Pedagogy 2025

Abstract

Contemporary arts education faces a pedagogical crisis that extends beyond institutional constraints to encompass fundamental questions about creative process and societal utility. This investigation proposes that traditional arts and design pedagogies – with their emphasis on hierarchical skill transmission and personal expression – represent systemic dysfunction that requires radical transformation. Rather than continuing to produce graduates who remain isolated from collective, reflective process and community intervention, arts education must embody adaptive, collaborative principles necessary for addressing social challenges. This paper draws upon Roy Ascott’s revolutionary cybernetic pedagogy, with focus on his experimental Groundcourse at Ealing Art College (1961-64), to articulate a manifesto for cyclical arts-based research methodologies. Through unprecedented access to the Roy Ascott Archive and recent interviews with Ascott regarding institutional resistance and pedagogical transformation, the investigation examines how his vision of education as adaptive system provides foundations for reconceptualising arts higher education as collaborative, socially responsive practice. The author’s cyclical making methodology moves through archival investigation, collaborative prototyping, community implementation and reflective refinement. The aim is to challenge conventional arts hierarchies whilst generating physical outputs. This approach looks to reframe the learning environment as living organism, responsive to feedback and capable of adaptation through continuous interaction. The paper proposes that cyclical making methodologies offer transferable frameworks for arts education across creative disciplines. This manifesto calls for institutional transformation that honours collective intelligence over individual artistic achievement, adaptive creative emergence over predetermined aesthetic outcomes and social utility over disciplinary conventions.