Okay I’ll admit it – I’m not entirely sure what this piece in The Art Newspaper is trying to say. Something to do with the artistic ticking of diversity boxes obviously. Whether or not the whole work it is fit to be exhibited - I’m not sure but I'm no artist.
How racist is UK art education? A new report aims to find out
Freelands Foundation and Runnymede Trust have partnered up to investigate racial inequality in schools and universities...
"Black, Asian and ethnically diverse students face significant obstacles to studying art at every stage of their educational journey, not least because of a striking lack of representation in the curriculum and in art educators," says Elisabeth Murdoch, founder and chair of Freelands Foundation. "This has the ripple effect on the lack of representation throughout the arts sector: from entry level, technical, curatorial, to leadership."
Murdoch continues: "We will look at the ecosystem of art education as a whole to identify bold solutions that we believe will drive real change across the sector, creating greater opportunities for Black and ethnically diverse students to shape and enrich the visual art landscape of tomorrow."
To this end, the report will also provide real guidelines and teaching plans to improve equality within the sector at all stages. Goals that should be more than achievable, as the Black British artist and Freelands ambassador Sonia Boyce points out: "If we can go to Mars, we can send more kids to art school."
6 comments:
"If we can go to Mars, we can send more kids to art school."
Sending an unmanned rover to Mars is just like sending more kids to art school. After all, they can both send back pictures.
What does, "More representation in the curriculum" mean? More picture books of BAME etc instead of the actually perfectly representative pictures which just happen to reflect the make-up of society now.
Remember children, positive discrimination is just discrimination (& therefore unacceptable and probably illegal under equal rights legislation).
Can Still Life and Landscape be racist?
Are people of one race allowed to paint pictures of other races?
How can we shoehorn sexual/gender diversity into this and garner more grants?
And what about the differently abled and challenged?
Surely, Mars was a bloke, and liked the odd punch-up...?
Not woke enough for 'artists'!
Building on yesterday's post about Jordan Peterson and the value of myths as preparation for life... we collectively have been telling ourselves poor myths for decades. We have dropped the 'Hero's Quest' for 'Everyone shall win prizes'. We have dropped the myths about 'Pirates and brigands' for 'Terribly nice people who have been cruelly oppressed'. We have dropped the myth about 'Individual Excellence' for 'If only you weren't discriminated against because you are a victim'.
If you look for '-ism' you will find it whether it exists or not, and perhaps more importantly if the particular '-ism' was magically vanished there is little chance that ordinary people would suddenly be rich, beautiful, and lauded by everyone. A very poor myth indeed.
Sam - although the Mars pictures are more limited than those painted by kids. Rocks mostly.
Ed - maybe more picture books representing that strange advertising world of amazingly successful mixed marriages we see so often.
Doonhamer - I'm sure even still life can be racist. White grapes, a bottle of white wine...
Scrobs - good point - is Mars essentially sexist?
DJ - yes the 'Terribly nice people who have been cruelly oppressed' is one of the most pernicious and the one which will sink us. Another aspect of it is 'know your enemies because they know you' - we've forgotten that.
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