Foreword
My experiences as an educator (as told in This Time Next Year We'll Be Farting Through Silk(...) formed the basis for my PhD proposal and application. Having retired from teaching through ill-health caused by stress I then needed to find the means by which I might be able to investigate and articulate the impact that auditing regimes had upon me as a teacher and more specifically as a teacher of art. There were two lines of enquiry that I hoped to pursue through my PhD project. Having directly witnessed the effects of political policies upon art education and assessment strategies (see GNVQ exam paper) I felt the need to ask 'How do we, or should we, attempt to measure art education?', and with regards to the impact that the same political policies have had upon staff and students I needed to ask, 'How might I produce art that is able to prompt both aesthetic outcomes and political awareness?' My first line of enquiry was concerned with critical pedagogy and my second line of enquiry was concerned with the problems of making and presenting politicised art practice.

During the first year of my PhD I wanted to present my work in an experimental context so that I might gain from critical feedback that would inform my research. And yet audiences are specific gatherings of people who speak their own particular languages and my work was not wholly specific to one type of audience. On the one hand I had hoped to communicate the political issues involved with my work and on the other hand I wanted to raise questions concerned with contemporary art education. It was because of this that I decided that it would be appropriate to separate my questions and offer them for presentation in two differing but related forms. I figured that if I could organise a series of research presentations for trades unionists/business studies staff and also organise a series of presentations for staff and students from the art education sector that I could cover all aspects of my research. I did not want to make art that was put into a gallery environment, segregated from the pain of the everyday power struggles that produced it. I wanted it to be accessible to workers in educational environments and also to explore whether my artwork could be accomodated in political environments. Importantly, I had become aware of a key thread that was relevant to both fields. As an art teacher during the introduction of GNVQ check box examination papers in 1997 I had noticed how art education resisted (so-called) objective measures in a similar manner to that in which people resist, when the ‘fragile texture of human subjectivity is reduced to cold calculus’ (Pollock, 2003) and damaged through managerial strategies together with continual surveillance techniques. The similarity of resistance that I refer to stems from the inherent mismatch between predetermined systems of audit in relation to critically responsive methodologies for learning and humanity in general.

I therefore decided that I would approach thirty specific academics and institutions (15 art institutions and 15 business schools) in the hope that perhaps (a mix of around) six of these would accept my request to present a research session to their students. The following excerpt has been taken from an audio diary that I made at the time.

'It's January 16th [2002]. I could have just sent out a letter [to academics asking them to participate in my research project] but it didn't seem enough. I wanted to give something genuine that took time to make. I wanted to take my time making something because that's what people don't have these days... time. And so I've been making little books containing my proposal to send to academics and institutions. Each book has been made individually for each specific person. There are thirty four books. 15 have been sent to managerial and business schools and 15 have been sent to art education institutions. The remaining four will be archived. Anyway, job done. They've gone into the big, wide, world. When I posted them out today I just thought, 'fucking hell... to send an idea out there... anything and nothing could happen'. Really pleased I've done it. I hope it works'.

Below are some images of one of the completed books. To the left is a link to the responses that I received to my proposal.



(Click on small images for larger versions)