The Work Room

This talk aims to demonstrate ways of re-defining ‘the studio’ as an energetic and challenging learning environment for art students where the emphasis moves away from singular activities with limited outcomes to a situation where individuals and groups can develop (and see being developed) a diverse range of ideas, strategies of translation and fabrication processes that can extend their current thinking and practice in unexpected and radical ways. Autonomous courses, whether historic or currently in development by institutions, where students are all doing ‘roughly the same thing’ can exclude situations where disciplines can collide and reinvent themselves.
Using images of student work from a project for a large group of 1st year Art students at Edinburgh College of Art I will discuss how, with the same source (in this case the studio around them) and some prompts, students identify various strands of investigation and diverse range of methods of practice. Setting a project with some open parameters allows individuals to navigate their own responses whilst learning from both their peers and a group of tutors that can offer a breadth of conceptual and technical knowledge. Importantly; students also begin to recognise tactics of investigation and practice that can be useful in more personally driven future activities that have a different focus
I aim to show that the classic model of the studio as an area of focusing thought and action still plays its part but the ways of responding to tasks is not such a closed loop. With a large number of students working with a range of ideas and processes in the same space there is a faster paced learning environment where the cross over between ideas and methods is more expansive and innovative.