Pedagogy 2025
Abstract
This paper discusses the Value of the Copy (VoC) project, a hybrid teaching initiative undertaken as an alternative to traditional student exchange programmes, piloted between October 2022 and May 2024. In contrast to the traditional exchange of individual students this initiative was between student and staff groups and introduced students to inter-institutional research and knowledge exchange. The project was a collaboration between Central Saint Martins (CSM), École des Beaux-Arts de Paris (BA), Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK), and Glasgow School of Art (GSA). It aimed to activate historic plaster cast and reprographic study collections as dynamic teaching resources and utilise them as expanded studios through cross-cultural, online and on-site collaboration. Students engaged with fire-damaged casts (GSA), politically vandalised remains of casts (KABK), a historic and publicly neglected cast and copies collection (BA) and 1960’s paper squeezes of Roman typeface (CSM). This paper identifies essential elements, challenges, and proposes a sustainable model for future networked projects. VoC offered students an opportunity to engage deeply with historical artefacts and their contemporary relevance, overcoming barriers to physical mobility through virtual means and using collections as expanded studio spaces. This exploration was not only educationally enriching but serves as a prototype for remote and hybrid international arts education in the post-pandemic, post-Brexit context. Outcomes included exhibitions, digital outputs, pedagogic insights, research funding bids and a renewed understanding of collections as active pedagogical tools. The project encouraged the exploration of questions around authenticity, reproduction, institutional legacy, and contemporary reinterpretation through the lens of student-led research and inter-school collaborative production.
Dr Martin Westwood is an artist, practice-based researcher, and BA Fine Art Course Coordinator. His art practices include traditional media: paper, ceramics, print, collage, alongside digital video, animation, and writing. Alongside these studio practices Westwood develops cross-disciplinary research projects including Headstone to Hard Drive (2014 – present) and the European Commission funded NEARCH fellowship (with Joey Bryniarska, 2014-19). He has published and guest edited peer review journals including Journal of Visual Art Practice and Philosophy of Photography.
Mick Finch is Professor of Visual Art Practice at Central Saint Martins. His artistic practice is video, digital photo-collage and image-led books. Over the years he has published academic and critical texts and is a founding editor of the Journal of Contemporary Painting. He exhibits and publishes regularly. His significant funded research projects are: AHRC funded, A Vision for Europe (2019-20) as PI; The GCRF/AHRC funded Imagining Futures (2020-24) as a Co-I; the EU Horizon funded T-Factor (2020-24), as a T-Lab leader. He currently represents CSM as a partner of the EU NewGenerations project IartNET led by the Brera, Milan.
Elizabeth Wright is a Reader in Social Sculpture and Knowledge Exchange Pathway Leader on the BA Fine Art course at Central Saint Martins. Her work explores the intersection of digital and physical sculpture and how this can be used as a space for radical, democratic arts education. Fostering an open model of art practice, working within both formal and informal learning environments she has co-researched and produced artworks with local and international communities of children, playworkers, schools, academics, galleries, and cultural institutions. Projects include: Designscapes/ EU Commission funded Digital Markers (2019-20) as PI and The GCRF/AHRC funded Imagining Futures (2020-24).
3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
Thursday 20th November, 2025