A new look at the way art is taught

A leading art college is changing the nature of its fine-art degrees. The aim is to broaden the skills of its students, reports Aidan Dunne.

The fine-art department of Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology has embarked on a series of initiatives that amounts to a significant development in the way the fine arts are taught at graduate and postgraduate level in Ireland. They are the result, says Aileen MacKeogh, the institute's head of art and design, of "a huge investment in looking at how and what we teach", a process that began four years ago.

Come January, a master's course begins in visual-arts practices. It innovatively features three streams: art-making, curation and criticism. Then, pending departmental validation, from the following September degree students will study for a general fine-arts degree rather than within the traditional categories of painting, sculpture and print- making.

The course will run over four years rather than, as currently, over three for a diploma with an extra year for a degree. Both the MA and the BA courses will be fully accessible full time or part time - or on a flexible basis.A vital aspect of the MA course is that it will be based not on the main Dún Laoghaire campus but in the heart of the city, in Temple Bar.

All of these changes reflect shifts in the wider art world, changes to which art colleges and schools have in general been slow to respond.

It has been apparent for many years that the standard academic categories of fine art are only loosely relevant to what people actually do.

A sculptor is likely to make video or performance works, a painter is likely to make photographic works, a printmaker is likely to do any of the above and so on. The exclusivity of techniques and materials to particular categories no longer holds true.

There have also been significant and controversial changes in the role of the curator, changes that can be summed up by the way the word is routinely used as a verb. Projects and exhibitions are now curated, to the extent that the curator or curators can overshadow the artists.

The balance of power has shifted so the curator plays a central role in initiating, shaping and mediating the art process, defining and directing projects rather than merely dealing with an artist's existing body of work.

Critical mediation is also a significant part of these changed mechanisms of organisation and presentation. Yet, as MacKeogh notes, there is no other curatorial course in the country. The visual-arts practices MA is co-ordinated by Mick Wilson, who has a record as both artist and curator.

Temple Bar Gallery and Studios will give over one of its largest studios, No 6, to the course. Effectively it will provide a working gallery space for the MA candidates. "It grew out of the desire to have students embedded in the real world, away from the isolated, academic thing." This may also entail having facilities for the MA course, including offices and a lecture room, in part of the top two storeys of the erstwhile Arthouse building on Curved Street in Temple Bar.

The one-year course (two years for part-time students) follows the calendar rather than the academic year. Each student will specialise in one of the three strands, practice, curation or criticism, but the course is designed so there will be much interaction and crossover, with obvious scope for collaboration.

"One of its strengths," as it is drily put by Mark Joyce, the painter and co-ordinator of the fine-art degree, "is that you don't just have all these art producers sitting around waiting for offers." The course, says Wilson, calls for "rolling delivery", so that via the Temple Bar Studio the students are immediately interacting with the public.

For Joyce, designing and co-ordinating the degree course was the main reason he went to work at Dún Laoghaire. "I thought it was so necessary in art schools to get out of the ghettos that have grown up around particular materials."

Nevertheless it was difficult and detailed work. "It's easy to say it's interdisciplinary, but what happens when people turn up on Monday morning?"

One of the implications is that any sphere of activity can be primary. "Rather than drawing being necessarily seen as preparation for painting, for example, it might be the chief focus of your activity. Why not?"

The emphasis is shifted away from the learning of particular, predetermined techniques to a more open approach to "ways of dealing with the world".

This places particular demands on the teaching staff, not least because there are more areas of expertise to be covered.

In the past British art schools were bitterly criticised for dispensing with the teaching of traditional skills without replacing them with a viable alternative. Academically, a significant problem is how to meet the demand for flexibility and plurality without sacrificing a grounding in genuine skills.

But MacKeogh and Joyce are convinced they have a sufficiently strong and diverse team, including such practising artists as Finola Jones, Cecily Brennan, Thierry Rudin and Amanda Ralph.

A major departure is the fact that the fine-art degree will be open to flexible-time students over the same timescale.

All of the changes have the effect of opening out the possibilities of the educational process. Everyone agrees it is as much a learning process for staff as it is for students. McKeogh is emphatic that it's not just a question of the transmission of information. The hope is that new approaches and ideas will emerge.

As Joyce laconically puts it: "It's necessary. Students want to find a place in the art world. But the art world is full up. These days you have to make your own art world."

The deadline for applications for the institute's MA in visual-arts practices is 4 p.m. on Friday. Contact the admissions department on 01-2144626