What Price Autonomy?

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What Price Autonomy? and The Last Hurrah Founded in 1843 as the Sheffield School of Art, the Fine Art Department at Sheffield Hallam University is one of the oldest art institutions in the UK. Corresponding with recent trends in UK art education in which many specialist academies are increasingly consumed by the universities with which they have merged, the closure of Psalter Lane, the current Sheffield art school faculty is imminent. This relocation provides a timely juncture to revisit some of the issues that forty years ago in 1968 gave rise to a series of student uprisings and dissenting movements throughout the UK, including the Movement for Rethinking Art and Design Education (MORADE). More recently made prominent by the debate surrounding the proposed relocation of Dartington College of Arts, the issues surrounding the rearrangement of the Sheffield art school are of acute local and national significance. ------------------- Symposium: What Price Autonomy? Thursday 5th June 2008, 1 — 4pm A panel of prestigious guest speakers will explore the implications of the rearrangement of the Sheffield art school and education reforms on the future of academic and professional arts practices followed by plenary discussion. Speakers will include: - JJ Charlesworth who has written extensively on art school autonomy - Bryan Davies, contributor to Protoacademy, an on-going collaborative project, based on graduate peer-led models for learning in fine art More speakers TBC. Chaired by Becky Shaw. See: http://www.danielsimpkins.net/main/psalter_lane/psalter_lane.html for updated information --------------------- The Last Hurrah The concluding degree show, The Last Hurrah will mark an end for the current art faculty and a beginning for the young artists involved. The 1956 Novel by Edwin O' Connor, from which the exhibition takes its name, tells the story of the unbeaten but aged mayor Frank Skeffington who finds himself ousted by a new brand of politics. He loses to a young handsome war veteran called Kevin McKluskey, and dies soon after his defeat, and while the city mourns the loss of a successful and popular mayor and the end of an era, it has no place for him and his kind any longer. Opening hours: Continues until Friday 6th June 2008, 9am — 5pm, opportunity for viewing on day of symposium. --------------------- Free entry, all welcome. Sheffield Hallam University, Psalter Lane Campus, Psalter Lane Sheffield S11 8UZ 1 See: http://www.manifestoclub.com/hubs/artistic-autonomy 2 See: http://www.static-ops.org/archive_june/essay_4.htm