Context is half the work : the live brief in fine art education

Jill Randall would like to use two case studies at two different sites of student projects to investigate the use of the Live Brief within teaching, and how staff research projects can introduce new ways of delivering Fine Art education, with benefits for the student and the institution. Jill Randall has a history of implementing her research practically within the University and re-introducing it into a teaching context. Parys Mountain Copper Mine is an abandoned mine site in Anglesey, an extraordinary place, an extreme environment, with its own “terrible beauty” of amazing colours and a toxic landscape where corrosion and time are accelerated. Randall has led student working field trips there for several years to respond to this unique site, creating new works on and with the site, and to contribute ideas for the ongoing development of the mine as a heritage site. Flat Time House in Peckham, South London, is a gallery, project space, archive, and the former home and studio of one of Britainʼs most influential artists, John Latham, founder artist of the APG, (The Artist Placement Group.) The APG was a hugely important and influential artists movement which began in the 1960s, and attempted, through negotiation, to place artists within industry and government departments, and instigated the notion of “Art in Context” and a “socially-engaged” art practice. Randall will report on a student project there in March, “The Open Brief”, re-staging one of the APGʼs maxims, and allowing students to make a personal response which begins with Flat Time House