Dave Beech

After the Educational Turn Dave Beech

After the Educational Turn explores the condition and critical potential of contemporary art education with a particular focus on the question of decolonialism. In the era of the globalised art world, when world-wide norms of practice (the biennial, the white cube, the artist's residency, the art fair) and a competitive economy of higher arts education providers have been established, this volume challenges the conventional frameworks for thinking about critical art education. The book takes its title from the widely recognised phenomenon of the last two decades whereby artistic and curatorial practices adopted pedagogical frameworks for the realisation and production of art (the Educational Turn) and asks how the formally instituted practices for the education of artists now operate in the wake of this critical reconstruction of education within the art practice itself. At a time when the global discussion of critical educational practice is overshadowed by neoliberal assaults on public culture, After the Educational Turn seeks to inform the future development of art educational praxis by drawing upon the project of decolonialism. Decolonialism challenges the political, social and cultural domination established through the Eurocentric construction of knowledge and practice, and seeks to produce emancipatory paradigms of knowledge by drawing upon multiple cultural traditions and the concrete project of decolonialisation operative for several centuries throughout Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
Drawing upon the cross-fertilisation of experimental artistic practice, critical pedagogy and decolonialism, this volume provides a resource for the next generation of critical arts pedagogies and reclaims an emancipatory role for art education.