Creative Transition. What might the 21st century art school become?

Whilst still lower than in the US, rising student fees have come as a shock to the British art education system. This paper discusses projects within the University of the Arts’ CCW* Graduate School which attempt to rethink how Fine Art postgraduate courses are developed and delivered sustainably.

These projects reject the limitations of the existing Fine Art education value systems. Instead, they are informed by principles such as ‘becoming’, cited by philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in order to re-think deeply embedded cultural agreements; the Transition Town movement’s focus on resilience; and other UK initiatives in sustainable education.

We have adopted these principles to explore how Fine Art courses and students can become more sustainable and resilient. In short, considering most art colleges are based on 19th century ‘factory’ models, one might ask, What might a 21st century art college and MFA be? We call this re-think ‘Creative Transition'.

This paper discussed initiatives that I've been involved with at Wimbledon and CCW about how the 21st century art school might be imagined. It was presented in the discussion "Should We Stay or Should We Go? Discussing the Debt-to-Asset Ratio of the MFA." at the College Art Association (CAA) New York Conference.