Teaching Beyond the Curriculum
Abstract
In this paper, we examine the possibilities that can emerge when pedagogy in arts education moves beyond the rhetoric of inclusion and instead become integrated into community ecosystems through creative forms of political and socially-responsive projects with/in the public sphere (Hussey-Smith & Badham 2023). Artist-led pedagogy is a social and collaborative practice of unlearning and co-creating new forms relational knowledge outside of traditional teaching contexts. These approaches extend histories of avant-garde artistic movements that engaged in anti-establishment activities to draw attention to inequities inherent in the institution (Thompson 2012). With important artistic precedents such as Tania Bruguera’s Immigrant Movement International (1991-present) and Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument (2013), these projects stimulate artists and their collaborators to ascribe and create value beyond the ‘professional’ into the domain of the ‘civil’ (Azoulay 2015). We write from a position of urgency to examine our own ethical and creative impulses in our public facing work by reflecting on Forms for Encounter and Exchange, a community-based studio for artist training activated through community partnerships embedded in a Melbourne based arts precinct. The course takes as its starting point the ethical questions that inform our practices: institutional critique; plural and co-created forms of knowledge; relational aesthetics, and the possibilities of inter-determinancy where outcomes are determined through shared experience. While delivered by RMIT University, this teaching program challenges the logic of traditional art school pedagogy of individualism, competition and transactional engagement with publics by maintaining long term relationships in the community sector.
With a 25 year history of art and justice in both Canada and Australia, Marnie’s research sits at the intersection of socially-engaged art practice, participatory methodologies and the politics of cultural measurement. Through aesthetic forms of encounter and exchange and a focus on relational ethics, Marnie’s practice brings together disparate groups of people (artists, communities, industry, local government) in dialogue to examine and affect local issues. She teaches across art, social practice, public art, and curation as Associate Professor at RMIT University in Naarm/Melbourne.
Kelly Hussey-Smith Smith is an artist, researcher and educator focused on photography as a social practice, the politics of representation, and community-oriented art education. Her research explores the intersection of documentary, social practice, and public pedagogy with a focus on community partnerships. Her most recent work looks at the challenges of teaching social practices in tertiary institutions, the relational and ethical conditions of collaborative work and artist-led approaches to public pedagogy. She has been involved with the Doing Visual Politics project for over ten years, a network of photographers, students and educators in Australia, Bangladesh and Nepal who use photography as a form of civil action. She is a Senior Lecturer in Photography at the School of Art at RMIT University, Australia.
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Wednesday 15th November, 2023