How Artists Learn: A Lexicon

How Artists Learn: A Lexicon was a performance lecture performed at The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. It was part of a programme of events for Have Some Imagination: Towards a Manifesto for Arts Education.

The lexicon emerges from approaches to tutorial and studio practice that encourage students to learn as artists, developed through experiences of curriculum design and pedagogical development in Fine Art and Performance Making contexts in higher education. The words are a consolidation of repeated strategies used to support students when they are ‘stuck’ in not knowing, unsure about what to do next. It considers how adjectives and verbs can be used to activate, energise or slow down situations for the individual needs of a student artist and their work. Although these words have emerged from a higher educational context - and originating from my experiences as a practicing artist - the lexicon can be adapted to be applied at any level of artistic and creative learning, gesturing towards what artists might need to learn to maintain agency and radicality within contexts that prioritise commodity, employability and metrics of economic value.

Presented by Baltic and Northumbria University, this two-day international conference will address the transformational value of creative learning for envisioning and sustaining collective futures.

As a result of educational policy changes and the impact of austerity on arts spending over recent decades, the delivery of arts education in schools, colleges, and universities has been pitched into an unprecedented crisis. Across geo-political contexts, a narrowly financialised discourse of the arts has come to predominate in public culture, often making arts education seem unworthy when contrasted with disciplines with supposedly better monetised outcomes and job prospects.

The conference will feature an array of performative lectures, round tables and interactive workshops designed to ignite meaningful dialogue, innovative thinking and strategise for an arts education of tomorrow. Together, we can envision and create a more inclusive, imaginative, and impactful landscape for arts education, ensuring that every voice is heard, and every perspective is valued.