In September 2022 we began our second collaboration working with staff and students in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds.

University art schools play a part in shaping the art canon and influence how many emerging artists develop their ideas of critical thinking, ‘quality’, and ‘taste’.

Does artistic quality and artist development mean different things in the contrasting contexts of the inclusive arts and higher education?

With staff and students we began our collaboration with a ‘what’ and ‘how’ workshop to surface what we wanted to know and how we might find out.

Not Another Bloody Assessment!

Assessment emerged consistently as an area to explore: sometimes it can be extremely productive and rewarding and other times confusing or even harmful. Together with students, we developed a workshop called Not Another Bloody Assessment to help us think through the complexity of being assessed as artists.

We also ran this workshop at EXPLORERS. This is an event run by inclusive arts studio Project Art Works. We learnt from running our workshops that there is a strong emotional dimension to being assessed, and there is often a desire for people to be more actively included in setting the assessment criteria and approaches. People also questioned whether assessment was even necessary in some circumstances and whether we need to think more creatively about the idea of evaluation as a whole.

The Irregular Art School exhibition

Emerging from the collaboration with the School, The Irregular Art School was an art exhibition exploring inclusive artist development emerging from the research. The exhibition showcased a selection of artworks created during the project, considered the barriers that artists at Pyramid have faced, and included pieces that are outcomes of new and experimental collaborations with students and artists across the city.

The exhibition opened on Friday, 3rd February 2023, in the Project Space at the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies and closed on 24th February 2023. We also hosted a series of events where people could visit the exhibition with the artists.