Art and Design School Project (Proposal for the 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennale)

​Project Mission
The Art and Design School Project is an interdisciplinary and creative project that offers a free, intimate and intellectual experience within a gallery setting for the discourse on art, design and contemporary culture. It is motivated by the tradition of experimental pedagogies and seeks alternative grounds for engaging the community of learners through non-conventional means of teaching and learning.
 
Project Rational and Goals
The Art and Design School Project is conceived first and foremost as a project. It exists as a liminal presence within a real space and is engaged with live participants but is fictive at the same time. This strategy supports the realization of the project’s goals while giving it the space to be experimental and critical. It challenges conventional structure and organization of a school, the methods of knowledge delivery and exchange, as well as the roles of learner and teacher. The project is strongly motivated by the possibility of opening up new concepts and strategies for the future teaching and learning of art and design. The Art and Design School Project therefore:
 

1. Takes on a projective and speculative character that affords it the space to question and shape the future of art and design education.
2. Allows a systematic and interdisciplinary process to unpack the issues and concerns surrounding art and design pedagogies, and to discover new synergies and strategies.
3. Encourages a different attitude among the participants that facilitates the free exchange of roles and their hierarchies- from an artist, a designer, a teacher, and a learner to a facilitator.
4. Provides a collective platform for recent graduates and practitioners to sustain their curiosity and intellectual inquiry after their formal art and design educations.

 
Project Organization
The themes for the class will be crowd sourced and curated from the art and design community prior to the start of the project. A collective of artists, designers and scholars who have devoted considerable time to their work and who share a passion for this open, interdisciplinary form of knowledge exchange will be invited to facilitate the weekly thematic discussions. Practitioners and recent graduates in their respective creative fields are eligible to apply as student participants. They are selected from an open call for application and successful applicants are invited to join the Art and Design School for a 12-week session. At the end of the session, the students present their works, research or findings to an invited panel of experts in the art and design fields.
 
Project Duration
All the participants will meet once a week for 2 hours in the evening at a gallery. The project will take 12 weeks to complete.