When: Wednesday 10 December, 6.30–8pm
Where: Online
Booking: £5 / Free to Kaleidoscope Network Members, Book here.

Online workshop hosted by Eastside Projects. Artist and founder of The Other MA (TOMA) Emma Edmondson joins us to host a workshop-cum-conversation inviting you to imagine your own art school and explore the art school as an artwork through the power and politics of alternative art education.

We will explore themes within TOMA’s recently published book How to Set up an Art School  and ask ‘what makes a bad art school’, ‘what makes a good one’ and explore how shared experiences can build a utopian space for creative learning together.

How to Set up an Art School is a collection of essays, activities, illustrations and reflections, curated by Emma, and serves as a guide for artists looking to establish alternative art schools, creative peer learning groups and those interested in the current state of contemporary art education. The session will explore themes within the book, and all are welcome to join – whether you’re interested in art education, DIY practice, playful making or artist-run spaces.

If you sign up to the event you will be asked for a postal address so some content can be posted out to you to participate in the session. Please sign up by 2 December to guarantee you receive it in time for the workshop.

About Emma

Emma Edmondson studied and graduated during the 2008 financial crash. Because of this you can often find her wondering, with a hopefulness, how austerity shapes creative survival. Alternative economies, precarity, optimism and utopian community are at the centre of her research and she makes public sculpture in many forms; from beer mats to brick walls to books to karaoke to brass signs.

She collaborates all the time and in 2016 founded The Other MA (TOMA) an accessible artist-run education model which is currently the only postgrad-ish level art programme in Essex after all others were stopped by their host universities. TOMA sits outside the traditional institutional model and was born of austerity and the decades long businessification of creative education. These are the politics that bought TOMA into existence and form the basis of the book How to set up an art school. Education is an art material. Emma is currently a PhD candidate at Northumbria University exploring DIY creative practices and artist-run organisational modelling under austerity (2008 – now-ish) through micro breweries, micro pubs and alternative art schools asking: what speculative creative spaces can we make, do, and commune within into the future?

This event has been organised by Eastside Projects for The Kaleidoscope Network, a collaboration between Spike Island (Bristol), Eastside Projects (Birmingham), Primary (Nottingham), The NewBridge Project (Newcastle) and Bloc Projects (Sheffield). Formed in response to a need for mutual support, the network has come together as a way to share resources, increase what each partner is able to offer and create new connections between communities of artists. Membership of any of the above organisations automatically makes you part of the Kaleidoscope Network.