Image Shutterstock
Two days after the University of Sydney released its Final Change Plan (FCP) outlining what the move of Sydney College of the Arts (SCA) to the main campus in Camperdown/Darlington will look like, Friends of Sydney College of the Arts (FOSCA) met to discuss an alternative roadmap.
A panel discussion titled Fast Forward: a vision for Sydney College of the Arts was not about attacking staff reductions or the move itself, rather, it was about filling in the blank that sat behind the word “vision” in the new plan, said Anne Flanagan, Former Deputy Director of AGNSW and Chair of the discussion.
‘Until now, the University’s thinking about SCA has been more concerned with controlling its finances than ensuring its long-term vitality. It has been alarming to see how, in the push to establish a smaller, cheaper-to-run institution, an imaginative vision for SCA has failed to emerge,’ said FOSCA in a formal statement.
Under the Plan, SCA will change from being an independent faculty to a small department within the School of Literature, Art and Media (SLAM) in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS).
Flanagan reminded that the FCP places a reduced intake at the new site, comprised of 300 – 340 undergraduates, 30 – 45 post graduates by course work, and 30 – 54 HDR (Higher Degree Research). There are currently 600-700 students.
She further summarised that there will be reduced academic and technical staff; that the Bachelor of Visual Arts will remain in place, while a new Bachelor of Advance Studies with a major in Visual Arts will be offered as a possible second major in all liberal arts and science degrees.
To understand the facts outlined in the FCP, we have summarised them for you.
You need a road map to move forward
One of the most pressing questions that came out of the discussion was tabled by Alexie Glass-Kantor, Executive Director, Artspace Sydney: ‘I think Sydney College of the Arts needs a Strategic Plan. People need to sit in a room for five days with a range of 10 – 12 stakeholders drawn from teachers and students, from leadership, new executive team, from the University itself and I think they have to ask the question ‘why does Sydney College of the Arts exist? Should it exist? If it does, what does it look like?’
‘We need to understand the limits and values and thresholds first, before we talk about partnership and collaborations,’ she added.
‘There has to be this step before the courses are constructed, and that step has to be what the future looks like, what it is offering, what its potential is – the past is what it is,’ she said. ‘How can we make recommendations when we don’t know what it will be measured against?”
Glass-Kantor was joined by speakers Lucas Ilhein, Lily Hibberd, Barry Keldoulis, Grace Cochrane and Helen Grace. The closed discussion extended to an external group of 25 industry thinkers.
Participants at Friends of SCA event. Photo Credit: Merilyn Fairskye
Making use of assets
Artist and academic Lucas Ilhein said that while there has been a utopian feeling at Kirkbride, the current Rozelle Campus, it ‘is like you are a far flung colony of the mother country’. He continued: ‘There is a moment when the pragmatists steps into the room and asks, “Are we going to be part of this conversation?” The university as a whole will better understand what it is to be an artists these days.’
Lucas believes that it’s the people who give any institution strength, and that influence should come from the base up.
Lily Hibberd warned that SCA needs to be careful in navigating this process as university rhetoric about vision and values are more a set of words than actions today.
Blaire French (Senior Curator Museum Contemporary Art), who said he didn’t go to art school but rather studied art history with a faculty physically located within an art school, said that kind of cross-department learning played a huge impact on his future career.
‘What artists and art school offer back into the university is the most exciting aspect, and that is relatively untapped to date,’ he said.
French, however, warned against the degrading of the school to an embedded department. ‘We are all using the word “institution” here, and what we are actually talking about is something that is going to become a department.’
He added that it is important to strengthen that ongoing sense of autonomy in a roadmap or vision plan.
Flanagan added that SCA will require a ‘strong voice within that mega faculty’ and the Faculty of Humanities of Arts and Sciences, Department of Art History, the Power Institute, and with the Macleay Museum, Nicholson Museum, Verge Galley, The Tin Sheds, the opening of the Chau Chak Museum in 2018, and the University art collections.
A question raised was whether SCA required its own gallery, noting that a Gallery Manager has been slated in the new staffing arrangements.
Is space, space enough?
‘What is being spoken of is two and a half floors of the Teachers College, so the discussion of space is an important one,’ said Flanagan flatly.
Is that enough, or does SCA need to think more laterally about how space is used?
Hibberd believes that there is enough space for SCA and that the bigger question is how that space is imagined to ‘create the art we want to create. We have to be very savvy what we can make and what we can exploit out of the situation and to be engaged in a civil sense – not just in terms of, “Will we keep our jobs?”
Barry Keldoulis, CEO Art Fairs Australia, offered a more abstract solution. ‘We don’t need a building … rather than saying to artists this is what we have and this is what we can offer you, we need to be asking them what you need and then to go out and find it.’
He reminded that we are living in a century of smartphones, AirBnB and Uber where the understanding of ‘space’ and ‘connectivity’ and use of physical facilities has been brokered on entirely new terms.
Both Keldoulis and artist and academic Anne Graham said that there was an opportunity to work with the university to utilise empty space when staff have postings overseas or students are on break to bring in international artists and colleagues to strengthen the schools offering.
Tapping the cache is not so bad
David Williams offered: ‘”What’s in a name? Very few people who go to ANU say, “I go to ANU School of Art in the Textiles workshop”. The university seems to have a kind of gravitas that people embrace. Sydney University and SCA are going to be interchangeable and, I think, eventually people will say they go to Sydney Uni School of Art – and that would be a good thing – it has a lot of cache associated with it.’
It was a point that Graham shared. ‘Students come because of the name – it would be silly to let that go.
Lily Hibberd, speaker at Friends of SCA event, with chair Anne Flanagan. Photo credit: Merilyn Fairskye
The main points raised were:
- The sustainable long-term vision for SCA presently articulated by the University is weak and fails to inspire.
- A strategic plan for the new SCA, established by the staff and clearly articulated to the community, should be an immediate task. SCA’s future image and identity depend on this process.
- Space limitations at the Old Teachers College needn’t cripple SCA. However, well-designed core spaces and facilities are vital for maintaining skills and for fostering collegiality for staff and students (the latter issue is not addressed at all in the FCP).
- The in-school gallery model shouldn’t be adopted automatically. Its main benefit to students is in learning the practices and protocols of exhibiting professionally.
- University programs in jewellery, glass and ceramics across the country are closing yet interest in those skills is not in decline.
- It must be recognised that only dedicated, rigorous programs are capable of training the teachers of future generations.
- The loss of autonomy for SCA as a department was identified as a serious concern.
- SCA must have something unique to offer international collaborations. This means finding its place here first.
- SCA stands to gain new opportunities for its students, new research collaborations, targeted benefaction.
- Specific funding possibilities within the University should be identified and brought to SCA’s attention.
- The University can learn much from SCA’s ways of thinking and modes of approach – social responsibility goals were mentioned specifically.
- SCA staff and students have contributed significantly to the texture of cultural life in our community; they have the capacity to do the same for the University.
To support or learn more visit Friends of Sydney College of the Arts
