CANNED was founded in 2011 by Iris Priest and Rory Biddulph in order to provide a platform for the exchange and enlargement of ideas and to support emerging artists and writers in their career progression both regionally and nationally. As such, issues to do with community, dialogue and reciprocity are important both to the CANNED founding intent and ongoing aspirations. For the most recent edition, ISSUE 3 we invited an open discourse on these themes, collaborating with artists, writers and critics to facilitate a wide, diverse and at times challenging examination of the perceived role of art in the contemporary context.

The CANNED programme has extended to the facilitation of real life events and exchanges from our work with basic.fm (the online radio station of art and culture), to one-off projects such as Peinture Abstraite – a collaboration between NewBridge artists Thomas Whittle and Holly Watson with the Swedish artist Jacob Dahlgren, culminating in the exclusive CANNED 3 centrefold and a thoughtful essay by Watson. Similarly in May 2012 CANNED hosted the three-day long event A NewBridge Enquiry. Devised and curated by the artists Andrew Wilson and Toby Lloyd A NewBridge Enquiry generated a wealth of critique, conversations and exchanges between artists, the public and other interested bodies. Some of these conversations – encompassing conflicting opinions and perspectives on the social efficacy of art – were then continued in ISSUE 3 through the four-way discursive essay A NewBridge Enquiry: the Politics of Participation and the Act of Invitation.

This approach to generating content and challenging, far-reaching discourse is something which the CANNED team hope to advance in future publications through collaborations both within the region and beyond to other national and international artists, writers and institutions.

CANNED are currently looking for submissions for ISSUE IV –The Politics of Representation, see details here.

Find out more about CANNED:
Website | Facebook |Twitter | Email

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Are you an Artist? Writer? Musician? Critic? Has the recession and past year of cultural, social and political unrest affected you or your practice? Or what you or your work now explores, engages, and deals with? The aim of this project is to challenge the notion that art and artists must passively engage with politics. Why aren’t we on the front line – Or more appropriately the front bench?

I feel passionately about this project as I am a part of the 99%.  – A young artist, a woman and a human being. It is so important that a strong and equal relationship is cultivated between those in power and those affected by the decisions made by the government, universities or the police force for example. Our generation must care about politics. We need to engage, challenge and construct a future for ourselves we feel comfortable and empowered in. We need to have a voice – A voice that does not necessarily have to shout, demonstrate and riot. There is a huge and justified frustration within my generation but we need to have a clear direction and ultimate goal that is driven by the youth of today.

On a personal level I am developing this project as I feel my engagement with politics is too basic; I want to challenge and refine my political and intellectual knowledge and become more involved with politics. And within my practice I want challenge myself conceptually and aesthetically – How do you convey a movement, a frustration, a collapsing society? I want to use my practice to push my creativity and political voice. I have always been interested in politics but am only starting to find my own point of view and position both as an artist and person. I also think it is important that this struggle is kept in the newspapers, minds and convocations of the public. The Occupy movement is brilliant as it has highlighted and raised awareness of the issues we face globally but there needs to be a considered and direct approach within the UK surrounding issues such as the enforcement of university fees, the dismantlement of the NHS and unemployment.

I am looking to work with and document people who feel they have something to express. If the ideas I have talked about engage your mind, values or political voice I would like to explore you ideas visually and also take your portrait.  I have already had some great responses to my photographic social documentary. Painters. Students. Photographers.  Friends. Business owners. Gallery workers…

This is an ongoing project and I would like it to reach as wider breadth of people as possible. I want to represent people from the 99%…

Where can art go next?

This is the way the artist’s world ends. This is the way the art world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.

If you would like to get involved please don’t hesitate to contact me on stellaheathkeir@aol.com or you can reach me by phone on 07733320110.

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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).