Future Art School Trends UK (FAST UK)

Gale, Cathy and Ryan, Max and Strange, Emily and Watson, Annie (2024) Future Art School Trends UK (FAST UK). In: P/References of Design. Cumulus conference proceedings series, 1 . Cumulus Association, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest, Budapest, pp. 651-664. ISBN 978-952-7549-03-5

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Abstract

Scenarios for envisioning future thinking in arts education are typically constrained by perceptions of contemporary circumstances as immutable, despite political fluctuations across the Global North: determined by culture wars, socio-economic, and ecological crises. While the future of art and design education cannot be predicted, we can help shape it by joining forces across/beyond borders (disciplinary, institutional, geopolitical) to create more horizontal hierarchies of knowledge tested through participatory discovery and discursive research methods. Drawing on the Learning Platform of ELIA: FAST45 (Futures Art School Trends 2045), FAST UK is introduced as an emergent nexus of British educators, student collectives, and third-sector partners. We actively embrace diverse stakeholders in the public domain as a socio-conceptual space for formulating an equivalent Pedagogic Futures Research Lab in the UK. This experiment in future thinking is devised as a catalyst for more robust multimodal bodies of knowledge employing discursive and empathic approaches to co-construct pragmatic and theoretical new methodologies, more porous academic boundaries, and future visions for the (British) art schools of tomorrow. Art school traditions, models, and methods are unpicked as a part of this process to sift best practices from habits/norms and familiar formulae through the lens of the possible, probable, potential, plausible, preferable, or even utopian futures for the sector. New forms of art practice, generative AI, radical pedagogies, performative practices, and hybrid technologies are synthesised in a convergence of knowledge. FAST UK is conceived of as a means of anticipating and shaping our collective futures by utilising the inherently imaginative, intellectual, and creative resources (human, strategic, methodological) nurtured and developed in our art schools at a local, regional, inter/national, and global scale.

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