Q-Arts Professional Practice: 20 Questions. Book Launch, Hauser & Wirth. 18th Nov 2016

This will be the fifth in a series of Q-Arts book – they function as historical documents, presenting a detailed map of fine art education across the British Isles at a time of rapid change and uncertainty about the future

Their method is very simple: ask a series of basic questions in order to open the lid and focus attention on the fundamental issues, which are also the ones that are least often discussed publicly. These include: how galleries choose which artists to represent; how the art school crit operates; the specific methodologies employed in fine art education; and now the question of ‘professional practice’.

The idea of ‘professional practice’ still appears as incongruous and uncomfortable for many working in fine art education. Objections may be raised from a bohemian or a political position, or perhaps both at once. What comes across in the interviews presented in the Q-Arts book are pragmatic responses to external pressures and the needs and desires of students as they leave university, alongside a critical awareness of the potential pitfalls of conforming to other agendas.

I would say that these pressures come from two directions. On the one hand from a contemporary art system which is increasingly professionalised, concerned with promotion and self-presentation, and where artists are spoken about in terms of clearly laid out career trajectories. On the other hand from government agendas designed to instrumentalise higher education in terms of national economic growth and personal financial investment. Fine art courses have to deal with the reality of student debt and the potential impact of graduate earnings and employment metrics, whilst maintaining a critical distance from neoliberal employability and enterprise agendas.

Some course leaders attempt to deal with this by maintaining a clear line of separation between the fine art curriculum and university professional practice modules, whilst others seek to fully integrate professional practice into the course. It seems to me that the provision of professional practice potentially allows broader issues to be incorporated into the creative and critical thinking that constitutes the fine art curriculum: issues such as employment and pay, sustainability, the role of the artist in society, and the specific benefits of a fine art education beyond a career as a gallery artist.

As is clear from the conversations in Q-Arts’ book, preparing for life beyond art school should not have to mean adapting oneself to reality in a way that forces a splitting between one’s professional artistic self and one’s critical and political artistic self. Ultimately as fine art educators we have an ethical responsibility both towards our students – to allow them to survive and thrive ­– and towards a culture of art which can be non-conformist, inclusive and collective. These two ethical aims are not contradictory in nature, even if they can be made to seem so by a culture organised around competition, and conformity to a certain model of success.

At a time when courses are compelled to compete with each other in order to survive, this book encourages transparency and dialogue across the sector, so we can learn from each other whist highlighting different approaches.

Dean Kenning

Sarah Rowles unpacks the findings of Q-Art’s new publication, ‘Professional Practice: 20 Questions – Interviews with UK undergraduate Fine Art staff exploring how students are prepared for life after art school’ in a new a-n research paper.

‘Teaching has become a big part of my art-making aesthetic or maybe it’s learning.  This is why I love your publications they have a sophistication about the discipline and philosophy of teaching art with very down to earth hands on stories and approaches by real people in the field. Dianne Pappas, Art Tutor, Massachusetts