Described by co-founder Bob and Roberta Smith as “a joyous experiment in a new kind of advocacy for the arts”, the Art Party Conference brought together over 1,200 art-enthusiasts last Saturday 23 November 2013 to discuss the future of art – with an added dash of hilarity and mischief.
Beginning with an energetic march on Scarborough beach, the event proved from the outset that it really was an “antidote to all other conferences”. Crowds of artists, students, arts and education leaders gathered waving handmade placards with slogans such as “Art makes people powerful”, “Art is life” and “Creativity is an act of defiance”.
After the march, participants reconvened in the historic Spa venue for the main action of the day – organised by Bob and Roberta Smith and local arts organisation, Crescent Arts.
The centrepiece was ‘the Summit’, a bunting and placard-adorned platform from which influential figures in art and education delivered various ‘provocations’ calling for changes in approach to arts education and funding policy.
A welcome was received from the Mayor of Scarborough, followed by an address by Bob and Roberta Smith in which he responded to the Government’s treatment of publicly-funded art education. He argued: “If creative kids are offered an exam structure seen to be below other GSCE subjects then they are being structurally reprimanded and punished for being inventive and creative.”
Continuing the theme of art education, provocations were also heard from Lesley Butterworth, from the National Society for Education in Art and Design (NSEAD), who described the Government’s proposals for art subjects in the national curriculum as “toxic”, and Shelly Asquith, President of the Students Union at the University of the Arts London (UAL).
Not one to miss a party, DACS presented
a programme of film screenings and interviews which saw our Chief Executive Gilane Tawadros discuss concepts of value and productivity with artists
Haroon Mirza,
Janette Parris,
Cornelia Parker and
John Smith.
Entitled ‘Values Overhead and Underrated’, these interviews were filmed by the artist and filmmaker David Bickerstaff and will be available to watch online soon.
Elsewhere, every corner of the venue was filled by artists and arts organisations advocating in one form or another for art. In a panel discussion the artists Cornelia Parker, Jeremy Deller, Pavel Buchler and Stephan Deuchar, Director of the Art Fund, talked about what turned them onto art. Another panel featuring the sculptor Richard Wentworth and representatives from Axisweb, NSEAD and the Cultural Learning Alliance discussed how art should be taught in schools.
In amongst the discussion were a host of participatory artworks and activities which highlighted the key issues of the day. Participants were provocatively invited to knock over busts of the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, in the ‘Gove-shy’. In another corner, a fortune teller sang songs which varied in length depending on how much you paid, highlighting that artists should be paid for their work.
If you missed the Art Party Conference, view pictures and tweets from the event in our Storify blog post below:
The Art Party Road Movie, a documentary on the conference by artist and filmmaker Tim Newton in collaboration with Bob and Roberta Smith will be released next year.
Visit the Art Party Conference website.
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Images: Protestors gather on Scarborough's South Bay beach at the start of the march which kicked off the Art Party Conference including (front, from left): sculptor Richard Wentworth, Scarborough artist Kane Cunningham and artist Cornelia Parker. Photo: Tony Bartholomew.