ACCELERATE: Accessible Immersive Learning for Art and Design

May 2023: Live events happened simultaneously in Bath, London, Ireland, Ukraine, and Poland for the Launch of Accelerate outputs.

ACCELERATE was a strategic partnership project (2021–2023) funded by Erasmus+ to develop innovative methodologies, tools, platforms, and resources for accessible immersive learning in art and design education.  

ACCELERATE has a simple but ambitious aim: to improve the teaching of art and design at higher education in a post-pandemic Europe through the development of innovative methodologies, tools, platforms, and resources for accessible immersive learning. It does so by bringing together art and design lecturers, educational researchers, and learning technologists from the UK, Ireland, Poland, and Ukraine to reflect on the impact of COVID-19 and war, to explore new possibilities for pedagogy and digital innovation

At its heart, ACCELERATE is about digital innovation in response to the impact that COVID-19 has had—and continues to have—on university teaching. It is fundamentally a practice-based project in its investment in the agency of technology and follows a ‘thinking through making’ approach. It seeks to address the particular challenges in the teaching of art, design and related practice-based creative subjects where materiality, embodiment, and experientially are central to the learning experience and where, consequently, the transition to online and distance learning has presented acute difficulties.

Bath Spa University led the project with University of Arts London (UK), Institute of Art, Design and Technology (Ireland), SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities (Poland), Sumy State University (Ukraine) and Chernivtsi National University (Ukraine).

Results and resources are published on the project website: www.immersiveartdesign.net

Image credit: SWPS Sara Bos 2023

April 2023: Doing Together symposium Bath Spa University

doing together was a two-day making and sharing practice symposium at Locksbrook campus Bath Spa University. This event took the form of ‘doing together’ through practical workshops that share the work we make/do as practitioners. The aim is to foreground the methods we use for doing, and share them with others. The symposium culminated in a reflective discussion on the event that evolved.

Natasha Kidd ran ‘The Undoing of an Object’ a short practical workshop that attempts to interrogate the complexities of “thinking through making” by literally taking objects apart.   Deconstructing an object visually, materially and conceptually we will interrogate the processes within it:  making, looking, thinking, gathering and auditing together.

Jenny Dunseath ran ‘About Making: Keep Chewing the Gum’ a session aimed at audiences with an interest in art practice, this playful and sometimes stupid session, involved multi-sensory, participatory approaches. While focus, certainty, coherence, and singularity are commonly considered pedagogical ideals, this session explores the nature of an art practice and the relevance of distraction and uncertainty to promote flexible, multifaceted, adaptive, and associative thinking.

At this online public event Gilane Tawadros, Chief Executive of DACS and founding Director of the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva), shared her response to a series of conversations which critically appraise current pedagogical practices and speculate on relationships to art making, art works, societies and cultures more broadly.

Gilane reflected on closed conversations held with Prof. Magnus Quaife (University of the Arts, Helsinki), Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre (Universidad de la República, Uruguay), Dr Gurnam Singh (Coventry University) and their respective invited guests, focused around the question: Post pandemic, how can we imagine, critique, and challenge conceptions of art in the future without confronting the hierarchies, systems, structures, and relations which form its present?

Taking the grammatical function of brackets as a metaphor for the art school within the ‘art world’ and society more widely; looking to the minority within the majority; to the ‘folds’ within the institution in which transgressive practices and dialogues challenge the broader status quo, this event sought to coalesce plural discourses around institutional change. Gilane’s external position to the art school enabled her to reflect on these conversations from outside of the debate, and to bring them back into significant conversation.

Gilane Tawadros has spent her career in the visual arts. She has curated numerous exhibitions and has written extensively on contemporary art. She was the first art historian to be appointed as the Blanche, Edith and Irving Laurie Chair in Women’s Studies, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. She is Chair of the Stuart Hall Foundation and Trustee of the Stuart Croft Foundation. Her most recent book, The Sphinx Contemplating Napoleon: Global Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Difference, is published by Bloomsbury.

Documents/links:

Event Programme

Transcript – please email MPF to request a copy of the Transcript

Recording of event:

Watch the event recording on Vimeo

Image credit: K.Squires 2022

Material:Pedagogy:Future’s first provocation event brought together a small group of individuals from across the globe to critically appraise current pedagogical practices and speculate on their relationship to art making, art works, societies and cultures more broadly. Invited guests were asked to be in conversation with guest(s) of their own choosing and to share their unrehearsed discussions with MPF.

This series of closed, unrehearsed conversations was held with Prof. Magnus Quaife (University of the Arts, Helsinki), Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre (Universidad de la República, Uruguay), Dr Gurnam Singh (Coventry University) and their respective invited guests. The discussions were focused around the question:

Post pandemic, how can we imagine, critique, and challenge conceptions of art in the future without confronting the hierarchies, systems, structures, and relations which form its present?

The following guests took part in these rich and important conversations:

​​-    Prof. Magnus Quiafe (Professor of Fine Art Pedagogy at KuvA, Uniarts Helsinki) with Jaana Erkkilä-Hill (Vice Rector for Research at the University of the Arts Helsinki) and Annie Davey (artist researcher and teacher at UCL Institute of Education).

–    Dr Gurnam Singh (Principal Lecturer in Social Work at Coventry University and Visiting Professor of Social Work at the University of Chester) and Dr Luca Morini (Research Associate at the Centre for Global Learning Education and Attainment at Coventry University).

–    Ana Laura López de la Torre (artist, writer and educator based in Uruguay), Rosalie Schweiker ( a conceptual artist based in London), Taniel Morales (a visual artist with training in mathematics and music), and Anna Colin (an independent curator, educator and researcher based in Kent).

Documents:

Event programme

Transcript – please email MPF to request a copy of the Transcript

Recording of event:

Watch the event Trailer Part 1 on Vimeo

Watch the event Trailer Part 2 on Vimeo

Image credit: N.Kidd/J.Addison