Tag: teaching

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Art Education as Training of the Senses

I will be leading an online discussion on the theme of ‘Art Education as Training of the Senses’ on Monday 23rd Feb from 6 – 7 pm as part of the National Association of Fine Art Education’s NAFNET series of events. The event is free and open to non-members. You can book your place here.

I will give a short introduction to open the discussion. Below is a bullet-point overview of the introduction:

Background

  • BA Fine Art with Psychology at Worcester
  • Curriculum redesigned to integrate psychology into fine art teaching
  • Students interested in art therapy often have lived personal experience of mental health issues, neurodevelopmental disorders and autism, and secondary experiences of severe mental health conditions, addiction and dementia
  • Covid pandemic of 2021 exacerbates problem of overwhelm of NHS mental health support
  • How might socially-engaged arts practices address public mental health crisis
  • Arts and Health Research Group at UW came out of that

Teaching Context

  • A significant percentage of students have common mental health conditions, neurodevelopmental disorders or autism characteristics
  • Fine Art education historically welcoming of neurodivergent people
  • Studio teaching is especially accommodating of these differences
  • Studio as safe environment
  • Attention issues evident for the last 20 years. Students glued to mobile phones
  • Smart phones directly implicated in an increase in mental health issues, especially anxiety, depression and ADHD
  • Intensified by consequences of Generative AI
  • How to get students off their phones and screens
  • Five ways to Wellbeing: Human connection, physical activity, attentiveness, learn new skills, giving

Art Education as Training of the Senses

  • Art as Education of the Senses: 19th century idea (John Ruskin), roots in Schiller’s Letters on Aesthetic Education (German Romanticism, Goethe)
  • Alternative educational models: Steiner, Montessori, Reggio Emilia
  • Marshall McLuhan: new media transform the ‘ratio of the senses’
  • Deep Listening: tasting, touching, hearing, smelling, sensing
  • Mindfulness and embodiment practices: bring the body back into teaching
  • The senses think. Thought is a sense.
  • Aligning Fine Art Education with Creative Health

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NAFAE Conference 2026: Call for Papers

This year’s National Association for Fine Art Education conference ‘IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO RAISE AN ARTIST: LOCAL, TRANS-LOCAL, GLOBAL’ will take place at Champness Hall, Rochdale on Friday 24th April 2026.

The focus of the conference will be co-operation, conflicts and collective agency in defence of creative and cultural education and placemaking.

We welcome proposals on the following themes:

Space and Place

● How do we define ‘region’ in an era where administrative boundaries, cultural identities and economic geographies no longer align?

● In what ways do place-based practices, geographies and cultural infrastructures contribute to, or challenge, broader ideas of regional or national identity within the arts?

● What is the shape and place of the future campus?

Emerging needs and priorities

● What priority and emerging creative and cultural skills most effectively promote lifelong learning and learner agency?

● What will shape the form of the educational offer and curriculum for Fine and Visual Art practices in terms of pedagogies, adult education and co-operative learning?

● How important is accreditation (i.e. what are the freedoms/restrictions it imposes for students and curriculum planners?)

Partnership and co-operation

● What are the weighted contributions of investors and stakeholders supporting educational initiatives marked as alternative to establishment institutions?

● Who are the private providers of education and lifelong learning that can be trusted to deliver with integrity or in any way enhance the current landscape?

● How can resourcing and facilities be modelled to best enable sustained practices and relevant growth from the activity?

Local, Translocal and Global

● What are the international exemplars for co-operation and where are the potential allies that will help to secure a fairer and more resilient accessible Fine Art ecology?

● Art and art practices are a public and civic good and underpin global citizenship and belonging.

● Why, if we consider the concept of paideia, we have failed to convince decision-makers of the contribution that creative arts make?

You can find our more about the conference here.

Proposals for contributions should be submitted to: admin@nafae.org.uk no later than Friday 13 February 2026. Decisions on contributions for our next NAFAE conference will be communicated to the participants by 27 February 2026.

To submit a proposal for contributions, you must be a NAFAE member. To join NAFAE please visit the membership page.