A WELSH NATIONAL SCHOOL OF ART?

There is growing concern regarding the teaching of fine art in Wales. The recent depredations in higher education and implicit threat to art education in schools and FE colleges suggests a pressing need to establish an independent art school that works to counteract the abandoning of a sophisticated visual language in art. Visual intelligence should be the principle focus of such an institution. One that helps aspiring artists become visually alert and able to recognise 

A national institution for the teaching of art in Wales must stand in antithesis to the prevailing culture of existing in art departments throughout the United Kingdom. One which misguidedly focuses attention away from the art work as a valid subject for perusal and critique and that would substitute an art that elevates ideas and personalities without a material intermediary. 

The idea that knowledge leads one to understand does not really work for artists, unless that knowledge is gathered and processed through the experience of making. Conceptual thinking is to be understood through understanding the potential of materials and through apprehending the object as art. 

Skills must be taught, but more through discovery, aptitude and the desire to realise visual ambitions rather than through technical prescriptions. Formal values and conventions will be taught as a means of artists establishing clarity and distinctiveness. A national school should celebrate the traditions of art. We attest that the most daring art comes from such traditions. 

Drawing will be taught as the principal way of exploring ideas. It will be taught as something specific. Drawing will be valued as the bedrock of all visual fine art disciplines. 

Critical thinking must encouraged through looking at work, at things in the studio, at potential art. Debate, discussion must be fostered, and analysis must not just involve those works present but also examples of art from both historical and contemporary sources. This framing or contextualisation is seen as essential in establishing agreed parameters for quality and particularity. Art history will be an essential component of a national school. 

An environment that will best enable the making of art in this way is, in our opinion the traditional artist’s studio. We intend to set a group of studios within a single building coupled with a variety of other spaces that cater for various teaching and domestic situations. In a good art school the private and public spaces are well balanced. Public learning represented by group critiques, life drawing classes and public celebration of work will need its own ample space whilst individual studios will allow for private introspection and accommodate semi private discussion one to one. Collaboration and apprenticeship teaching can take place in staff studios and studio workshop.

There are a variety of possible patterns for a national art school in Wales. All have a different number of possibilities as well as potential problems associated with them. Not least the proposal would necessarily be examined in what appears to be a particularly hostile climate given the aforementioned trend towards the decimation of art education in Wales.

To advance such a proposal we must consider specific information and establish a sound strategy and sustainable business plan. Experienced and independent advice to proceed regarding company constitution, whether to seek accreditation and deliver graduate or post graduate qualification.

Ambition, it has been said, is critical. Anything that aspires to be national institution must necessarily operate and perform internationally