Art School: A Proposal
By Patricia Briggs and Monica Haller
Patricia Briggs and Monica Haller propose a model for an art and design school based on the mutually supportive and productive relationship they developed at MCAD as student and teacher. There they worked as an open-ended learning and thinking team. This team, and model of teamwork, has not been bounded by the academy, but rather continues to evolve and feed both of their practices. Haller and Briggs propose that the ideal art and design school is designed to help artists and designers (learn to) form relationships, teams, connections with others, that stimulate, feed, and sustain their practice.
How is this accomplished?
The school recruits minds they foresee being attracted to one another. That is to say, they curate attractive and attracting minds. What minds tend to gravitate toward one another? We look at living partnerships to inform us. A teacher + student relationship = minds that feed each other’s practice, form teams, and/or networks. Relationships formed in school are productive for teacher and student and public(s) and continue to evolve beyond the period of “study.”
Art and design practices center on engaging the public(s); therefore the ideal art and design school does not segregate faculty members and students from the public—from the community at large—but rather is organized around the goal of teachers’ and students’ interpenetration with the public. This school is designed to facilitate connection of artist and designer with collaborators, audiences, and institutions within and outside of the school. This school links with other institutions (businesses, public schools, publications, nonprofits, etc.) through staffing, workshops, residencies, internships, reading groups, volunteering, apprenticeships, projects, employment, work study, mentorships, etc. These links are not segregated into specific “departments of concentration,” but are assumed components of every class or study plan; they are available to each work project, team, teacher, student, and infiltrate all studio practices. Partnerships build one at a time, person-to-person. Teams and networks grow. The first generation of partners model their actions for the next, form intergenerational networks. More communities flow in and out, intersect, grow.
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