Art students have no business on technology institute campus
It is taken as read that the value of anything worthwhile is revealed, conclusively and exclusively, by the bottom line.
We are seen only as part of an economic patchwork; the family is merely an economic unit, female, male, single, married, teenager, student - all economic sets and sub-sets, all neatly arranged and rationalised, quantified and valued. Job done.
But not quite. The students of the Crawford College of Art and Design in Cork are now holding the baton in a relay of student protest lasting more than 20 years at the proposed relocation of the college within the campus of Cork Institute of Technology (CIT).
This proposal defies logic, if one has the interests of the arts and art school at heart, and makes sense only if the prime consideration is economy alone.
The art school would be of secondary importance here, and the very nature of the creeping, all-pervasive logic of market and economy would inexorably breed something other than a school of art.
The arts needs independence. An art school is about the subjective; a learning space where the student can strive to achieve an honest subjective take on the human and natural worlds they encounter and express that through any medium that will do the job.
It is a place for seeing and thinking outside the box, for re-inventing perspectives; for pinning down and materialising what was heretofore immaterial.
The nod-and-wink of the marketplace - imagined or otherwise - cannot be a point of initiation for the arts. They cannot flourish if subordinate to an institute of technology which has, as a rationale for its own existence, the needs of the marketplace.
It is good to see a high level of development in science and technology.
However, it is misguided to suppose that relocating an art school to an institute of technology would fundamentally benefit the art school; this would amount to an act of destruction.
It is in the nature of the arts to be autonomous and it is essential to the survival of the Crawford College of Art and Design that it so be.
We hope that our Government will wake up to this reality as they did eventually in regard to the Cork School of Music. They should stop starving the Crawford of funds and take seriously their responsibility to a very important regional and national institution.
We artists of 'Passing Through' support the current students and the staff of the Crawford College of Art and Design in defending its location.
Alice Maher, Michael Quane, Joy Gerrard, Katherine Beug, Simon English, Eilís O'Connell, Maud Cotter, Linda Quinlan, Marie Foley
Crawford College of Art and Design
Sharman Crawford Street
Cork
Note: 'Passing Through' is an exhibition at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, UCC, of a selection of graduates over 30 years from the Crawford College of Art and Design. The exhibition continues until January next.
