Art Colleges in Crisis

You could not attend the degree show this year at Duncan of Jordanstone without seeing the brave work of Fine Art student Finn Millar doing his best to "keep the university alive". Finn Millar said: “The degree show is an opportunity for our year to make a real lasting impact on this university and play a role in saving not only the jobs and livelihoods of staff who got us to where we are today, but also ensure future students get the best quality of education they can and keep this university alive.” It is understood around 200 students taking part in the show have agreed to display the posters alongside their work, and as a visitor they were a highly visible demonstration of an issue which many of us attending would have been unaware.

In the many years that I have been documenting the degree shows in Scotland, I have witnessed the degradation of courses with subjects being compacted together or cancelled a massive loss to the students coming through, but also a huge loss to the arts of Scotland and Britain. It was like dominoes, Ceramics across Edinburgh, Dundee, Glasgow and Aberdeen went first, followed by tapestry in ECA and then Furniture Design, Stained Glass.  Illustration and Graphics across the colleges are becoming more homogenised and indistinguishable, in what I believe a prelude to pushing them together.                            To revive courses disbanded is complex and expensive, the loss of vital machinery and materials as well as the rare expertise. 

Thankfully the Red List of Endangered Crafts is highlighting the critical plight and loss of different artisan skills across Britain, but arts in general are endangered by successive governments funding and education policy decisions and now they threaten the countries creative community with AI. 

Our Art Schools over the years have suffered, by being absorbed into institutions that do not understand or accommodate the space and material rich requirements of many art subjects. Now as the squeeze of resources happens that art schools are suffering. Across education it seems we have the same 'Billionaire' ideology of our sick society, with University Principles on ludicrous salaries and bonuses whilst the people actually involved in the teaching and running of courses and their students are starved of support and finances. 

‘There is a disconnect between the disinvestment, possibly by accident, in art education, and all the evidence for its importance,’ argues Anita Taylor. How has such a disconnect happened and how can it be countered? ‘The trouble is that the outcomes of art education are complicated and policy doesn’t manage the complexity,’ says Vicky Gunn from Glasgow School of Art. She is particularly concerned by the fact that the results of the Teaching Excellence Framework, which measures the quality of every university course, can cross-reference graduate earnings from each course. Her recent work focuses on describing with more clarity the processes and impacts of studying art, so that the sector can argue for alternative forms of value.