You Spin Me Round….

The art education debate continues in worthy art rag Art Monthly. If you haven’t been following the debate, UAL students i.e. Byam Shaw Fine Art 2009 and MA Printing Camberwell 2009, have expressed their dissatisfaction with their courses in letters to Art Monthly, as well as those of leading art professionals and educators.

A mole (wow, that makes us feel like real spies) has informed us that Jane Lee, the course director of Central Saint Martin’s Fine Art course, has encouraged students organising their Fine Art degree show 2010 to create fake/faux criticisms and positives of the fine art course to arise controversy and advertisement for the degree show in the magazine. A level of spin we thought’d been left behind in the ’90s with the YBAs.

As quoted by one of the previous students there: “It was implied that sending the correspondence might – if printed – generate publicity, and that the debate would somehow end in a kind of ‘well come on down to the degree show and make your OWN mind up’… it’s interesting to see how a woman in a position of power and care at a leading institution – and whose reputation hypothetically could be undermined by the debates featured recently in Art Monthly – was openly suggesting such underhand tactics.”

Inadvertently, this tactic by Lee perhaps highlights the desperate need for reform in our art schools, and a review of current art school educators.