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'Crossing Boundaries' - engage International Summer School 2010

Berlin

engage International Summer School is for experienced gallery educators, artists, curators and academics.

This peer-led event was a significant opportunity for colleagues at a similar stage in their careers to work together to:

  • Reflect on aspects of current practice in gallery education
  • Review current research and political agendas
  • Consider the positioning of gallery education within the cultural sector
  • Learn about international contexts for gallery education
  • Network with UK and international colleagues

In 2010 engage Summer School was be held in Berlin during the Berlin Biennale. It took place at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt www.hkw.de, a centre for the display and debate of the contemporary cultures of Africa, Asia and Latin America which offers a broad programme of events including visual art and new media exhibitions, music, dance and theatre.

                                  Sumer School 2010

Programme

A day of visits to galleries and arts spaces in Berlin was scheduled as well as two days of peer-led discussion and activity. Professor Carmen Möersch, Head of the Institute for Art Education, Zurich University of the Arts opened the event and the sessions were devised and facilitated by members of the group.

The theme, Crossing Boundaries: where does the international art world intersect with gallery education? was an invitation to participants to consider the role of gallery education in an internationalised art world of biennials and festivals. What are the tensions between gallery education practice, which frequently focuses on engagement with locality and the local, and the concerns of an increasingly homogenised art world and art market? What can gallery education practice and engaged practice bring to these events?

Workshops

Delegate-run workshops took place throughout the event around the themes:

Audience and Exhibition
Beyond the Bienniale - Working with 'International' and short term events - the benefits and issues
Multi-Media Global Communication
International Exchange
Education Team as Commissioners – International Artists In Residence
Global and Young People

Click on the workshop title to read more and, where available. download the full report:

1a Henrike Plegge
Localization: Global Art and Education

In 2011, the Centre for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe/Germany will show the exhibition The Global Contemporary, which will document how Globalization with its economic and socio-political processes, influences contemporary art and its institutions and shows how this is reflected in the art itself. The exhibition is a result of the research project GAM-Global Art and the Museum, initiated by Peter Weibel and Hans Belting in 2006, which conducted seminars and conferences in several countries with the participation of cultural workers form different art scenes.

Alongside planning for the exhibition the gallery education programmes are already under way and thus seen as an active constituent in the exhibition production. The mediation programme has approached different public groups to include them in a long-term discussion about the exhibition's concepts, topics, artists and the proposed gallery education programme itself.

Henrike presented the Workstation, a special space planned within the exhibition as well as a theoretical foundation for the mediation programme, which will demonstrate that the exhibition is conceived as a work in progress, with opportunities to open up the exhibition to on-going change through interventions and commentaries by artists and the public. The space will be independent of the usual opening hours and museum restrictions. It will be host to both local audiences - groups participating in different programmes and events - and to global participation - international artists producing ongoing responses to the exhibition. The contributions and art products developed here will be displayed in a range of spaces left open in the gallery during the time of the exhibition, and thus transform the exhibition into a laboratory which is under continuous modification.

1b Lisa Edgar
Multi-Media Global Communication

Lisa led a discussion focusing on a case study of the Vision On Series which was part of the international festival project, May You Live in Interesting Times, which as a learning and participation programme was fully integrated from the project's outset.

The programme incorporated:

  • The Ghana Think Tank - a major international commission and socially engaged project
  • New Media lab – A gallery based weekly exhibition programme with a sensory theme running over 6 weeks featuring interactive new media artworks, events, workshops and lecture series
  • Switchboard Internet Radio Station project which attempted to open a dialogue the physical festival and a global audience online. http://switchboardonline.co.uk/
  • Teacher's conference – National conference for Art and Design teachers in Wales in collaboration with the WJEC (the curriculum council for Wales)

The full programme can be found here.

1c Susan Lamb and Helen O'Donaghue
Developing and sustaining local artistic and audience participation in international art events

Writing in 'Mapping International Exhibitions,' first published in 1993, Ferguson , Greenberg and Nairne critiqued the presumptions and 'illusionary world view' upon which many international exhibitions are created. In its place they imagined a new genre of exhibition developing from 'a more specific and sustained engagement with communities and audiences, creating meanings beyond the spectacular and mere festivalising of such occasions'. The model they suggested would have 'reciprocity and dialogue built into its structure'.

In relation to the context the work of Tate in Cornwall , Susan explored a range of models that could contribute to achieving artist engagement and audience participation in planning towards a Manifesta bid and how this process could inform and support the parallel development of a Tate St Ives Residency Programme.

Helen gave an Irish context for the 'temporary exhibition', remarking on EVA, a successful model in Limerck city on the West coast of Ireland and discussing plans for the Irish Museum of Modern Art's plans for the Dublin Art Contemporary due to take place in 2011.

They focused on questions such as the urban versus the rural context as a locale for large scale events, how the local can relate to the innovative and international and how contemporary art can operate in non-urban contexts. What opportunities does this create for artists and audiences?

2nd Breakout Session
Tuesday 29th June 14.15 -15.45

2a Sarah Mossop and Selina Levinson
The Education Team as Commissioners: issues raised through working with international artists in schools and the community

Sarah Mossop facilitated a discussion around the impact on roles and relationships within institutions when the gallery education team commission international artists to work outside the gallery. Drawing upon the recent experience of overseeing the Maria Pask commission as part of Modern Art Oxford's Art in Rose Hill programme, and the challenges and issues this raised for the institution, she referred to the external evaluation of the Art in Rose Hill programme, which focussed on organisational change during this period.

Selina Levinson led a discussion around what a school residency is and the tensions between artists and the community this programme can create. Drawing on the Whitechapel Galleries' Artists in Residence programme, she discussed the school as a model for addressing the political, social and the economic. This engineered situation raises issues and topics around the global versus local model. Drawing upon the experience of this year's four residencies and the issues that have arisen she considered whether this is a viable model for fully engaging all parties and for artists to truly develop their practice.

2b Oliver Sumner and Emma Smith
International Exchange and artists' professional development

Delta Arts has been involved in a research project, Golden Threads, a series of international artists' professional development research exchanges. They hosted two exchanges between the UK and Denmark.

Emma and Oliver described the thinking behind this particular research model, the experience of working with international partners and the outcomes from the first round of exchanges. They led a discussion on the considerations when working with educator practice and practitioners internationally and will invite delegates to take part in a round table discussion on the theme Transferability of Methodologies to encourage the group to discuss what can and can't be learnt from international exchange, questioning the dominance of the West in the artistic notion of 'international' and exploring how to make international exchange truly a two way process.

2c Sally Booth
Cross Cultural experiences and exchange

Much of Sally's work with people is site specific in outdoor and participative settings and she is interested in taking gallery education work into outside and outreach locations. In 2005/6 she made two visits to Japan and undertook workshop/lecture tours to accompany her touring exhibition. She worked in collaboration with the University of Kyoto with students of traditional Japanese painting, and facilitated practical arts workshops with visually impaired children and adults at schools and community centres around Nara and Fukuoka.

The experience of exchanging artistic cultural references was fascinating, and the linguistic and cultural challenges intense, baffling and sometimes hilarious. She used these examples as a starting point to open up a wider discussion with delegates on cross-cultural experiences.

2d Erja Salo
Everybody´s Museum / The Transparent Museum

How do we make exhibitions transparent or how do we engage audiences in the exhibition making process?

Erja explored how the work of museum and gallery professionals can be made more open.

How can the development of exhibitions and education programmes be made more transparent to audiences? How can the influences that impact on the making of exhibitions e.g.: values, ideologies, context be made explicit to audiences? How can they participate in this development?

The workshop included a focus on one of the exhibitions at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

3rd Breakout Session
Tuesday 29th June 16.00 -17.30

3a Synthia Griffin and Fiona Dean
The Global and the Local: Connecting with communities

Coming from two different aspects, an international recurring Visual Arts Festival that infiltrates wide areas of the City, and an established international gallery, both presentations drew on the opportunities and challenges of working with an international focus at local level. The joint presentations raised questions on legacy and impact on local communties, collaborative possibilities and sustaining relationships.

There is a continued shift towards art galleries and museums developing global identities, operating on a global platform or being influenced by factors that are positioned beyond the walls of the gallery which include regeneration, city making and sustainability. In addition to this there is a developing strand of artist's practice that is centred around working internationally with public space, the museum, the city and its communities.

Looking at Tate Modern's role as an institution that operates on an international, national and local basis Synthia explored these identities, how they work separately as well as opportunities for them to work together to produce interesting connections, a cross fertilisation of practices, ideas and high quality projects. Focussing in particular on some key case studies, that has as its starting point a need identified by communities she looked at how these have evolved to connect with international agendas and artists. She also addressed the strengths and complexities that result with projects like these particularly in relation to how they are sustained, their shifting local identities and how this balances with a global significance.

Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art (GI) is a unique and relatively new event in the cultural Calendar of the City of Glasgow. Now taking place every other year, the Festival builds directly on the diverse arts infrastructure, infiltrating wider areas of the City through exhibitions and public projects, across a wide range of venues and off-site spaces. Over the past year, Fiona has worked to deliver GI LEARN, a research and development project supported by funding from the Scottish Arts Council Education Department. LEARN set out to look at GI's potential as a distinctive platform for educational partnerships, capacity building and relations to wider communities, to inform future directions. As well as research into education and engagement within other Biennials and Festivals nationally and internationally, LEARN involved the formation of a small Peer Group. As well as sharing insights to the process and challenges of LEARN, Fiona opened up discussion about the possibilities presented by relations and crossings between different kinds of practitioners and professions; capacity building and experimentation, and consider if and how new sites and forms of learning and legacy might be made possible. Contextualised in the recurring picture of inequality within many large cities such as Glasgow, connections with local and often harder to reach communities, ideas of exchange and reciprocity, and the opportunities and challenges presented when different kinds of individuals and institutional structures collide, were a key focus for discussions.

3b Ali Bennett and Miranda Stearn
Beyond the Bienniale - Working with 'International' and short term events- the benefits and issues

How do we bring the benefits of working with the international contemporary art world into gallery education practice, and into public sector organisations, especially at a time where there may be financial pressure to narrow the range and scope of what programmes can do?

More broadly, what meaningful purpose can engaging with larger-scale international events, for example, the Olympics, Expos serve for gallery education practitioners and how can that positive energy be harnessed to inspire, strengthen, reinforce what we do and develop innovative practice?

Ali and Miranda led a discussion about the role of the arts in the many international events which are not art world specific; world expos (such as Shanghai 2010), sporting events (such as this summer's Football World Cup in South Africa), Capital of Culture festivals and of course the Olympic and Paralympic Games. With whole communities transformed and large numbers of people either travelling or experiencing cultures other than their own remotely through media coverage, these events enjoy a higher profile and have a capacity to capture the public imagination. They carry with them an energy and an enthusiasm for international exchange and sharing which, for many audiences, outstrips that offered by more focussed art world events. As such they could represent inspiring opportunities for our sector, but only if we can find a meaningful role to play within them. How do we harness this energy without simply jumping on the bandwagon?

3c Rachel Moss
Young people and the Global Art world

In relation to the consultative part of her role as the Young People's Programmes Manager at the National Portrait Gallery, in particular running the Gallery's Youth Forum, Rachel facilitated a discussion and mapping exercise exploring how young people as a gallery audience group are influenced by the global, particularly in relation to the art world. This included exploring the idea of 'crossing boundaries' more broadly, thinking about the continuum between a series of polarities including:

  • The local and the global
  • The contemporary and the historical
  • The real and the virtual
  • The event-based and the self-directed

The National Portrait Gallery's Youth Forum is a peer-led advisory panel of 15-20 young people, including two national members from Leicester and an international member from Stuttgart. Having young people's perspectives from beyond London has proved beneficial and the Youth Forum members have recently set up a Facebook page to widen participation and open up discussion across the UK and beyond.
www.npg.org.uk/youngpeople

For this session Rachel collaborated with Youth Forum member and artist Elizabeth Hepworth who is based in Berlin for six months, to complete a residency/period of intensive study at the Universitat der Kunste (UdK) Berlin - www.elizabethhepworth.com/

3d Emma Smith
Right Here Right Now

A street workshop for public engagement. A workshop involving a micro-collaborative project devised by the group and enacted on the streets of Berlin within the time frame of the workshop, exploring spontaneity and expectation in the context of linguistic and cultural difference.

4th Breakout Session
Thursday 1st July 2010 10.00 – 11.30

4a Gill Nicol
Local Global

Gill discussed the links between local and international using the project Ballast Seed Garden as case study. Developed at the Arnolfini by artist Maria Theresa Alves, the project looks at engaging communities through the story of trade and international travel. It crosses from the local to the international and yet carries the ghosts of people's stories hidden in seeds transported from one side of the world to another. It is also a story about partnerships within Bristol and how the project has captured people's imagination. Included in the discussion was a critical look at the project - 'what were the pitfalls'? and 'why did it receive such an engaged response'?.

4b Samuel Silva
Factory Soundscape

We live surrounded by machines in our everyday life. Samuel led a practical workshop in which participants created a soundscape for an imaginary machine, developed from different objects, noises and rhythms. The result of this work was recorded in order to create a performative factory-like soundscape showing how sound and motion can animate and change the way we see objects around us.

4c Anna Vass
International Exchange

Anna facilitated a discussion and presented a case study around the concept of 'the international'. The discussion was open-ended and required no particular resolution or conclusion. The discussion instead provided a thinking space for participants to consider ideas, how they impact on our programmes and how they filter in to the delivery of our education activities.

To provide a platform for this discussion Anna prepared a case study, focusing on the tensions between international programming and power relations; and how the group could consider the following questions:

  • What are the implicit and explicit meanings to the term 'international' when it is used to describe an artist and their practice?
  • What are the conditions that effect how artists get access / invitation to an 'international' status?
  • What experiences do we have of how 'international' artists and their practices get communicated to audiences and educational groups?

 

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