World Art School (ongoing)

World Art School began as an idea to create an art school with a curriculum that honours the approaches and world views found in all sorts of communities across the world.

I have wanted to create a world-curriculum art school ever since I worked with AAVAA, the African and Asian Visual Artists Archive, helping to put it online in 2001-2.
The next iteration was with Idle Women working with Kazi Ruksana Begum and Kinsi Abdulleh and women based in Lancashire who have a connection to Idle Women. Participants had a wide variety of experience in education, from almost none (primary school only) to wholly self-educated, to highly educated with one or more university degrees. Some were poets, some sketched and used paint, some were gardeners, but none of the participants had a dedicated and focused art education. Rewarding but also difficult work.
I also toyed with a commercial model for World Art School, similar to other new art schools like Turps Banana and I explored World Art School as an online course delivered on eventbrite.

But I realised this needs to be an art work. It needs to be critically engaged and deeply reflexive.
It’s not a money-making venture.
It’s not yet another iteration of what currently exists.

World Art School needs to be something that does not yet exist. Something important. Something needed. Something that enables listening and insight.