Engage, the National Association for Gallery Education’s Post

Free Course Access to Artists Affected by the Sudden Closure of The Art Institutes If you know a student or educator who was enrolled or working at the Art Institutes during this abrupt closure, please direct them to the link below. If you are a student or educator at The Art Institutes, who was left adrift by the sudden closure of this institution, Visual Arts Passage is waiving all fees to attend our Summer and Fall 2023 Guest Speaker Packs. We are saddened to hear so many artists and educators have been left adrift by the sudden closure of The Art Institutes. Going to an art school is a major commitment and life choice, and we can only imagine the frustration and uncertainty students must be experiencing. Our founders frequently speak out against schools that put dollars before learning, something we feel has overrun higher education. We believe many of these institutions prioritize profit margins before considering the best interest of the student. This is why we have chosen to provide free enrollment to our Guest Speaker Series for the Summer and Fall 2023 to any student or educator who was attending The Art Institutes during this sudden closure. We understand this is small offer, considering the gravity of the situation. We hope this allows some students to continue to learn and join a community of artists during a difficult transitional chapter of their art career. If you were affected by this closure, please follow the link below to complete an access form for the Summer and Fall Guest Speaker Series. This guest speaker series features artists such as Wesley Burt, Jeremy Collins, Karla Ortiz, zoey frank, Iris Compiet, Drew Tucker, and live interactive sessions with, Julie Beck, Modern Eden Gallery, Terryl Whitlatch, Brian Matyas, Luca Nemolato, Keith Knight, and more. #theartinstitutes https://lnkd.in/g6DsQUQ3

Thanks for sharing Sierra Van Ryck deGroot! This was such an important article from Stephanie Downey and Amanda Krantz (I can't believe it's been 2 years!) -- and we should be doing more to show the continued harm being done to museum educators as museum directors expect more & more from a smaller staff. The pressure for more visitors, more programs, new forms of engagement, new community partnerships, more events, etc. continues, yet museums have failed to hire the staff needed to support this growth (or pay museum educators the proper wage/salary for their expanded work). I'm seeing extreme burnout across the field, and so many incredible folks in education continue to leave museums for other jobs. No one is listening to them when they talk about their overwork and the urgent need to slow things down. And many are afraid to even mention their burnout for fear of being fired, looked upon as a failure, or even passed by when a rare promotion opportunity comes along. It is a crisis within museums that will far outlive the COVID pandemic. And the saddest part is that it doesn't have to be this way. Any museum can begin right now to listen to their educators, value the work being done and the people doing it, right-size the levels of programming and visitor engagement, prioritize the hiring of additional staff, and take steps today to address long-standing pay inequities. Change is possible, and we're the ones that can & must build a better future for museums.

"I beg you, dear artists, to imagine cities that do not yet exist on the maps: cities where no human being is considered a stranger. That's why when we say Foreigners Everywhere (this year's Venice Biennale's curatorial theme), we are proposing 'brothers everywhere'." Jorge Mario Bergoglio, also known as Pope Francis. This was the first time in History a Pope visited the Biennale - the Vatican opened a pavilion in the 2013 edition - and I need to admit this was one of the most interesting thoughts I have read so far about this year's proposal. And for my point here, beyond being the main representative of the most oppressive and destructive institution in the world, he is also not an art specialist. And this is not the first time I see a non-specialist bring the most thoughtful, insightful opinion about an important art event. Curatorial strategies need to involve the audience. They need to bring the general public to the centre of the conversation. This sounds like common sense but somehow, in the visual arts, it isn't: many curators still do not prioritize the audience's experience, which often becomes an exclusive responsibility of education and programming professionals. Movie and performing arts directors usually create for an audience, or at least consider their perspective when putting a work together. Of course, each art form has its particularities, but how curators and artists can still afford to offer, so often, such little carrying for the audience is something that has long been beyond my comprehension.

Journal 47 ‘Communities and care’ is now up on our website. Over the next few months we will be spotlighting the work of our contributors and revealing the second series of our podcast.  This week we are looking at 'How do we begin to tell the story of a river?'. The article was written by by Ali Reid and Claire Pounder with Dr Paul Stewart, all from MIMA (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art)/ Teesside University. This article is a reflection on the creative beginnings of MIMA's exhibition 'People Powered: Stories from the River Tees', which was on display in MIMA’s galleries in central Middlesbrough from July to December 2023. The last 20 years has seen a rise in gallery engagement practice towards new methods in terms of how publics experience exhibitions, artists and museums. From an educational aesthetics point of view, this is defined by Paul Stewart as viewing a particular type of gallery engagement and curatorial activity as a facilitation of, or an engagement with the aesthetic process, with the method of learning at its heart, rather than a substitutive process of translation or engagement to an existing curatorial activity. People Powered: Stories from the River Tees at MIMA is an example of this.  Communities and care is a response to the UK Government’s ‘Levelling up’ agenda connected to a perceived lack of culture or other infrastructure. At its core, is the idea of engaging communities, most often used in the professional arts sector to refer to collective groups working together, defined by a distinguishing factor across a shared experience. Take a journey through visual art practice, engagement and participation in the era of placemaking and levelling up, simultaneously exploring the uses of the word care in relation to this work. Login with your member details to read our journals: https://buff.ly/3Var3KO. #teesunicreativearts #teesside

I am feeling nervous as I head up to Leeds to take part in an event, where my research is featured as part of an event/exhibition. Academic research so often stays in silos that reinforce systems and structures that keep the system going in ways that I find unethical. One thing I love about Design Research is the opportunity it gives researchers to step out of academic contexts, and share artefacts that embody research ideas (to clarify - artefacts don't have to be physical objects - they can be tangible or intangible) ... Publics, people, situations, events, can become important critical forces that enable robust critique, reflections and understandings of meanings of the research we create. It can be, however (especially as a PhD researcher working alone) a very uncomfortable thing to do. Engaging with non-expert audiences, or experts in different fields, can make you feel vulnerable. This discomfort however, I believe, is an essential part of the critique of my work - and therefore my role as an academic. I am not going to get everything right, and getting things wrong is incredibly important. As someone who likes to get things right though, getting things wrong, or not making sense, can create discomfort. However, it is times like this that I am reminded and reassured by the words of Mathilda Tham (during her RSD11 Keynote last year) "What if we didn't change the world because it was all too embarrassing?" If anyone is in Leeds, and fancies visiting the Feed exhibition at The Tetley as part of Baby Week Leeds - please pop along and say hello! I will be there tomorrow (Tuesday) and my work is available to see and experience all week. I am exhibiting as part of a curated body of work by In Certain Places - a public art research project based University of Central Lancashire. In Certain Places creates work that challenges how we understand and experience places and fosters long-term change by connecting institutions and communities. My work is funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), supported by my institution University of Brighton and the exhibition is generously supported by Arts Council England... I am exhibiting work alongside the work of other designers, artists, researchers and activists. Let me know what you think!

One of my wishes for 2024 was to write more consistently on my Curious Curator Substack, and another was to collaborate on multi-disciplinary food installations, organise experience and discourse-led supper clubs, and follow my passion, focusing on the intersection between food and art. While planning and researching, I wanted to highlight seven artists and designers exploring food as a medium with whom I wanted to share their multi-faceted practices. I now wrote about seven artists (and collectives) exploring food as a medium to follow. You can read it here: https://lnkd.in/eu4Yy2CE

CVAN’s core mission is to lead on policy change across the visual arts. The imminent general election means that there’s no better time to set the agenda for future policy, and to call on all policy makers to improve their understanding of the sector’s – and artists’ – specific needs. In ‘Reframed: A new policy agenda for the visual arts’ we explore the context for change, addressing the multiple issues and challenges faced by the visual arts and artists, including low pay and precarity of employment; diminishing investment in the sector especially around public funding; freelancers rights and working conditions; arts education; investment in studio space and individual galleries, and more. Reframed clearly sets out our policy priorities and the solutions we believe are needed to ensure that we achieve resilience and growth for the sector, as well as protecting the wellbeing of our creative communities, and cementing our world-class standing on the global stage. We must work together to ensure that our artists are lifted out of relative poverty, and that our publicly funded visual arts organisations have the resources they need to help support and sustain our vibrant creative ecosystem. There’s an incredible amount of detail packed into this important document, so if you cherish the visual arts as we do, please visit our website to find out more, and read the document in full: https://lnkd.in/e2yHf39e

TOWARDS A MANIFESTO FOR CRITICAL OPENNESS IN ARTISTIC RESEARCH Session 2: Openness / 28th May – 17:00 (Cest) I'm really looking forward to the second session of our open meeting on artistic research and critical openness in the era of big data and algorithmic governmentality. https://lnkd.in/ecReNfCC The online series Towards a Manifesto for Critical Openness in Artistic Research explores the disciplinary ticks and nervous points emerging around the regulatory practices of Open Research and how they do or do not adequately support the diversity of practices in the field of artistic research. Through these discussions we aim to formulate a set of value-based positions and principles by reflecting on the historical precedents of copyright in art and science, the acceleration of open ideologies in digital culture and the practical implication of these developments for artistic research and its distribution. The discussion series will be run through the ELIA Platform for Artistic Research over 3 x 1-hour online sessions. While the sessions will be informal and discussion-based, they will also reflect on the tensions between artistic research and open science to arrive at creative and critical perspectives. This conversation will be continued at the ELIA Artistic Research platform event at the ELIA Biennial 2024*, Milan. #artisticresearch

How Critical Digital Pedagogy enhanced Five Conversations In reflecting on critical digital pedagogy I have considered an instance from my own practice. Though I am not directly referencing my teaching experience I believe my art and teaching practice both nurture the same themes of inclusiveness, communication and sharing ideas and experiences. In 2019 I received an Arts Council grant to complete a project called ‘Five Conversations’. Initially I proposed to create visual portrait styled maps of five inspirational Northern Irish Women. These maps would document the places and experiences that had helped them to get to 2020. These where to be exhibited in a gallery. Then Covid happened. This project had to change, obviously it had to, everything had to change. The biggest change was that instead of working with 5 inspirational women I worked with 6. I collaborated with a Esther Mogada @creatingaspace, a Northern Irish film maker, to put together a digital film about the project and these women. Making this digital opened it up to a much wider audience. I was able to promote it as an online exhibition. I was lucky enough to be able to hold an exhibition where the illustrated maps where displayed but I also blended the video into the show. It ended up being the most powerful piece in the exhibit. I believe this was because it incorporated the definition of critical digital pedagogy outlined by Stommel (2014). It was a collaboration with community at the centre. It opened the project up to diverse international voices/viewers. It was not defined by a single voice and had its roots outside the traditional ideas associated with art and gallery exhibitions. The full video can be viewed here: https://lnkd.in/e-Fi_WAP #teaching #pgcert #theory #teachingpractice #blendedlearning #digitalpedegogy #northernireland #artisticpractice #inclusivity

* 2024 FIAF Congress in Bangkok: FIAF Commissions’ Workshops * The workshops of the three FIAF Commissions on Wednesday 24 April at 3pm, Bangkok time, will be accessible via a Zoom Webinar. If you are interested in joining any of these workshops online, please register at the link below. Cataloguing and Documentation Commission Workshop: The CDC will report the recent developments achieved in three Task Forces. We would like the community to participate actively in the International Directory of Film-Related Libraries and Collections and thus explain the process (Anna Fiaccarini), we will officially launch the new version of the Treasures from the Film Archives database (Rutger Penne) and present our latest steps working with the FIAF Knowledge Graph (Paul Duchesne). Programming and Access to Collections workshop: The workshop will focus on presenting the interim results of PACC's two recent surveys (Screening Fee survey and “Rule 96” survey) together with some preliminary conclusions, and will offer an opportunity of discussing the possible next steps in the matters covered by the surveys. Technical Commission Workshop: The Technical Commission will deliver updates on our ongoing projects, including the Digital Statement on Sound, and Fundamental Archiving Resources. We will also raise some topics of concern, as a call for future discussion in the community, on the preservation of born-digital films and the continuing closure of labs and shortage of equipment and materials. https://lnkd.in/e59Vh8ES