Introduction
The aim of my artefact is to develop a series of student-led seminars for the forthcoming academic year (2021/22) on the subject of ‘Art and Social Justice’ for the MA Fine Art Painting course at Camberwell College of Arts, with a particular focus on painting. I am interested in how notions of diversity, marginalisation and prejudice are understood by what is a very diverse cohort in order to explore how painting as a practice can be successfully deployed to fight for social justice (see appendix 1).
Background
My approach will be guided by critical pedagogy, which aims to create spaces for learners to critique received orthodoxies and hierarchies and to imagine and propose alternative social, cultural, political and economic narratives, systems and world views.
Academic and writer Priyamvada Gopal has written that: “Decolonising the curriculum is, first of all, the acceptance that education…needs to enable self-understanding. This is particularly important to people not used to seeing themselves reflected in the mirror of conventional learning”. She argues that culture and knowledge are collectively produced, and everyone has a right to “understand what their own role has been in forging artistic and intellectual achievements.” (Gopal 2017) (see appendix 2).
The key is to give the students a significant sense of agency, a recognition that they are constituents of a powerful community of learners, with an equal stake in an incredible human and intellectual resource. This is echoed by Vikki Hill’s contribution to the UAL publication: ‘Decolonising the Arts Curriculum: Perspectives on Higher Education’ where she references Paulo Freire, who promoted ‘self-reflexivity in the learner to awaken a critical consciousness’ and Dr Gurnam Singh, who stresses ‘the importance of non-hierarchical dialogue and exchange to develop critical consciousness, to connect ideas to lived experience…’ (Hill 2018 p.23).
It is important that the seminars are, to a large extent, student led. In ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ (1970), Paulo Freire argues against what he calls the ‘banking concept of education’ (Freire 1970 P.72), where students are turned into ‘receptacles’ to be filled with content imparted from the teacher. He writes: “The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them” (Freire 1970 P.73).
In his article ‘A Pedagogy of Social Justice Education: Social Identity Theory, Intersectionality, and Empowerment’, Aaron J. Hahn Tapper suggests that one of Freire’s most important arguments is that student’s identities need to be taken into account and that the idea of imposing knowledge without appreciating the students’ ‘situation in the world’ is bound to fail. Tapper writes: “A teacher needs to create experiences with, and not for, students, integrating their experiences and voices into the educational experience itself” (Tapper 2013 p.414). This led me to believe that an emphasis on co-creation by students and staff is crucial to the success of this project and that social identity theory will also be useful as a way of bringing different social groups together productively.
The Proposal
For the past 6 years, the MA Fine Art Painting course has delivered the ‘Painters’ Forum’, which provides a space in the timetable for students to share or test ideas, to run a practical workshop, a seminar, walking tour, to engage with an external archive or collection etc. Students take ownership of these sessions and it reinforces the idea that the knowledge and experience of all students is invaluable. Recently there have been discussions on colonial violence and museum collections; on the work of Ibrahim Mahama; gender and illness through the work of Eva Hesse; art and mental health and the work of Philippe Vandenberg and screenings of seminal Indian cinema. Participants are encouraged to participate and are given relevant source materials to read beforehand or are asked to bring examples of their own to present and discuss in the sessions. The Painters’ forum is a model for the development of the seminar series.
Initially, I decided on a series of six seminars. The first would be an introduction to the subject and an outline of the task ahead. For the second I would invite a guest speaker to address the subject through their own research, practice and experiences (see appendix 3). I would then split the cohort into four groups and each would work together to host a teaching session of their own design, based on the past examples of the Painters’ Forum.
Student Focus Group Feedback
To discuss this proposal, I assembled a group of current MA Fine Art Painting students. They were a diverse group, with a range of ages, life experiences and nationalities.
One of the participants observed: “Change can’t be prescribed from the top down – it must happen at the grass roots. The best that institutions and course leaders can do is to facilitate discussion and encourage relationships between students. It’s easier to say what one really thinks when some understanding has developed. Trying to front load a course with challenging issues can put up barriers”.
They were very clear that the discussions should be broad and address a range of art practice and not be confined to painting alone.
Some of the students argued for tougher, more candid debates, discussions and crits. There was a call to discuss issues and ideas as openly as possible. However, they were also mindful that this can be challenging as students come from a range of educational cultures and that in some, open critical debate is not encouraged (see appendix 4).
The group were quite clear about the importance of effective orientation at the start of the course, particularly for international students, where terms like criticality, context, analysis etc. should be discussed and understood from a range of social identity positions so that they become critical tools that can be deployed with confidence. This will also be embedded in an overhauled introduction to the students’ contextual practice assignment.
Creating safe spaces for open discussion, debate and critique was seen as crucial by the group. I spoke to them about Eloise Sherrid’s film ‘Room of Silence’ (2016) and asked them about the proposals set out in Shades of Noir’s ‘The Little Book of Big Case Studies: Faith’ (04.07.2017) for creating safe spaces for group discussion and critique. The article recommends establishing a set of guidelines at induction and suggests that guidelines and ground rules should be co-authored by students and staff to allow everyone to take ownership of the process. Respect and self-awareness are key, and it suggests that students are asked to be aware of the positions and privileges they bring and to avoid assuming the opinions and identifications of other participants (Shades of Noir 2017 p.7-9)
One of the students, felt that the most important issue for the course is to use social justice as a way to prepare students for a professional artworld that is inherently unjust and disadvantageous to women, people of colour, people with disabilities and those of working-class backgrounds. This made me reconsider the aims of the seminar series and how students might practically apply the knowledge and ideas that they learn about. Indeed, the seminar series can be linked to the existing cross-MA Fine Art professional practice programme (the MA Fine Art Professional Toolkit).
Despite the perception that the creative sector is liberal minded and inclusive and despite a number of recent initiatives, it seems clear that the artworld is still unrepresentative and discriminatory(see appendix 4 for more on injustice in the art world). As Hettie Judah wrote in Frieze (06.06.18) in response to the ‘Panic! It’s an Arts Emergency’ conference conceived by Create London at Barbican in 2018: “The most blistering take-away from the ‘Panic! It’s an Arts Emergency’ conference…was that lack of social mobility in the arts is due, in part, to a pervasive self-congratulatory conviction amongst many in the sector that they represent the solution rather than the problem” (Judah 2018).
A central aim of the seminar series, therefore, should be to equip students to negotiate the art world and initiate change from within. In his paper ‘Rethinking Education as the Practice of Freedom: Paulo Freire and the Promise of Critical Pedagogy’, Henry Giroux articulates how Friere’s ideas can underpin this approach. Friere suggests that critical thinking is a “tool for self-determination and civic engagement” to soar “beyond the immediate confines of one’s experiences, entering into a critical dialogue with history, and imagining a future that would not merely reproduce the present” (Giroux 2010 p.716).
With this in mind, I asked the group if a seminar series will be the most effective format or if we should be developing an outward facing and socially engaged project instead. One of the students recounted a number of socially engaged projects that she has participated in in the past (see appendix 5), but the consensus was that, in a short course (the MA course currently runs for 45-weeks over 12 months), a series of seminars that equips them to apply what they know and initiate change on graduation is what is needed most at this time.
Conclusion
The aim is to timetable a series of seminars on the subject of art and social justice.
The emphasis will be on co-creation and student-led learning.
Students should work with a guest lecturer to establish a subject or provocation for the sessions. The lecturer’s specific expertise and positionality will frame the debate – funding will be sought from the Teaching and Learning Exchange.
The sessions should build on the format of the existing ‘Painters’ Forums’, for which subjects are proposed by students and staff and student participation is encouraged and supported.
The subjects should be broad and not be confined to painting practice alone.
Safe spaces for group debate and discussion should be created, with staff and students establishing the ground rules together (reference to social identity theory).
We need to consider the practical application of the sessions – to place them in the context of the students’ future engagement with the art world and wider society based on the ideas of Freire, Giroux and critical pedagogy.
Consider the most appropriate way to document the sessions, to create an educational resource. A model for this is the Shades of Noir website and journals and the paintingresearch progamme hosted by MA Fine Art Painting at Camberwell and BA Painting at Wimbledon (www.paintingresearch.net).
1757 words
References
Atkinson, R (2020) Arts organisations awarded £1.27m to tackle racial inequality, Museums Association. Available at: https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/2020/11/arts-organisations-awarded-1-27m-to-tackle-racial-inequality/ (accessed 24 July 2021)
Boucher, B (2019) It’s Not All in Your Head—the Art World Really Is Unfair. Here Are 9 Reasons Why, Artnet news. Available at: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/9-reasons-art-world-is-unfair-1726653 (accessed 24 July 2021)
Brook, O; O’Brien, D; Taylor, M (2018) Panic! Social Class, Taste and Inequalities in the Creative Industries, AHRC – University of Edinburgh, University of Sheffield
Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Continuum.
Giroux, H (2010) Rethinking Education as the Practice of Freedom: Paulo Freire and the Promise of Critical Pedagogy, Policy Futures in Education Volume 8 Number 6
Gopal, P. (2017) Yes, we must decolonise: our teaching has to go beyond elite white men, The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/27/decolonise-elite-white-men-decolonising-cambridge-university-english-curriculum-literature (accessed 20 July 2021)
Hill, Vikki (2018) Decolonising the Arts Curriculum: Perspectives on Higher Education, Arts Student Union and UAL zine. Available at:https://issuu.com/susanbubble/docs/final_decolonising_zine2.compressed (accessed 20 July 2021)
Judah, H (2018) The Art World is Overwhelmingly Liberal But Still Overwhelmingly Middle Class and White – Why? Frieze. Available at: https://www.frieze.com/article/art-world-overwhelmingly-liberal-still-overwhelmingly-middle-class-and-white-why (accessed 18 July 2021)
Mohdin, A (2021) New studies to examine racial inequality in UK art and music, The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/mar/15/new-studies-to-examine-racial-inequality-in-uk-art-and-music (accessed 25 July 2021)
Shades of Noir (2017) The Little book of Big Case Studies: Faith, SoN. Available at: https://issuu.com/teachingwithinson/docs/shades_of_noir_case_study_-_faith_ (accessed 20 July 2021)
Sharratt, C (2020) Disabled People Can’t Afford to Be Artists – the System Needs to Change, Art Review. Available at: https://artreview.com/disabled-people-cannot-afford-to-be-artists-the-system-needs-to-change-covid-19/ (accessed 24 July 2021)
Tapper, A J H (2013) A Pedagogy of Social Justice Education: Social Identity Theory, Intersectionality, and Empowerment, Conflict Resolution Quarterly, vol. 30 issue 4
Whitten Brown, T (2019) Why Is Work by Female Artists Still Valued Less Than Work by Male Artists? Artsy. Available at: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-work-female-artists-valued-work-male-artists (accessed 24 July 2021)
Appendix
1. The diversity of the MA Fine Art cohort is demonstrated for example by the fact that in recent years, students have come to study on the course from countries such as China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Russia, Kuwait, Iran, Morocco, South Africa, Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina and Chile.
2. Priyamvada Gopal argues that “decolonisation is not just about bringing in minority texts but also how we read ‘traditional’ texts” and we are encouraging a more urgent questioning of conventional critical narratives in our curricula and a recognition that the diversity of the group is an invaluable tool for the interrogation of orthodoxies (Gopal 2017).
3. Recently we have presented talks by Hanaa Malallah on ruination in relation to war and violence in Iraq; Yvonne Feng whose PhD research is a response to the imprisonment of her mother in China; Michael Asbury on how modern and contemporary Brazilian art has resisted the dominant narratives and hierarchies of Western art; Denise Kwan on the stories of Chinese migrants to the UK, told through the objects they own.
4. In relation to group critique and debate, one of the members of the student focus group who studied in China before applying to Camberwell said: “I studied in a comprehensive university in China. We don’t have much criticism. Every year at the end of the term, we have a course that lets you make your own artwork, to create things by yourself. But that just means you choose what you’re interested in to show to your tutor. They will tell you yes or no; you can make the work or not. Most of my classmates don’t even care, so there are not many people I can talk to about my work. Some teachers would encourage me to do what I want in private. We can’t be too direct or radical about some things, I think that why I always like to make my work obscure. So, when I came here (Camberwell), there were lots of group critiques and reading groups and I didn’t understand how to deal with that. I just recommend some artists or talk about how the artwork attracted me. Sometime if you don’t ask me, I will keep quiet because I don’t know how to critique other people’s work. But I am better now!”
5. There are a range of on-going problems in the art world and wider creative sector in relation to inclusion to address. For example:
In artnet news (12.12.19), Brian Boucher discusses the systemic inequalities of the artworld, quoting Touria El Glaoui, founder of the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair who said: “Founded on—and playing a significant role in—colonial, capitalist, and patriarchal structures, the art world undoubtedly favours those from particular demographics with influential networks and financial wealth” (Boucher 2019).
In March 2021, the Runnymeade Trust and Freelands Foundation announced a commission to look at how people of colour are excluded from art education and how this subsequently effects representation in the UK cultural industries, where only 2.7% of the workforce are from Black Asian Minority Ethnic backgrounds (Mohdin 2021). The Freelands Foundation has pledged to award 15% of its future grants to the promotion and support the involvement of people of colour in the arts sector (Atkinson 2020).
Gender inequalities are demonstrated by the lack of representation in major museum collections in Europe and the USA and by the significant differentials between the value of women’s and men’s artworks, as described by Taylor Witten Brown’s 2019 report for The Art Market, produced by Art Basel and UBS, based on art market data from Artsy (Witten Brown 2019).
In relation to class, the ‘Panic! Social Class, Taste and Inequalities in the Creative Industries’ report (2018), authored by Dr Orian Brook, Dr David O’Brien, and Dr Mark Taylor concludes that social mobility has not changed substantially across the cultural industries in nearly 40 years and this is reflective of changes to the underlying social class structure of England and Wales. Unpaid labour, endemic in the art world, represents a considerable barrier to people of working class backgrounds and is viewed by many of the report’s contributors as a form of exploitation (Brook, O’Brien, Taylor 2018).
Meanwhile, an opinion piece by Chris Sharratt in Art Review (26.11.20), discussed exclusion and representation in relation to artists with disabilities and highlighted Harry Josephine Giles and Sasha Saben Callaghan’s campaign ‘Not Going Back to Normal’, a ‘collective disabled artists’ manifesto’ and online gallery, commissioned by CCA, Glasgow and Arika, the Edinburgh political arts organisation. Gailes says: “We need an approach to arts funding that prioritises work that is happening at a grassroots level; work that is always more inventive, more productive, more diverse, more inclusive” (Sharratt 2020).
6. One of the members of the student focus group described her experiences with participatory and socially engaged projects in the past:
“So, in terms of social justice, I think for me personally, it’s about raising awareness and engaging effectively with communities directly – being there and allowing people to advocate for themselves. So, just reflecting on a past project: it was to do with anti-racism week, and it was in the wake of Stephen Lawrence’s murder. We were commissioned by Greenwich council. They commissioned a group of artists to work with communities in Greenwich and I got to work with a group of white mums who went to the school that Stephen Lawrence’s murderers attended. I am British Asian, and I had to work with a white theatre practitioner and a black actor so that between the three of us we had to engage this group of white mums to develop cultural understanding and appreciation. The way we did it was by talking about someone in their community who wasn’t white and, you know, they couldn’t think of anyone. We had to do all sorts of things to try and get them to think outside the box and the one person they came up with was a Turkish women woman who used to babysit all their kids. So, once they had that in common, we started to discuss Turkish culture and the idea was to make these banners which were displayed in a carnival in Eltham at the Millennium Dome. They had to reflect on Turkey and this woman and paint and decorate a banner which represented this one woman and it made them think about someone else other than themselves. They had never done anything like that before and we are talking about middle age white women. But the minute we started talking about another culture and what that entailed they were all on it; they had fights about who wanted to have pride of place on this banner because they were absolutely huge. Each of the other commissioned artists had made their own banners and the result was that when these women saw what they done in public, they were so proud they actually appreciated not only what they done, but they had developed an awareness and some understanding of someone else from a different cultural background.
I’ve done several like this, in places like Peru and India. The fact that these communities can have someone, or a group of people come in, to be there with them to talk about things and elicit ideas with them, to just facilitate something, that just opens up so much more. In a way it’s quite empowering for them because in some places you’re not allowed to speak about certain things. You’re not putting yourself on them, you’re just being there with them on their level, at grassroots level and that’s what’s important, to be at the grassroots.”