Lectures

PLASTICITY Working Group

At the Footnotes Summer School, a group of creative thinkers gathered to work, think and play around “Institutional vs. Non-Institutional Education.” For this, they travelled to the year 2045 together.

Get to know their world and work…

PLASTICITY emphasises the importance of space and being present with others in the learning process, and the need for individuals to make changes themselves, highlighting the importance of a more open and flexible approach to learning and the arts in a rapidly changing world.

The history of the PLASTICITY working group in images (2040-2045).

PLASTICITY key statements

• An emphasis on more spectral forms of knowledge (vs. for example the binary institutional >< non-institutional) is facilitated through technologies (but not only).
• Non-linear (hi)story-telling with several voices is included in art education.
• Plasticity is related to adaptability. Programs from IHAE had developed a larger spectrum outside the traditional art world. They also abandoned the 4 years based structure of the studies. They are highly flexible, modulate, learning trajectories that can be ongoing during the duration of an artistic career. This kind of openness gave much more attention to all aspects of informal learning.
• Informal learning is taking over the formal learning context and has important consequences on infrastructures, learning outcomes and human resources.
• Education is a basic human right and a condition (humans are inherently learning beings). Education is about personal development and enriching the lives of the individual, their community and their universe. It’s about giving life meaning.
• Who verifies informal learning, and who verifies the verifiers? In 2045, in art education, verification by diplomas has been completely abandoned.
• 2045 is a highly individualised society where plasticity is the most important ingredient (skill?) for community building.
• Well-structured open-source material with free access to academic and artistic knowledge without any barriers (e.g. language).
• Art education has changed from local to global in a digital way and from information based on experience and experiment based. Anyone can access courses in all the universities in the world, but also local in-person -spaces for reflection are included for embracing local communities and local reflection.
• In 2045 we finally took into account that a large part of society is excluded from understanding and applying code language. Education and Art maker place foremost concentrates on teaching how to hack digital tools instead of using them.
• Art schools are no longer focusing on constructing the myth of an artist but providing visual thinking knowledge in order to intervene in society 360% wide.
• “In the frame of Re-programming, in which Higher Arts Education is in continuous transformation and the student body has a central role in echoing the needs of and the cultures in society, cultural intelligence training is used as a tool for staff and students. Institutional mechanisms of the past (2022) are nowadays irrelevant.” – Re/programming
• Cultural (visual) intelligence training, and integrative thinking…. should be the content of Art Schools.
• Be the change you want to see in Arts Education!! The change comes from acting differently. Just make the change. It has to do with trusting the teachers. Trust the humans.
• Space is important to learning. White rooms are horrible.
• Knowledge is about being present in the moment with other people and a point of crystallization of interests.

(information, communication, knowledge, wisdom)