A fully funded PhD opportunity to creatively use the latest virtual reality art forms or filmmaking techniques to improve the health and wellbeing of disabled communities.

For more information and application details, please visit the Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities website here.

Deadline: Friday 11 August 2017

More: Website | Facebook | Twitter

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Find more opportunities in our weekly bulletin here.

Looking at what Art & Design education should or could be, Parallel School encapsulates the idea of non-institutional, self-led education. The aim is to connect people of different backgrounds from around the world to share their knowledge with one another.

A truly international concept, Parallel School has previously taken place in São Paulo, Berlin, Glasgow, Moscow, Paris and London, with an “each one teach one” system, meaning all participants are equally teachers and students. Guests and lecturers from different disciplines are also invited to complement the workshops.

The most recent Parallel School event was in Brno as part of the 2014 Biennal of Graphic Design. You can take a look at the journal documenting their workshops here.

Lookout for Parallel School happening near you or you can submit your own idea for Parallel School here.

More: Website | Facebook

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For more creative delights we’ve Spotted on the web take a look here.

Making the transition from education to the workplace can be very difficult. Education teaches you the skills you need to do a job, however it doesn’t necessarily teach you how to land one. Futurerising addresses this dilemma with inspiration, learning and support for your career.

What should be in your CV? What questions should you ask in an interview? How can you stand out from other candidates? How do you negotiate your first salary?

Futurerising highlights internship and employment opportunities, shares biographies from industry professionals, posts reviews of the latest industry work and uploads industry tips and advice.

Futurerising has live briefs for you to submit your ideas to. At the moment, they’re looking for a social media campaign strategy for Batman versus Superman and a creative way for Greenpeace to recruit the next generation of environmentalists.

Upcoming Futurerising events include Leeds College of Art on 5 February, Cambridge University on 17 February, Bournemouth University on 15 March and Middlesex University on 4 April. At each event they bring along an eclectic mix of speakers from creative, planning, accounts and strategy, through to tech and start-ups.

Futurerising visited the UK’s largest independent media agency, the7stars, to have a chat with Co-Founder Jenny Biggam. Check out the video above to learn about the ins and outs of a large media agency. Hear about Jenny’s day-to-day role leading the7Stars, their work process and agency culture.

You can listen to exclusive talks from industry speakers across a range of subjects to help you learn about the creative industries and landing a job here.

Explore the Futurerising site for tips to improve your portfolio and handy links to further relevant sites.

More: Website | Facebook | Twitter

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For more creative delights we’ve Spotted on the web take a look here.

Ikon is an internationally acclaimed contemporary art venue situated in central Birmingham. Housed in the neo-gothic Oozells Street School, it is an educational charity and works to encourage public engagement with contemporary art through exhibiting new work in a context of debate and participation.

The gallery programme features artists from around the world. A variety of media is represented, including sound, film, mixed media, photography, painting, sculpture and installation.

Blind Spot magazine, Issue eight (1996), Art direction by Tony Arefin. Courtesy Blind Spot.

Ikon’s off-site programme develops dynamic relationships between art, artists and audiences outside the gallery. Projects vary enormously in scale, duration and location, challenging expectations of where art can be seen and by whom. Education is at the heart of Ikon’s activities, stimulating public interest in and an understanding of contemporary visual art.

Bomb magazine (Winter 1996), Art direction by Tony Arefin. Designed by Miranda Dempster.

Through a variety of talks, tours, workshops and seminars, the Learning Team aim to build a meaningful relationship with Ikon’s audience that enables visitors to engage with, discuss and reflect on contemporary art.

Yael Bartana: And Europe Will Be Stunned, Zamach (Assassination) (2011) Commissioned by Artangel. Production Still by Marcin Kalinski.

Ikon Gallery have the following upcoming exhibitions from 12 September – 4 November: a retrospective of the work of Tony Arefin, who was a graphic designer prominent during the YBA period of the 1990s, and the trilogy And Europe Will Be Stunned, by Israeli artist Yael Bartana. Additionally, Ann Veronica Janssens returns to Ikon with her video work Oscar (2009), a portrait of the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer at the age of 102.

Yael Bartana: And Europe Will Be Stunned, Zamach (Assassination) (2011) Commissioned by Artangel. Production Still by Marcin Kalinski.

Ikon Gallery can be found at 1 Oozells Square, Brindleyplace, Birmingham, B1 2HS.

Find out more:
Website | Facebook | Twitter

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From time to time we feature galleries and spaces that showcase & encourage grassroots artists. Browse through more of our Featured Venues.
Contact us to talk about a feature on your venue.

Its fully evident that university education (like many other parts of the ‘public’ sector) is in for a fairly significant assault in the coming weeks and months. While as a general issue, this could merit further discussion, i suspect that is better covered here, here and here, and what I really want to focus on is design education in particular.

The prospect of cuts raises some fundamental questions. What are we educating designers for? Can we entertain a pluralistic and broad-based definition of design in the face of increasing modularisation and ‘skill aquisition’? If designers are creative problem solvers, what problems are they solving and who do they belong to? If design students are paying for the status of attainment, how is that measured, and what is it?

I think in response to these questions, the following resignation letter, written by Laslo Moholy Nagy to the Bauhaus over 50 years ago, captures the key issues far better than I could;

“For the Bauhaus begins now a time of stabilization conditioned by the length of its existence. As a consequence of the growing scarcity of money, it is demanded that it be productive, efficient – today more than ever.

Even though human and pedagogical considerations are not eliminated intentionally, they suffer because of this stabilization. Among the students, this reorientation is noticeable in their increased demand for technical skill and practical training above anything else.

Basically one can’t object if human power wants to measure itself on the object, the trade. This belongs essentially to the Bauhaus program. But one must see the danger of losing equilibrium and meet it. As soon as creating an object becomes a specialty, and work becomes trade, the process of education loses all vitality. There must be room for teaching the basic ideas which keep human content alert and vital. For this we fought and for this we exhausted ourselves. I can no longer keep up with the stronger and stronger tendency toward trade specialization in the workshops.” (Fuller version here)

This letter captures the twist that often occurs when educational investment is taking place — ‘Design’ becomes a noun (as in the profession) rather than a verb (as in the activity, moving, as Milton Glaser puts it, from an existing condition to a prefered condition). But this isn’t some sort of nostalgic defense of the university or an ‘open’ design education. What is really interesting about the current debates around education is that they also include some acceptance that the university system can be fraught with cronyism, beauracracy, and does have a lot of room to change. However it is the direction of that change which is in question. Design can be conscious of and engaged with professional practise without being in thrawl to it. Graphic design can deal with typography without necessarily taking to or, (that classic art school cliche), “breaking” the rules, and so on and so forth…. All of the above can be achieved within looser (less costly) structures that still aspire to excellence but have a far more relaxed and far less measurable idea of what that might be.

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Thanks to David Kerr and Keith Dodds for their key part in this blog post, (unknown to them).

I’ve written at various points over the past year about the tremendously exciting parallel school, (a student-led augmented educational experience), as it has shadowed my own emerging interest in the field of alternative education. There are a couple of issues that i think are important about this;

The initiative starts small, and uses social network tools to connect with likeminded communities, but is built on the dedication and energy of a small group.

In line with the ‘open community’ myth of the net, it still appears to be dealing with a core demographic of similar people, though they may come from different countries and cultures, and be geographically dispersed.

It is aligned to a traditional educational institution but is not bound by it.

In itself and its existence, it is a political act, and directly questions the creeping commercialism of education.

Most of its work appears to currently be self-referential, (about the act of ‘design’ and the process of education), and it will be interesting to see if it moves into other areas.

It is fantastic that at a time when most art colleges are going through the business-as-usual degree shows, groups of students are self-organising in this way.

More resources on alt/self/parallel/future education, knowledge (and related areas) here – (sorry for the sloppy formatting):

www.unitednationsplaza.org

52

www.staedelschule.de

facultyofinvisibility.tinka.cc

College

translate_url?doit=done&tt=url&intl=1&fr=bf-home&trurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.corner-college.com%2FCollege&lp=de_en&btnTrUrl=Translate

real-world-studio

index.htm

index_about.htm

p3.shtml

SLOFI

diy-masters

story.asp?storyCode=94208§ioncode=26

www.thishappened.org

www.newworknetwork.org.uk

da.html

schoolofeverything.com

www.theschooloflife.com

free-university

story.asp?storycode=407359

illich

University_of_Openness

TheFreeUniversityProjectGlasgow1987-199

resourcecategory.html?resource=Academic_Programs

fiuwac_statement_-_www_fiuwac_.html

9C4309B0B50D8AA36167.htm

about

sigma.html

londonfreeschool.wordpress.com

filmstudiesforfree.blogspot.com

itunesu

index.php?cat=2&subCat=docdetail&&id=206

edgware_road.html

resources

project6.html

Paulo_Freire

www.theschooloflife.com

Public_Library_of_Science

Open_access_%28publishing%29

stuart_bailey.shtml

critical.pdf

systems-learning-final-event-oct-6-2009-london-rca

www.summerhillschool.co.uk

ankur.society.for.alternatives.in.education

www.bureauit.org

portal

2010

Publications | Institute of Network Cultures

link.hfk-bremen.de

some more links: (updated 4.11.10)

www.department21.net

futurefarmers

colab_a_laboratory_for_collaboration_and_serious_play_by_shoham_arad__16513.asp

index.php

future-public-school

new-media-cultural-studies-and-critical-theory-after-postmodernism

artschoolalternatives.tumblr.com

PaulElliman

crosslab

www.onomatopee.net

cult_of_the_ugly

journalism

www.islingtonmillartacademy.blogspot.com

schoolofthefuture.org

gdiycommunity.wordpress.com

I grew up glued to the TV, particularly American cartoons funded by toy manufacturers to flog their products, and playing a lot of video games that didn’t do me any harm. However, cinema was, and will always be, my first love.

Our local cinema was the mythical ABC Muirend Cinema. Designed by William Bereseford Inglis in 1933, the building exterior replicated a Spanish style hacienda while inside the auditorium had lots of Flamenco style motifs, such as balconies, amber lanterns and images of matadors painted on tiles dotted along the stairwells. Looking back as I write this, Muirend Cinema seems a bizarre prophecy of my future; I studied Spanish at Glasgow University and somehow I’ve ended up working for Glasgow Film Theatre as Learning Projects Coordinator for Young People. The range of the films it offered were the standard box office fare but I relished them all regardless. My seminal movie moments included watching Jurassic Park on the opening weekend, my mum convincing the box office grump that I was old enough to watch The Man Without A Face and stuffing my face with the cheaper sweets bought next door in Safeways to the bombast of Independence Day.

Sadly like a lot of old cinemas in Glasgow, ABC Muirend shut down in 2001 due to shrinking audiences that preferred the industrial comfort of a multiplex and the cost of maintaining a building that was well past its prime. Each time I pass it, I can’t help feel a wave of sadness for an important community relic that now functions as luxury apartments for a select few. My memories of Muirend remain but families in the Southside of Glasgow have to travel elsewhere these days for their cinematic outings.

Hopefully some of these families come to the GFT for our free Take 2 family screenings which screen every Saturday morning. I try to programme a range of films that appeal to a wide audience while sneaking in a few classic and foreign gems, like The Boy From Mercury, Mr Hulot’s Holiday and The Belles of St. Trinian’s. Unfortunately a lack of distribution of foreign titles for children and availability of prints makes screening non-Hollywood films a lot harder than it should be.

Although 41% of 15-24 year olds visit the cinema once a month* and are exposed to moving images on a daily basis, young people are often the least catered to by art house cinemas. More often than not, they tend to select films that appeal to older audiences with their youth remit left solely to ‘parent and baby’ screenings. Consequently, children and young adults miss out on the wealth of different contemporary perspectives offered by world cinema and so remain quite happy to settle for whatever is showing at their local Cineworld.

This isn’t helped by the fact that moving image education still struggles to be implemented across schools in the UK. Despite repeated efforts, teachers cite a lack of resources and adequate training to properly implement film into the classroom. As a result, DVDs can often become a babysitter for pupils rather than a key part of their cultural development and awareness. It remains to be seen whether the ambitions of 21st Century Literacy, a consortium set up by the UK Film Council and Film Education among others, can be achieved.

In response to these issues, GFT Learning set up the Glasgow Youth Film Festival to offer young people a chance to help devise, promote and run their own film festival. Programmed by a worryingly cool bunch of teenagers, GYFF aims to reach out to young Glaswegians through their love of movies while supporting their talents and aspirations. This year almost 7,000 young people attended GYFF events; it was such a refreshing sight to see so many young faces in our cinemas. (Previously, members of our Youth Group told me that they felt unwelcome by older GFT patrons who thought they’d only talk throughout the film.) The response we had was overwhelming and encouraging enough to safely say that there’s a youth audience in Glasgow interested in films from around the globe.

Over the next few years for GYFF, I hope to increase the opportunities for young people to talk to people who work in the moving image industries – not just directors or actors but writers, graphic designers, animators and editors who all make a living from their passion for film, TV and video games. Like the rest of the arts, the film industry remains horribly white and middle class, in spite of the occasional tokenistic scheme for individuals from underrepresented backgrounds. Anyone who aspires to work in this industry is expected to intern for free or live off small bursaries. I had to do this for almost 2 years and I doubt that it will change anytime soon, no matter how legally grey internships appear.

There’s more to young movie fans than a lucrative demographic to market blockbusters to. Exhibitors, distributors, not to mention teachers, should encourage young people to look at moving image in a reflective and creative way rather than be passive observers that we often assume them to be. Thankfully youth film festivals such as GYFF, Discovery and Future Film, alongside the exciting developments promised by 8 1/2 Foundation, demonstrate the growing commitment to future generations of cinemagoers. With the falling costs of HD technology and the increasing ease of distributing films online, I’m hopeful that all young people will continue to be inspired by the flickering images around them – from the glow of a TV, the hum of a projector or even the hypnotic whirl of your mum’s dirty washing.

*According to UK Film Council’s 2009 Statistics Handbook

Images of ABC Muirend taken from Scottish Cinemas site