NiTRO + Creative Matters

Perspectives on creative arts in higher education

Edition 3, 2016 – Academia’s Contribution To Our Future Artistic Heritage

President’s Welcome
By Su Baker, President, Australian Council of Deans and Directors of Creative Arts — In this issue of NiTRO we ask how well are we connecting the academy with artist practice outside the Citadel. How well are we preparing our students and how do we support our colleagues in their core career aspirations, that in most cases will be outside the university and educational context?
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The Human Touch In An Automated World: Are The Creative Arts Ready To Respond?
By Arun Sharma — Creative and performing arts disciplines are at an interesting juncture. After decades of concern about lack of funding, and about being sidelined in favour of the STEM disciplines, there may be some positive signals. The question is whether these disciplines are ready for the opportunities emerging from these signals.
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Editorial: Shaping Things To Come: Academia’s Contribution To Our Future Artistic Heritage
By Dr Jenny Wilson — In his 1999 book, Art Subjects, Howard Singerman saw the university as ‘a crucial structuring site where artists and art worlds are mapped and reproduced'. University teaching, research and engagement agenda and the strategies that are adopted serve to enhance or restrict how its artists, staff and students, connect with and advance their genres and professions.
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Fighting Old Battles Again?
By Malcolm Gillies — Sitting on my shelf for the last eighteen years has been a copy of "The Strand Report". Dennis Strand's excellent work was for a project overseen by the Head of the Canberra School of Art, David Williams, and chaired by Peter Karmel, a leading economist and former vice-chancellor of the ANU. It was the first coordinated attempt to bring together the full range of visual and performing artists to address how they might better fit in with the developing research expectations of the National Unified System.
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The Art School Story
By Tamara Winikoff OAM — Earlier this year ArtsHub, published an article by National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) CEO Tamara Winikoff on the changes in art schools following the Dawkins amalgamations. It collated views and experiences of those currently working in the university sector and provides a useful starting point to consider how contemporary universities are influencing artistic practice. With the permission of NAVA and Arts Hub the article is republished below and has been updated by Tamara for NiTRO.
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Building Resilience in Visual Artists
By Eileen Siddins and Ryan Daniel — As Bourdieu describes in his text ‘Firing Back’, the modern world has moved into a work situation dominated by employment precariousness, constant insecurity and downsizing to increase profits and therefore shareholder return. While artists have in general faced employment stresses for centuries, the impact of the broader economic move towards dominant players and markets is affecting the art world as well.
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Real-World Creative Learning: Embedding Arts Curricula in Festivals and Exhibitions
By Dr Sue Gillett — The current trend in Australian universities has seen the proportion of enrolments in Arts subjects declining over the last decade, with regional universities and campuses more significantly affected.
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25 World Premiers and 100 compositions: The Australia Percussion Gathering
By Associate Professor Vanessa Tomlinson — The second Australia Percussion Gathering, directed by Associate Professor Vanessa Tomlinson alongside advisors Tom O'Kelly, Dr. Louise Devenish and Francois Combemorel was held at Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University in July 2016. Sitting somewhere between a music festival, a conference and a music camp, the six day event brought together industry professionals, international guests, and an impressive 96% of all students studying percussion in tertiary institutions in Australia.
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All That Is Bad
by Ian Haig — The status of the Avant grade has now been systematized into what Dave Hickey calls the ‘therapeutic institution' – a self-propagating structure of academics, curators, critics and artists proclaiming arts goodness for the world.
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From Uncertainty Towards Fluency: My Doctoral Journey
By Dr Peter Knight — The relationship between academia and artistic practice is in flux, and in my view that's one of the reasons why the space in which they meet is an exciting place to be working. I undertook two postgraduate degrees in music both of which had an emphasis on practice-based approaches.
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