IN PERSPECTIVE 5 - From order and power to student and power - On mergers and discomfort in arts education

"Miss, please give me the minister!". Henk Vonhoff's voice sounded as commanding as it was sonorous as he addressed his secretary over the intercom. Vonhoff was commissioner of the Queen in Groningen, but also chairman of the supervisory committee of the Groningen State University of Applied Sciences, the only university still directly under the minister. We, faculty directors, were at his audience for the umpteenth time to complain about mismanagement by the two-headed Executive Board. Just a month earlier, he had addressed us like naughty schoolboys and sent us away. It was only lacking that he gave up lines of punishment. But now he had had enough and recognised the seriousness of the situation. Not long after, the minister actually intervened.

Budget deficits and cuts

The merger of pedagogical academies, engineering colleges, physiotherapy colleges, library colleges, art colleges and many more had pretty much taken place across the country. But the discomfort was still there. Mergers involve competency struggles, new intermediate layers of management, getting used to different blood groups. And where efficiency was envisaged, in reality economies of scale often brought cost increases, hence: budget deficits and cuts. Many of the top positions were occupied by former teachers who had worked their way tough through the institutions before this. Driven people with expertise, but amateur administrators, often without any idea how to deal with employees.

Right from the start of my directorship of Groningen's art colleges - Minerva Academy, Groningen Conservatoire and Academy of Architecture - it became clear to me how wrong everything was, at the college and in the arts sector itself. Quarrelling between Executive Board and faculty directors, dissatisfaction in all departments about bureaucracy and hierarchy. After a briefly forced swap of agriculture for Friesland and art for Groningen, there was the laborious merger of the Frisian and Groningen art colleges1, and hefty financial deficits emerged as corpses.

Minerva Academy was an excellent education - with an autonomous view of (neo)figurative art and an innovative computer graphics offering - but introverted. The conservatory, even after the merger with Leeuwarden, was moribund. The architecture course, as part of yet another national reorganisation, was in danger of being abolished by the minister. Each month, more financial deficits became visible, which the college did not want to pay for. The entanglements at the college and the faculty formed a daily soap opera. Very soon, I was and remained part of it. A fresh newcomer you are always only for a short while.

Crying in the corridor

Five years later. Standing in the corridor of the Utrecht Conservatory of Music was a weeping double bass teacher, esteemed musician from a well-known family of string players. He could stand it no longer: constant cutbacks, reorganisations, layoffs, loss of valuable colleagues. What comfort could I offer him?

After Groningen, I thought I had had it with art education. Nevertheless, I went to work as the director of the HKU (Utrecht) conservatoire. The third conservatoire in the country, after The Hague and Amsterdam. I felt I had a precious work of art in my hands that could fall apart. Because here again: continuous national discussions about the system and cuts that seemed to be deployed from a strategy of Verelendung, nationwide, but also within the institution itself. Spectacular things were happening at newly established HKU faculties such as for music technology, but the conservatoire was seen as 'out of date' by the Board of Governors and treated as such.

Again, directors who had worked their way up as teachers, with a strong, idiosyncratic strategic vision, but an equally idiosyncratic and irritating 'management by talking around' and behaviour that would no longer be accepted by current standards. Again, in five years I became sadder and wiser. Even in these five years, art education spent a lot of time and energy talking about forced cooperation, cluster formation, mergers, intake restrictions, exit qualifications and other order discussions. (That administrative fuss applied to the managers; teachers, meanwhile, did their work and observed that the school was running well: in spite of rather than thanks to management)

A more stable system

Everything is relative, but the HBO - and within it art education - is now much more solid, professional and self-assured than in the days when the midwifery school and the sports academy had to continue as one college, the minister intervened in Groningen or the conservatoires in Hilversum and Alkmaar had to close their doors. Anno 2022, Hanzehogeschool Groningen cherishes its vocational arts courses, which are standing firmly again. And HKU does not have to bite off as much. The national system is a stable mix of independent art colleges, (such as AHK (Amsterdam) or HKU (Utrecht)), of multisectoral colleges with faculties or 'schools' for the arts and a standalone as the Rietveld Academy. 2

If you want to get an idea of the themes with which art education in the Netherlands entered the 21st century, the report 'Profession of Artist' by the Project Organisation for Art Education (Van Heusden)3 from 1999 is a very illustrative catalogue. It is an administrative epic, in terms of size. The main report comprises just under 200 pages and then there are five sectoral sub-reports. The reflections and proposals cover funding, volumes, cluster formation, starting qualifications, training profiles, quality assurance, quality 4, innovation, connection to professional practice, internationalisation, entrepreneurship.

More than 20 years later, the Sector Agenda HBO Art Education 2021-20255 hardly about order issues such as volumes, organisation or intake. Art education mainly agendises personal development and well-being of students, social safety, diversity, connection to society, an open and digital learning environment ('blended learning'), lifelong development and research. Perhaps too good to be true, but you would say: these days it is more about students and their learning environment than institutional interests.

Practice and education inclusive

Art education, of course, continues to be viewed critically. Even apart from the persistent myth that too many students are admitted and that, if it were not the case, the job market for artists would be much healthier. I have dealt with that elsewhere6. The same applies to the subject of business vocational preparation which will always be subject to criticism The persistence of misunderstandings indicates incomplete communication between education and practice. Which shouldn't be the case. Most teachers have both feet in practice. And are field committees. There are supervisory boards. There are work-field conferences. Apparently, it is not enough and more creativity needs to be used for additional channels.

Another part of the criticism comes from within and is also shared within the KUO. A debate on art education at Spui25, on 22 June 2022, "Dreaming of post-precarity" 7was much less about business professional practice or entrepreneurship than about topics such as inclusion, interculturalism, gender and social safety. These are the active challenges for both professional practice and education. Here, practice and education are intertwined in an intricate way.

From which cultural frame do you do the selection at admission and the assessments afterwards? From which cultural reference do you choose your lecturers? Do you prepare students for the often competitive professional practice or do you reject that competition and thus exempt them from it during the study? And in that case, do you prepare them properly for practice? Social insecurity in practice also creeps into education. Do you bolt all doors or do you empower students?

Living with reality

The Van Heusden report put 'cultural pluralism' in a few sentences as a theme for the future. Now it is a hot issue to which education must relate. This, but also, for example fair pay and social safety, will certainly set the agenda in the coming years. If this goes well, it will then create space for subsequent themes, old or new. For me, craftsmanship and content remain core themes in art education, however much their definition is context- and culture-dependent. When it comes to preconditions, the themes are: sufficient money, but especially sufficient time for the development of the artist. If these are lacking, that is no excuse for inadequate results.

Inventive artist Yuri Veerman took part in the Spui25 debate. When it came to politics, he said that the field should not always be surprised by policy setbacks. You should not let go of the ambition to bend reality to your will, but in the meantime you should relate to the existing reality, he said soberly.

That, then, seems to me the most important task for art education: to develop craftsmanship and content as well as the personal attitude to trust yourself. "Give me the minister " you cry, but you know you can eventually do it on your own.

Nuts