It's time to liberate arts education, make it free

British artist John Latham, who believed that art should be accessible to all. Photograph: Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images

Daniel C Blight

Monday 14 December 2015 17.33 GMT
Last modified on Tuesday 15 December 2015 09.48 GMT

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I recently became an art student again. It marks my third stretch in higher education since 2003, following art-related stints at Swindon College and a London art school. I’m completing a PhD, which I need so that I can teach at a higher education level.

I need to teach so I can eat. For every period of study I’ve had to borrow progressively larger amounts of money: a student loan, overdraft and money from the family – for which they borrowed themselves – to fund an education in which I believe. All my arrears remain. Debt is the price I pay for a young adulthood spent researching and working in culture.
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For most an arts degree will provide little money or financial stability, but providing the lecturers are strong and curriculum diverse enough, it will offer exposure to life-changing engagements with culture and politics. Some consider this to be the point of an arts degree – to offer an experience of critical thinking as it relates to artistic work (and let’s not forget that it is a form of work).

But could there be a better way? There are some institutions that have resuscitated older forms of education, not quite forgotten in London or the UK, to question the expense and current neoliberal politics of most university art schools. Here are just a few examples:
The Antiuniversity of London

The Antiuniversity of London was founded in 1968, in Shoreditch, east London. It was also short-lived. This part of London played host to a collective of individuals inspired by the theory and practice of liberation, civil rights and other protest movements popular in the US and UK at the time.

The Antihistory research blog, which collates the legacy of the Antiuniversity, and the public space at Flat Time House, where it began, are places where discussions about alternative arts education still take place. They follow in the philosophical footsteps of artist John Latham, who believed art should be accessible to all and lived in the house until his death, greeting whomever was interested in the subject at his door.
Open School East

Open School East (OSE), a short bus ride from Shoreditch, was founded in a disused public library in De Beauvoir Town by a small group of writers, curators and artists. One of the more prominent and well-funded independent art schools, OSE supports 14 associate artists a year, from diverse backgrounds, with or without formal qualifications such as a BA or MA.

In lieu of paying fees, associate artists are expected to exchange one day of labour a month, in support of various educational and public programming initiatives. As the founders of the school state: “OSE was born in a climate of spiralling tuition fees, which only perpetuates the lack of a social mix already present in the arts. OSE was instituted with access in mind as well as independence of thought and an openness to other forms of pedagogy and artistic learning.”
Islington Mill Art Academy

The Islington Mill Art Academy (IMAA) was founded in Salford in 2007.
A small group of artists had just finished their art and design foundation courses and, after attending various open days for university degrees, left uninspired.
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Maurice Carlin, one of the IMAA’s founders, has said before that university degrees present too narrow an idea of what being an artist in the world might be like, which sets students up for inevitable failure upon graduation.

He and his co-founders more recently said: “Through our experiences, we’ve learned that education need not be bought and sold; it’s something that any small group of people can entrust between themselves. IMAA is a continuing conversation about what it means to be an artist and an active response towards recovering education.”

The increase in tuition fees in the UK has further solidified government attempts to produce a culture of university education where exclusivity is favoured over access for all. Independent art schools offer an alternative, but not what is generally considered a certified qualification.

They do, however, put curriculum development in the hands of students alongside more experienced professionals. These curriculums try to develop arts education the way it should be: you get out what you put in – not financially,
but in the manner in which you engage a sense of community and equality, alongside the production of your own artistic work.

It’s too late for me; I’ve already got the debt, but future artists should be supported by a government that provides free education. And if this doesn’t happen? As artist Patrick Brill, aka Bob and Roberta Smith suggests, art schools will be full of rich people with posh accents. “It’s bad for art and it’s bad for democracy,” he says. I couldn’t agree more.

Daniel C Blight is a writer and co-editor of Loose Associations – follow him on Twitter @DanielCBlight

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