Nadine Hecht and Katharina Wittemann in London, UK
We were invited to present our design foundation programme KATAPULT at the INFE symposium “Foundational” at RCA White City Campus in London at the end of August 2024. INFE is the International Network of Foundation Educators. The three-day symposium explored the legacies and impacts of foundation education in art & design, being organised in collaboration with the Royal College of Art, London, and The University of the Arts, Helsinki:
“Within art schools and beyond it is common to hear Foundation art and design courses described as a key moment in people’s lives. Foundational sets out to explore how this is so: to ask in what ways Foundation courses, and their equivalents both internationally and at other levels of education have been foundational; what experiences have stayed with people and continue to shape their personal, professional, and creative selves? What aspects of foundation teaching have been adopted and adapted by other levels of education and why does this seem to be increasingly common? How can we begin to archive these experiences and how can we explore them creatively using modes of artistic research? How can we ensure that future generations can continue to benefit from the experiences of these pedagogies?” (https://www.rca.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/foundational-day-two-three, 06.09.2024).
We learned about INFE through Chloé Briggs, who is teaching in KATAPULT via the Erasmus+ Mobility Programme. She is a British artist and foundation educator living and working in Paris with many years of (inter)national experience in this field. She forwarded the call for proposals to us and we submitted a proposal for a presentation at day two.
Day one (“Archives”) was held online in June. The presenters explored different archives and began to imagine what an archive of Foundation Art and Design Education might look like. We heard about the National Arts Education Archive, which conserves works from different time periods and different art schools, starting from childhood onwards. It was also interesting to learn about the vivid history of the RCA foundational collections and archives, which contain a range of materials from text-based documents to students’ work. This archive reveals a shift from rigid education in the beginnings towards a more flexible and open-minded way of teaching. Just like in our KATAPULT programme today, technical skills, professional preparation and personal development all together are conceived as a proper grounding in art and design education. In other presentations aspects like decolonisation and participation were discussed. Keynote speaker Ekua McMorris talked about integrating research in foundation education and promoting an awareness for using (foundational) archives, which is relevant not only for KATAPULT but also the KUPFER project at the Faculty of Design.
Day two (“Narratives”) took place in London and consisted of 23 presentations exploring the legacies of Foundation Art and Design Education. The content was subdivided into six topics, two of which were simultaneously in three different rooms: “Setting Scenes”, “Evolutions”, “Reverberations”, “Agency and Journey”, “Places, Networks, Relationships” and “Curricula, Assessment”, which we were part of.
In our room, we first heard presentations on the topic “Places, Networks, Relationships”.
Paul Taylor from the Carlisle College of the Arts talked about his 40-years experience in teaching foundation, what he calls a network of processes and a celebration of the provisional.
Doug Bowen from the British Higher School of Arts and Design, Moscow, shared stories of foundation alumni and emphasised the “art of guiding” foundation students as well as the essential aspect of cross-disiciplinary collaboration. For him, foundation is a network of contributions.
Chris Roberts and Gabriel Birch from the University of the Arts London talked about foundation “beyond the studio” and gave an example of an environmental art field trip, where research and process were in focus.
Raz Barfield from the Glasgow School of Art/China Central School of Art reflected on foundational education in a transnational context. Working collaboratively with students from China and Scotland he faced several challenges. The language barrier e.g. was diminished by a change in the curriculum in which language and practical courses were combined.
US Ramesh Kalkur from the Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology introduced the modular curriculum of their one-year foundation. The framework consists of modules like “Play and Invent”, “Order and Chaos” or “Community and Practices”. He also emphasised the importance of teaching process-oriented fundamentals instead of (discipline-)specific skills.
Adam Farcus from the University of South Florida presented the concept of labour-based grading contracts in art classrooms where promoting the students’ intrinsic motivation and minimizing biases lie in focus. He referred to linguistic research material in the lack of references from the arts. In his speech he also invited us to the next FATE (Foundations in Art: Theory and Education) conference in Washington D.C., that takes place every two years. The FATE network is based in the U.S. and Canada and exists for over 30 years now.
In our presentation we shared experiences from KATAPULT: introducing the programme itself, talking about the impact on students (also specifically on Katharina Wittemann), giving insights to the educators’ perspective, as well as showing an outline of our programme evaluation and summarising particularities of our foundation pedagogies.
Day three started with an inspiring keynote by Prof. Jaana Erkkilä-Hill from the University of Lapland, Finland. In her speech “Old school art school – artist led pedagogy” she talked about the common ground between students and educators and referred to her own teaching experiences at the Nordic Art School. There artists and students worked and lived together for a period of two weeks, in which hands-on learning inside a fixed frame promoted intense processes and personal dialogue.
In the afternoon of day three, the INFE participants took part in various workshops that were based on methods of Foundation Art and Design pedagogies and artistic research. First we attended the workshop “Morning sketch: words as material” by Kate Moss, an Australian artist based in Sweden. In four prompts we explored methods of creative writing and discussed the artistic quality of poetry. Second we participated in a Cyanotype workshop by Robert Roach, Gabi Mind and Chrissie Peters from the University for the Creative Arts, Canterbury. We learned about the process of creating a black and white design, handling the light-sensitive material and developing the image with water.
Between the units there were several plenary discussions and room for personal conversations. We noticed a common tenor in many aspects. Especially the fact that foundation education needs more advocacy in terms of the benefit of foundation programmes and in terms of funding. Many passionate voices emphasised the transformative quality of foundation education: Experiencing experimental process-oriented work after school education and before graduate studies opens the creative mind and stimulates personal development. This results in an individual “penny drop moment” which all foundation students seem to have and which leads to finding professional orientation. Even many years later, having followed a creative or another career, alumni appreciate the impact of their foundation experience. For that reason the importance of a foundation alumni network was discussed to be a tool for supporting the relevance of foundation education. Besides that measures like publishing, research and conferences were mentioned. It was also interesting to hear that, other than in Germany, in the UK there are accreditation standards for foundation education which is due to the long tradition of British foundation programmes.
To feel and to hear the collective voice of committed international foundation educators was a valuable experience for us and revealed the potential of this network. Be it future cooperations, learning best practices or the benefit of on site conferences like this symposium.
Thanks to the initiators of INFE and to the team that made the event possible. We are looking forward to meeting you again next time!
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INFE Symposium: www.rca.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/foundational-day-one www.rca.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/foundational-day-two-three
INFE Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/infe_foundations
KATAPULT: designpf.hs-pforzheim.de/katapult
Photos: Nadine Hecht, Katharina Wittemann, Group photo by Patricia McMeans