Should We Teach Art?

Neoliberal policies and the increasing marketisation of education have meant that art education has been dropping in status across all levels of the educational system, yet society continues to demonstrate an ever-growing appetite for art. The case for entrenching art within the school curriculum has been made for many years, so what makes it different now?

This conversation between Juan Bolivar, Michele Gregson and Munira Mirza, chaired by Andy Ash, reflects on these conditions by responding to the multi-layered question 'Should we teach art?'

It examines what it means to teach art, what kind of place art should have in the curriculum, and how the climate has shifted since 2016, when the question first emerged in discussions among Freelands Foundation and its collaborators.

This talk took place on 29 May 2019 at Freelands Foundationin London. It reflected on the years since the Foundation embarked on a four-year partnership with the Institute of Education, University College London (IOE/UCL), working with artist teachers on the Art & Design PGCE course to explore the idea of teaching as an artistic practice.

The conversation was also programmed alongside the exhibition 'Resist – Things Artists Do Whilst Learning to Teach', which showed the work of the 26 artist teachers that were part of the IOE/UCL and Freelands Foundation partnership project.

Contributors: Juan Bolivar (artist and curator), Michele Gregson (General Secretary of NSEAD), Munira Mirza (Executive Director for Culture at Kings College London) and Andy Ash (Senior Lecturer at IOE/UCL).

'Should We Teach Art?' is part of Freelands Foundation's ongoing research into the idea of teaching as an artistic practice.