saw art schools moving away from medium-specific degrees – including painting – and beginning to experiment with general Fine Art courses, in which students were encouraged to explore a range of media and use whatever medium was most appropriate for realising their concept. The idea was king. The art world seems to exist in a cycle where we go from ‘painting is dead’ through to a resurgent interest and back again, over and over, and recently a new interest in painting has emerged, and courses with ‘painting’ in the title have begun to return. The importance of painting has been an area of debate for some decades. There is an argument to suggest that a focus on a single medium encourages students to push against the perceived boundaries of that medium and explore its imagined limits in provocative and exciting ways, with the result that not everyone studying on a painting course ends up making paintings. In focusing the Prize on painting, we have emphasised the continued importance of engagement with materials, as a means of championing material process and experimentation in the face of the neoliberalisation of the university model and the pressures on having the space to make – both psychologically and physically – within higher education institutions. We contacted every single art school, university and college in the UK that runs undergraduate courses in either Painting or Fine Art and invited them to select a single final-year student, and work by that student, for consideration for the prize. We left the definition of painting up to each institution, in recognition of the importance of the expanded field and the shift in thinking about what constitutes a painting. We also left open the format for the process of nomination, which has led to some very inventive approaches for selection. Some institutions have asked the staff to select nominations. Others have set up internal competitions and open exhibitions, from which the nomination is chosen. In one case, the final year students submitted works for a 'group crit' session and then anonymously voted for the work they felt should represent their course.  Each year, the nominations have been considered by an independent jury, who select the winning paintings and artists to feature in an exhibition and accompanying publication. Involving such a diverse range of voices in this process has been tremendously rewarding for us as an organisation, and for the jurors. Because the nominations are looked at anonymously the jurors are selecting the works that speak to them most, without potential prejudices about what comes from where. It has led to a very exciting diversity. In 2022, juror Habda Rashid spoke about the breadth of work making the judging process most difficult, but nonetheless immensely rewarding (1). When writing for the publication that accompanied the 2024 exhibition, juror Michael Archer wrote that “the old categories – portrait, genre, landscape, history, abstraction – are not exhausted or exhaustible because they encompass all that exists or could be imagined.” (2) 
8-min read
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Why Artists Should Teach

A conversation on the relationship between teaching and artistic practice with Joseph Cartwright, Jenny Eden and Shepherd Manyika, chaired by Raksha Patel.

51-min listen
transcript available (pdf)
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SHIFT: India Harvey

Artist and researcher India Harvey explores how notions such as play can challenge perceptual and sensory hierarchies, opening up different ways of engaging with the world.

7-min watch
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Art teachers should have the space to be rebellious

An activity sheet that invites you to consider the boundaries, motivations and possibilities for rebellion and creativity as an artist and teacher.

4-min read
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West Rise, School by the Marsh

A documentary about West Rise Junior School in Eastbourne, which takes a hands-on, outdoors-oriented approach to learning, informed by the school’s location on the site of a Bronze Age settlement.

16-min watch
listen
Visualising Art Education

Shade podcast presents a five-part series of conversations with art educators and practitioners that springboard the chapters of the Visualise report.

139-min listen
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ARTISTEACHER Toolkit

Guidance on facilitating experimentation and creative risk-taking within the classroom using 'Which Way is Up?', a set of imaginative prompts designed by Hannah Rennie and Shepherd Manyika with Cement Fields.

2-min read
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SHIFT: Hannah Kemp-Welch

Sound artist Hannah Kemp-Welch presents aspects of her research into Sound Arts Practice, including exploring the role of listening as a social art practice and the tensions around participation, ownership and representation in socially engaged art.

7-min watch
watch
SHIFT: Paul Morrow

Artist and educator Paul Morrow issues a powerful call to action for educators to enact anti-ableist pedagogy in the art classroom, presenting an introduction to its liberatory ideas alongside practical tools for its application.

9-min watch
transcript available (pdf)
listen
The Studio as a Site of Community and Collective Action

A conversation on the potential for studio spaces to contribute to a diverse and inclusive art world with Dr Charlotte Bonham-Carter, Dyana Gravina, Jane Morrow, and Rosalind Nashashibi.

54-min listen
Visualise: Race & Inclusion in Secondary School Art Education - page 1
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Visualise: Race & Inclusion in Secondary School Art Education

A landmark research commission and report on race and inclusion in art education in the UK.

3-min read
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Resist - Things Artists Do While Learning To Teach

A documentary follows a year in the collaborative project between the Institute of Education (University College London) and Freelands Foundation.

24-min watch
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Championing making practices in UK art schools

A reflection on five years of thinking, teaching and practicing painting in UK higher education by Freelands Foundation.

8-min read
watch
SHIFT: Jess Gilbert

Artist-teacher Jess Gilbert discusses her methodologies for encouraging students to play, take risks and embrace the uncertainty of process-led learning.

12-min watch
listen
Should We Teach Art?

Responses by Juan Bolivar, Michele Gregson and Munira Mirza, chaired by Andy Ash.

71-min listen
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Thinking Making

A documentary that explores the work of Plymouth College of Art and its pioneering approach to art education.

29-min watch
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Edges of Edie Evans

A response to the practice of Edie Evans during their fellowship at Swansea College of Art. 

5-min read
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SHIFT: Katherine Smith

Artist Katherine Smith discusses her investigation into using materials as an interface for connection to the body. 

18-min watch
listen
Art Schools, Place and Policy

A conversation about the impact of place and policy on teaching and art practice with Dr Silvie Jacobi and Dr Matthew Macaulay, chaired by Paul Haywood.

100-min listen
transcript available (pdf)
watch
Balancing Acts: Between Abstraction and Figuration

Drawing on his extensive career teaching on Foundation courses, Sean Kaye discusses how to teach painting by not teaching painting, and the relationship between the abstract and the representational.

59-min watch
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The Unteacher: Philip Guston and pedagogy as practice

A conversation on painter Philip Guston’s relationship to teaching practice with Sepake Angiama, Dana Clancy, and Alexis Harding, chaired by Ben Street. 

92-min listen
transcript available (pdf)
watch
What if the environment was our teacher?

A student-led film documenting the Haberdashers’ Borough Academy project, led by artist Sean Roy Parker, to imagine an eco-responsive curriculum.

11-min watch
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SHIFT: Daniel T. Barney

Artist and educator Daniel T. Barney explores the productive 'misuse' of tools in an exploration of artistic teaching practices that go beyond traditional curricula to enable a pedagogy of play.

11-min watch
watch
Painterly Perversions: Expansion as Translation

Magnus Quaife delivers a talk that explores the boundaries of painting and how it might be defined.

73-min watch
watch
SHIFT: Sadegh Aleahmad

Artist and educator Sadegh Aleahmad explores the discourse of ‘Decolonisation of Mind’, investigating its applications in his practice and its influence on his methodology for facilitating art workshops for primary school children.

11-min watch