ELIAblog has moved

Now at www.elia-artschools.org

ELIA has a new website. The ELIAblog has been integrated in it. This means that the wordpress blog will cease to be active. We keep it open for reference.

The blog about the NEU/NOW Festival can also be found at www.neunow.eu

Languages through Lenses @ Prix Europa

Languages through lenses 2010 will be launched at the Prix Europa Festival in Berlin next week.

The films made for this year’s competition can already be viewed at http://www.prix-europa.de/pe10/languages_through_lenses/

Read more about the project at www.languages-lenses.eu

ELIA turned 20 today!

20 years ago, at the conference Imagination and Diversity in Amsterdam, ELIA was born. Those were momentous times. During the preparations, the Berlin Wall came down. When the conference started on 3 October, it was also the day of the German unification. And one year later, we were first accross the Iron Curtain with the Strangers and Brothers conference in Budapest. It seems like a long time. Actually it’s just 20 years.

ELIA Newsletter September out now!

The ELIA Newsletter went out today. In it, we update you on the NEU/NOW Festival and the Biennial Conference. We announce our 20th Birthday and our new Deputy Director, Schelte van Ruiten. Also, we commemorate Tan Mei Wha, who played an important role in the founding process of ELIA and in the first years of ELIA’s existence.

To read it in full, click here.

Peer Power in print

The artesnet project will officially end on 30 September. The findings of three years of collaborative work have been gathered in artesnetEurope: Peer Power! The Future of Higher Arts Education in Europe. After months of hard work, the book is now running off the presses. Joke, our designer, put these pictures on her blog today to give us some foretaste:

(click on the image to see more)

Peter de Graeve on creating “Schools of Art” in Flanders

In today’s newsletter of the Faculty of Arts and Architecture, formerly IvOK, Leuven, dean Peter de Graeve reacts on the bill on Higher Education recently approved by Flemish parliament. In the new policy guidelines, the position of art schools in the binary system of universities and polytechnics is redefined: a status aparte as Schools of Arts, with links to both universities and polytechnics, is proposed instead of their present status as polytechnics. The dilemma is comparable to the Dutch situation discussed in the post below.

Higher (arts) education in the Netherlands: two reports

This is the second report on Higher Arts Education reviewed here, after the 2009 report of the Austrian Wissenschaftsrat. We’re searching for recent reports from other countries in order to get a more detailed overview of HAE systems in Europe at large. If you know one, please contact floris.solleveld [at] elia-artschools.org.

Higher Arts Education in the Netherlands has always had a sort of special position. They never had university status; the Netherlands have a binary system of universities and “polytechnics” (“hogescholen” or HBO), but art academies are the only institutions that can pre-select, and the work load is much more at university level. Like in other countries with binary systems (Belgium, Germany, Austria, Norway, Finland) this system has been subject to shifts and debates as a result of the Bologna Process. Although the Dutch were quick to adapt to the bachelor/master system, the new relations between universities and polytechnics have remained an open issue and so has the particular position of art academies, sometimes described as ‘polytechnic-plus’.

ELIA’s comments on the Green Paper

On 27 April, the European Commission launched its Green Paper Unlocking the Potential of Cultural and Creative Industries for public consultation. For the first time ever a European Policy Paper on the cultural and creative industries has been published. It is also for the first time that it mentions the role of the art schools. You can read more about it in a previous post. Below, you can read ELIA’s comments. You can also download them as a pdf.

Following the Tuning track

ELIA is involved in a European project Sectoral Qualifications Framework for the Arts and Humanities, following the Tuning track. Its main task is to develop descriptions for the 3rd-5th cycle of the European qualifications, which are the qualifications possibly leading to higher arts education. It will be particularly interesting and useful for colleagues who develop special programmes to attract talented people, without proper educational backgrounds, involvement in secondary education and foundation programmes.

The project launch will take place in Thessaloniki 1- 2 October 2010. The other groups within the project from the arts (music, architects) and the humanities will also meet there and we will have some joint sessions. The project is organized by TUNING,  the organizers will cover travel and accommodation costs. Please let me know as soon as possible.

truus.ophuysen [at] elia-artschools.org

Paradox in Granada

Meeting of the ELIA Fine Arts Section
Facultad de Bellas Artes, Granada, 24-25 June

Loosing your luggage is never a good way to start a meeting overseas but such is life. After 13 hours traveling, including a delayed flight from Heathrow, I was checking into the hotel without my bag, which was probably languishing somewhere in Madrid. What was surprising was the ‘mater-of-fact’ness with which the Iberian staff in Granada treated the 6 travelers from the same flight in the same situation, as if it was only to be expected! Later that evening, during a stroll into town, I bumped into Kevin Atherton (Dublin) and Christine Pybus (Cork) – what are the chances of that in the crowed streets of a major city…

Day 1

The first meeting wasn’t scheduled until late afternoon, which gave us time to explore the town during the day. Despite our host leaving each of us a full conference-type bag of goodies at the hotel reception we still weren’t quite sure of where we were going. So meeting at reception meant at least we’d all get lost together. As it happened, Isidro Lopez-Aparico (Granada) met us half way across Fuente del Triunfo and led us to our meeting point. Juhani Jarvinen (Lahti) was already there and before too long we were joined by Maia Mancuso and Maria-Antonietta Malleo (Palermo). Sean Cummins (Nottingham) and Enrique Martinez Leal (Cuenca) and Ana Garcia Lopez (Granada) complete the steering group for this meeting … time for business.