Saturday 26 July 11am - 6.30pm
Alternative Methods: Art and Education
Plus Open Studios

Click here for our Eventbrite page to book return travel from Cambridge train station for this event. Transport will leave Cambridge station at 10.30am and return to the station at 6.30pm. Trains from London Kings Cross travel to Cambridge every 30 mins and the journey time is 45 mins. This event is FREE.

You are very welcome to stay on with us for the evening, for our summer BBQ, which starts after the event.

The fourth event in our Futurecamp series includes contributions from artist Lucy Beech, Dr Matthew Cheeseman, School of English, University of Sheffield; Anna Colin, freelance curator, co-founder Open School East; the Wysing Expanded Studio Group presented by artists Frank Abbott and Rob Smith;  Leah Gordon, Ghetto Biennale, Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Futurecamp residency artist Ahmet Ögüt, with student Senay Öztürk; Sara Nunes Fernandes, co-founder of School of The Damned with current students Ruth Angel Edwards and Emilia Bergmark; Ella Ritchie, Director of Programming at Intoart with artist Ntiense Eno-Amooquaye; artist Florian Roithmayr; and Sally Tallant, Director, Liverpool Biennial.

Artists based at Wysing who will be opening their studios are: Erica Böhr, Jackie Chettur, Elena Cologni, Lawrence Epps, Bettina Furnée, Soheila Sokhanvari, Rob Smith, Helen Stratford, Ash Summers, Caroline Wendling, Lisa Wilkens and Caroline Wright.

Wysing’s annual Leverhulme Arts Scholars Summer School will also be operating during the event. Information on the School can be found here.

Premise of the event

Art education has become an urgent issue, at both secondary and university level, due to cuts in funding and the politics and public discussion surrounding its relevance to society. As such, the formal routes for education and engagement with art are failing, and access is becoming socially and economically more divided than ever. Artists have long created alternatives to the established institutions and methods. However, recently there has been a resurgence in this form of activity and discussion, in part in response to the general need, but also in relation to more specific questions of social and economic access for different parts of society and culture.

Schedule

11am – 12noon Wysing Artists Open Studios

12pm: Introduction and welcome

12.10pm: Sally Tallant will discuss her approach to art and education, within the range of different programmes she has run, previously at The Serpentine Gallery, and now as Director of the Liverpool Biennial.

12.30pm: Anna Colin will discuss Open School East. Located in a former library in De Beauvoir Town, East London, OSE is a non-fee paying study programme for 12 associate artists and a space that is host to a wide-ranging public programme. Anna Colin will be joined by current OSE associate Lucy Beech.

12.50pm: Sara Nunes Fernandes will discuss the School Of The Damned, an unaccredited MA course run by its students which advocates free education and demands a universal acknowledgment of education as a fundamental right. She is accompanied by current students Ruth Angel Edwards and Emilia Bergmark.

1.10pm: Open discussion 

1.30: Break with teas, coffees and snacks available and Wysing Artists Open Studios

2.30pm: Leah Gordon will talk about the Ghetto Biennale, Port-au-Prince, Haiti – a cross-cultural arts festival held every two years since 2009 in a popular neighbourhood in Port-au-Prince hosted by the Haitian arts collective, Atis Rezistans.

2.50pm: Ella Ritchie, Director of Programming, and artist Ntiense Eno-Amooquaye discuss Intoart, a London based art collective that includes people with learning disabilities and has developed a reputation for sharing practice inclusively with audiences.

3.10pm: Frank Abbott and Rob Smith will discuss the Expanded Studio Group formed by the artists who have studios at Wysing Arts Centre and at Primary, Nottingham. They will present aspects of their self-organised project as an experiment in community and collaboration.

3.30pm: Break with teas, coffees and snacks available.

3.50pm: Dr Matthew Cheeseman, Research Fellow in the School of English, University of Sheffield, and Wysing studio artist Florian Roithmayr will discuss the concept of ‘tacit knowing’ developed by Hungarian theorist Michael Polanyi.

4.10pm: Futurecamp residency artist Ahmet Ögüt will discuss The Silent University, an autonomous knowledge exchange platform by and for refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. With current student Senay Öztürk, he will then introduce Aciliyet Mektebi, a new autonomous pedagogic laboratory space initiated by Öğüt.

4.30pm: Open discussion 

5.30pm: Wysing Artists Open Studios

6.30pm: Event ends - You are very welcome to stay on with us for the evening, for our summer BBQ

Contributor Biographies

Frank Abbott is a studio artist at Primary, Nottingham. He makes films and video installations and has a long record of organising collaborative projects, including the  European funded Creative Collaborations (2002-2005). His recent work includes working with the painter Duncan Higgins, Muscle (Berlin 2011) and a workshop on collaboration with Indian artists in Jaipur.

Aciliyet Mektebi is an autonomous pedagogic laboratory space initiated by Ahmet Öğüt. It started with an urgent need to rethink alternative models for the current education system in Turkey. It aims to engage the existing capacity of knowledge between professionals and students and turn itself into a collective learning center. It aims to promote strategies that offer equal learning opportunities and exchange knowledge and skills with a parasitic approach of pedagogy instead of target practice and banking system of education. Its first hosting venue will be SALT Beyoğlu from summer 2014.

Lucy Beech is an artist living and working in London. Recent presentations of her work include: Cigarette Game 2 (Tearing it Up), Tent, Rotterdam (2014), Passive Aggressive 2, Camden Arts Centre, London (2014), Left Behind Together, Outpost, Norwich (2013) in collaboration with Edward Thomasson; Young London, V22, London (2013); Buried Alive, Plaza Plaza, London (2013); 21st Century, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2013) and One Another’s Company, IMT Gallery, London (2011). Beech is currently an associate at Open School East.

Dr Matthew Cheeseman is a research fellow in the School of English, University of Sheffield. He is a graduate of the University of Cambridge and the University of Sheffield. He worked in contemporary art before becoming an academic, where he now works between English Literature, Folklore, Creative Writing, Music and Education.

Anna Colin is a curator and writer based in London. She is a co-director of Open School East, associate curator at Fondation Galeries Lafayette in Paris and co-curator, with Lydia Yee, of the next British Art Show.

Ntiense Eno-Amooquaye is a member of the London-based art collective, Intoart. Her practice integrates the visual, written and spoken word through print, text, image and live performance. She had a recent solo exhibition at Saison Poetry Library, Southbank Centre (2014). Group exhibitions include ‘See Revolutionary Art Exhibit’ at Whitechapel Gallery (2009/10), Tate Modern 'No Soul For Sale' (2010), Studio Voltaire (2007) and at MAD Musée, Belgium (2011).

The Expanded Studio Project is an artist-led initiative that has emerged from out of two in-house collaborative projects developed independently by current studio holders at Wysing Arts Centre and Primary (Nottingham). The 24 artists are trialling a collaboration between different geographic locations to extend their practices beyond their own studio. The project will use a continuous live link between studios and feature a final public event shared across two sites and online.

Leah Gordon is an artist and curator. Her film and photographic work has been exhibited internationally. She is the co-director of the Ghetto Biennale, was one of the curators for the Haitian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale, and was the co-curator of Kafou: Haiti, History & Art, at Nottingham Contemporary. Gordon is represented by Riflemaker Gallery, London. The Ghetto Biennale is a cross-cultural arts festival held every two years since 2009 in Port-au-Prince hosted by the Haitian arts collective, Atis Rezistans.

Ahmet Ögüt  is a socio-cultural initiator, mediator, artist, negotiator and lecturer, whose work addresses social situations, communications, and recently, alternative forms of educational and institutional systems. Öğüt exhibits widely internationally working across a variety of media. Ögüt was awarded with the Visible Award for The Silent University (2013) and he co-represented Turkey at the 53rd Venice Biennale together with Banu Cennetoğlu (2009). Ahmet Öğüt lives and works in Istanbul.

Located in a former library in De Beauvoir Town, East London, Open School East is a non-fee paying study programme for 12 associate artists and a space that is host to a wide-ranging public programme. It was instituted in 2013 as a space for artistic learning that is structurally light, collaborative and experimental, and that invites interactions between artists, local residents and the broader public.

Ella Ritchie is the Director of Programming and founder member of Intoart. Since 2001, she has initiated and developed programming that seeks to create opportunities working with people with learning disabilities facing barriers to inclusion through social, economic and health factors, and with little or no access to art education. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts, University of Brighton.

Florian Roithmayr‘s work involves the presentation of hand-crafted, sculpted and cast homages to the production of objects. He has recently had solo exhibitions at Site Gallery, sheffield, MOT International London, Galerie Neue Alte Brücke in Frankfurt and Treignac Projet, France. Florian Roithmayr is represented by MOTInternational in London and Neue Alte Brücke in Frankfurt. He has a studio at Wysing.

The School of the Damned is an unaccredited MA course run by its students which advocates free education and demands a universal acknowledgment of education as a fundamental right. The School of the Damned was produced as a pragmatic response to the current educational system and as a protest against it. Sara Nunes Fernandes is one of the founders, she is accompanied by current students Ruth Angel Edwards and Emilia Bergmark.

Rob Smith is a studio artist at Wysing Arts Centre, who alongside his own practice has a collaborative practice with Charles Danby and a co-director of Field Broadcast.  Recent venues for projects include IMT Gallery London, a symposium at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and Den Frie, Copenhagen.

Sally Tallant is Director of Liverpool Biennial – The UK Biennial of Contemporary Art. From 2001–11 she was Head of Programmes at the Serpentine Gallery, London where she was responsible for the development and delivery of an integrated programme of Exhibitions, Architecture, Education and Public Programmes. She has curated exhibitions in a wide range of contexts and developed long-term projects including The Edgware Road Project, Skills Exchange and Disassembly. She initiated the Park Nights series in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilions and co-curated the Serpentine Gallery Marathon series with Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Jessica Lack will live blog this event. Jessica Lack is a freelance arts writer for the Guardian. She was the previews arts editor of The Guide for ten years and now contributes to G2 and the arts and culture section online. She also contributes to various art and culture magazines including Dazed and Confused, ID Magazine and World of Interiors. She was Deputy Editor of Tate Magazine for five years and has published various catalogue essays and art books. She was writer-in-residence at Jerwood in September 2012.