On education

On Monday, we paid a visit to the Centre for Glass and Ceramics at The Danish Design School (formerly know as the Bornholm School of Ceramics and Glass). The school, now part of the Denish Design Scool of Copenhagen, goes back to 1997, when it started bare-bone in a former canning factory office building. As the first students were settling in, the studio wing was still under construction. This way, the faculty and the students designed a building to their exact needs in collaboration with the architects. The story goes that in this first year, the small lake behind the school was drained to find the exact stone in the former quarry what was needed for a restoration of an important monument in Copenhagen. Before the blast was about the happen an evacuation warning went to the school and the students had to drop blowpipes and plaster molds and get out.
The school buildings are a marvel: single floor, lots of glass, two parallel hallways (a "theory" and a "workshops" wing) spreading out long in the middle of what could be described as a park complete with a pond and an apple orchard. Being in the building feels like being both inside and outside at once. The facilities are amazing! Each student has a desk/workstation, set in rows like the cubicles in a megacorporation's office.
There are only 75 students with 2 full time faculty in each of the two areas: glass and ceramics. DKDS is proud to be a design and craft school. According to professor John Gibson, who generously showed us around and explained the program structure and the teaching philosophy: the goal of the school is to maintain and further the design and craft tradition with the ceramic medium. By default, most students produce functional ware or other need oriented products. In the three years of study (for a bachelor's degree) they have repeated exercises to identify a need, research materials and formal/technical solutions, and design for it. The way of teaching is also interesting: during a semester, there are several workshops on special topics by guest teachers. Monday is always theory for everybody and the rest of the week is studio. The faculty has very high contact hours (28! - if I remember correctly) with he students. Since the school is small and in a very remote area (again, Bornholm is an island, farthest away from mainland Danmark) the students hang out around the school all the time, working, socializing, eating (there is a fully equipped kitchen and a large dining hall), beer drinking. Most graduates go on living in Bornholm, at least part time, and continue with their studio practice. For those who want to continue, there is a master's and a PhD program in Copenhagen. This is the place for fine art, the undergraduate education beeing simply for learning a trade well. Did I mention, that each Danish student admitted to a school (there is an entrance exam, portfolio review and students usually come with work experience in the field) gets a 5000kroner/month stipend from the government? This is for 6 years!

After our visit to the school and especially after my presentation, I've been meeting with students and alumni who wish for more freedom in their practice. Listening to these young people, I'm very sympathetic. I'd also come from an education system where rules were stifling all that did not fit in with the official line. So different from our school education structure in the States! On one hand, I see a lot of sense in the Danish structure: learn the craft and the material, get an experience with practice as a professional, and only then you are ready to take the work to any place you wish. But, on the other hand, I think this feeling is stronger: rules are results of arbitrary chain reactions of history, tradition, and access. Consequently, they are meant to be broken. ...if for nothing else but for trying and seeing what happens. I find a lot of value in learning a material well (I wish our students in general were so well prepared!), but also in abandoning it if does not fit the idea. We all agree that even a craft work needs concept. Where we differ is whether this is found in the subjective intention or in the utilitarian purpose. I've been thinking since Monday on what makes a good work of art or craft: to put the conclusion in the most simple way: if heart, brain and hand equally participates in the making the outcome is most often good, and it does not matter what "category" it belongs to.