analysis of these projects. Instead, they work outwards to parallel each contributing writer’s interests in these subjects, leaving Art School’s timeline to be traced through a collection of annotated visual material, and the partnerships and affiliations that supported its evolution, detailed in the book’s acknowledgements section. This introduction sets out the foundations on which Art School is based and still operates, particularly in this mode of reflection, and draws attention to the energy that it has generated.
Although its scale is hard to define and its edges are uncertain, I will begin by attempting a quantitative summary. Since its inception, Art School has developed through fifteen projects conducted in Ireland. It has grown through the participation of thirty-three artists, over eight hundred students between the ages of six and eighteen, approximately seventy school teachers and staff, twenty primary and secondary schools, three third-level institutions, three national art centres, four county council arts offices and one national art biennial, and it has gained the support of a variety of regional and national arts and culture institutions in the process. I could go on in terms of videos made, tunnels drilled, strong men produced, gut bacteria cultured, mermaids dredged up and other aspects of the project’s ecology, but I’ll leave those ends loose, to be touched upon later on in this book.
In terms of its form, beyond the residencies and workshops at its core, Art School embraces mutation. It has grown to include exhibitions, publications, presentations, limited-edition posters and even an artist-led chat show. It develops by multiple stakeholders and agents conversing, proposing and negotiating, and is informed by each of its contexts, giving it a porous consistency, ready to mulch in and ferment on location.
Art School’s energy is often provocative. Operating outside the constraints of the formal curriculum and enjoying freedom to experiment, the projects conducted under the aegis of Art School have addressed issues that are topical, pressing and often difficult to discuss. As students encounter artistic production through these subjects, they come to understand that art is much more than aesthetics, and can provide an opportunity to actively reassess a variety of concerns and find new ways of engaging with the world.
The time frames of projects vary considerably, as Art School does not adhere to a single format; workshops and residencies can take place over days in quick succession or extend across months. The day-today logistics of each project are negotiated on a case-by-case basis depending on the time and resources of both Art School and the school that is hosting it. Projects often begin with a site visit, where I have a chance to meet students, teachers, principals and other staff to work through the logistics and ambitions of the project across the table from each other. Following this, I often invite along the artist (or artists) to visit the school, so that they can be introduced to the students with whom they will work, plan their project, consider spaces they are curious to inhabit and enquire about other resources that they might be able to activate.
Given that Art School’s modus operandi is constantly changing, writing proposals has always been an integral aspect of its adaptive architecture as an independent framework. Art School evolves through each proposal, via a new concept that responds to the specific context in which the project is to be set. These have included Other? Other* Other!, which explored otherness in the months following the Marriage Equality Act of 2015,1 and The Masterplan, which investigated the changes occurring in Grangegorman, an area of Dublin undergoing rapid urban renewal.2 Continually working to define the ambition of these projects has kept questions about the potential (perhaps occasionally elusive) role of art in relation to education close at hand.
Art has long had a place in school education, playing an important role in developing the skills, creative expression and imagination of students in the classroom. But the emphasis of art in the classroom setting often remains focused on cultivating a student’s capacity to master established representational techniques and to develop a command over a particular medium. By contrast, Art School draws its inspiration from the active practices of contemporary artists who operate in a variety of media and engage with contemporary social, political and environmental issues such as climate change, urban regeneration, social dilemmas, protest, educational reform, abortion, teenage identity crises, migration, immigration and gender politics.
For example, during her residency at Killinarden Community School, artist Sarah Browne initiated an enquiry into knowledge transferal by showing students a hundred-year-old photograph of students learning to swim on dry land. This led to a discussion about how learning takes place—how it is mediated through mimicry, sensory experience, listening and demonstrating. The students then split into groups, each deciding on something they would like to learn and something to ‘unlearn’ (for example, the students voiced a desire to learn ‘how people come up with ideas’ and to unlearn ‘how to use social media’). These aims were printed in poster format, and formed the beginning lines of a pantoum, which subsequently led to the development of a video work titled How to Swim on Dry Land that was exhibited in Rua Red as part of It’s Very New School in 2017. In support of these sessions, Browne screened video documentation of other artists’ work, including Seven by Mika Rottenberg and Jon Kessler.3 This work involved participants being subjected to intense heat in a sauna-like container and pedalling exercise machines, wearing very little clothing, and producing sweat as the product of this labour. While this video was playing, I remember one of the students turning to me and asking, ‘Are we allowed to be watching this?’ This response made evident what was coming to mind for many of the other students, between scenes of skin, sweat and exertion. Screening this video in the classroom allowed space for thinking through associations between imagery, desire, objectification, competitive self-improvement and capital—an important and evocative knot to untangle in the context of this residency and beyond.
Processes like this might initially appear as unsettling within the context of education, as it is so often understood. Yet, inviting students, teachers and artists to open up and work on such subjects together through Art School has been an overwhelmingly affirmative experience. Perhaps this enthusiasm is a reflection of the challenging times in which we live and our growing sense that conventional modes of learning must adapt and change. Over the years that Art School has been active, it has operated against a backdrop of social, political, economic and environmental change which has manifested in both positive and negative ways in Ireland, as well as on a global scale: social reforms in Ireland, for instance, have extended the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people while, at the same time, a housing crisis has led to a catastrophic rise in homelessness;4 and the climate crisis has sparked a surge of resistance in defence of the interconnected nature of life on our planet, particularly among the young. Contemporary art offers a mode of interrogating these momentous changes, often in ways that are free from the constraints which become embedded within a formal curriculum. The support that Art School has received from arts organisations is also a sign of the growing recognition of the potential of art. There has been an expansion of interest in arts-in-education programming in Ireland, as evidenced by the Arts in Education Charter,5 the National Arts in Education Portal,6 modulating support structures within the Arts Council (Ireland’s major arts funding body),7 and, more recently, Creative Ireland.8 Indeed, the initial stages of Art School were supported by the Wicklow County Arts Office’s fledgling arts-in-education programme, Thinking Visual.9 This interest in the role of art within educational reform extends into popular culture and media as well, with The Sunday Times devoting a full spread to the Art School exhibition It’s Very New School in 2017.10
When introducing the Art School framework to an artist, I emphasise that the goal is to develop workshops and residencies where they can continue their own practice, based on their own research, their own working methodologies and their own beliefs. They do not have to ‘perform’ the role of the artist. Nor should they distil their practice into a format that can be easily evaluated or appraised in order to be legitimised within the school. In fact, the artists whom I have invited to work within Art School are not selected because of previous experience of working in schools. Instead, I approach each artist based on my interest in their current practice and recent
