The Glasgow School of Art

Call for Papers:
ON NOT KNOWING: HOW ARTISTS TEACH
In Person Conference: Deadline for abstracts for panels: 28/02/23
June 9 & 10, 2023.

convened in partnership with 
Uniarts Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Art

The not knowing is crucial to art, is what permits art to be made. Without the scanning process engendered by not knowing, without the possibility of having the mind move in unanticipated directions, there would be no invention.

Donald Barthelme, Not-Knowing, 1997[1]

How do artists teach in higher education, galleries and beyond, within the current climate. If not knowing is crucial to making art[2], is it also important in the teaching of it? As artist-teachers, what might we learn from each other, and how do artists’ pedagogies change and evolve? 

Within art schools, academies, departments of art, and across the range of environments in which artists teach or facilitate learning, there has for some time now been a sustained questioning of the values and assumptions that had previously underpinned various aspects of artist’s pedagogies[3]. This conference sets out to determine what is special about the way artists teach, asking how and why artists’ pedagogies in the post compulsory sector have developed in the first part of the 21^st century. Structural challenges including massification, standardisation,[4] and financial constraints have had significant impacts but so does our relation to culture and ideology. A changing world requires us to address issues of justice and equity with varying degrees of urgency, to explore virtual and hybrid approaches in the pandemic, and to reconsider our pedagogical practices in relation to critical methodologies. How are we changing curricula in light of ongoing challenges to the canon? There has also been a shift in the socialising aspect of Fine Art education which had typically asked the student to come towards the educator’s world through the process of learning, more recently however students have begun asking educators to come towards their world so that this learning might be more effective. Within this context the reliance on student centred approaches has been critiqued for promoting a consumer culture[5] and failing to put anything on the table to which students might respond and grow[6]. Yet art schools still offer a glimmer of possibility for the critical education of individuals. As Barthelme suggests, ‘not knowing’ is crucial to the creative process, but also, we suggest, vital to pedagogy in the arts and the way artists teach.

The On Not Knowing: How Artists Teach conference will share and explore the various approaches, methods and understandings of artists who teach in the field of higher education and beyond. 

Steering Committee: Professor Jaana Erkkilä-Hill (Uniarts, Helsinki), Dr Elizabeth Fisher (Northumbria University), Professor Rebecca Fortnum (GSA), Dr Marianne Greated (GSA), Dr Luis Guerra (Uniarts, Helsinki), Dr Roddy Hunter (GSA), Rory O’Neill (GSA SA), Professor Magnus Quaife (Uniarts, Helsinki), Dr Timothy Smith (Uniarts, Helsinki), Dr Henry Ward (Freelands Foundation).

The call:

Many of our selected sessions have now opened a Call for Papers. These calls will be managed by the individual session convenors, but you can find all of the calls collated in the PDF shared at the foot of this page.

If you are interested in presenting a paper please send your abstract to the relevant session convenors by Tuesday 28 February.

KEY Dates: 

• Deadline for proposals for papers: 28/02/23
• Full conference schedule launches: 31/03/23
• Conference: 9-10/06/23

For more information please contact: HowArtistsTeach@gsa.ac.uk