Study
StudyDuring the Fine Art and Design in Education course, you will learn everything you need to be an innovative and professional art teacher or to work with the public in museums or other arts institutions in an engaging way. You will develop your own artistic talents and help others experience the meaning of art, design and creating for themselves.
Give the course the colour and shape you choose
On the Fine Art and Design in Education course, you will develop both your artistic and educational sides. There is plenty of scope to develop your talents in both autonomous art and design in order to develop as a visual artist or designer. As an artist educator – see also the heading ‘Artist educator’ – you will also be challenged to consciously pursue that relationship, and to seek answers to the questions: what does visual work mean for my teaching? And, what does teaching mean for my visual work?
Read, look, digest, frustrate, whatever, but make! Make! Make! And keep going!
Fine art, design and education
Central to the course is the development of both your artistic and your educational talents. In the programme you will follow, there is plenty of space for visual subjects, from design to autonomous art, but there is also a strong focus on preparing you to be a teacher, with both theory subjects and internships in practice, for example at secondary schools or in secondary vocational education.
The Fine Art and Design in Education course offers you a rich, inspiring and in-depth programme in which you will learn everything you need to start work as a professional in art education. However, there is no fixed template for a passionate art teacher. How you shape your role as an art teacher is an important question, one you will gradually be able to answer better as the course progresses.
Roughly half of your study time will be spent on your development as an artist and designer. You will work in spacious classrooms in the Rietveld building at Oude Kraan and in ArtEZ’s excellent workshops for graphic art, metal, ceramics, screen printing, digital media, liquid plastics, etc. In the first year, you will take basic subjects such as graphic design, drawing, product design, interaction design, photography, moving image and painting.
Starting in the second year, there is a lot of room to make your own choices and to give your course a profile of your own, for example in the sphere of art and technology. You do so by taking practical workshops, visual arts elective programmes and specialisations.
Finally, you will immerse yourself in the world of fine art and design by means of the theoretical subjects cultural history, art theory, philosophy and current affairs. In the those subjects, you will learn about both contemporary developments and the historical development of the arts. You will learn to think critically about art and its position in society and develop an increasingly considered opinion on that.
Interdisciplinary cooperation is becoming more and more important these days: boundaries between different art forms are blurring and disciplines are working together to learn from each other and move forwards together. In order to prepare you for interdisciplinary professional practice, you will work a lot with students from Theatre and Dance in Education during your course.
This is the exact reason why I participate in the NO CLUE Project: to make art with different artists from different disciplines. I think it's very cool that we have the opportunity to get together and get inspired by each other.
Artist Educator
On this course, the above domains do not stand in isolation. Your development as a visual artist and designer always stand in relation to the effect you want to achieve in others – whether they are pupils, participants in projects, visitors to exhibitions or fellow artists.
In order to underline how important we consider this relationship, on the course we use the term “Artist Educator”. In that term, “The Artist” and “The Educator” are inextricably linked. In our view, your teaching is shaped by your artistry. And conversely, who you are as an artist is determined by your quality in working with people.
In the course, we offer you a lot of space to explore ideas about art education and choose your own direction. Gradually, you will develop your own opinion on the question: what kind of Artist Educator do I want to be?
Course structure
You don't become a good art teacher in one day. It takes time, courage and perseverance, but it is very rewarding.
On the full-time Fine Art and Design in Education course, you start with a broadly-based propaedeutic year. You will be taught many visual subjects and you will also develop your theoretical side in subjects focused on contemporary art or cultural history.
You will be prepared for teaching by means of internships and subjects such as educational theory here on the course. In year 1 you do an internship at a secondary school. You will explore whether teaching is for you and practise giving lessons under supervision.
I feel more and more confident when I am teaching. Whereas at the start it felt a bit like a presentation, now it’s a real lesson. I find myself really getting into the role of teacher. I help the pupils become independent. When they ask a question, I answer it with a question to encourage them to come up with an answer themselves rather than me giving it to them.
Teacher: Roos van Haaften You do internships in both years. In year 2 the internship is at a secondary school or in secondary vocational education. In year 3, there are two internships: one of them is interdisciplinary, with students from the Theatre and Dance in Education courses. For the other you can choose either a school or a non-school internship. The former range from primary and general secondary to secondary vocational education; non-school internships can be with museums, festivals, publishers and art centres, for example. At the course, we have a lot of contacts with the professional field, which allows us to offer good internship placements.
In this middle phase of your course (years two and three), you largely set your own course. Through specialisations, electives and workshops, you will gradually develop your own answer to the question of how you will make a difference to society as an artist educator. At the end of the middle phase, you will give a presentation demonstrating your provisional choices of emphasis within the domains of visual, theory and education. What matters to you, what do you want to learn in the final phase and where do your main challenges lie?
It is very tempting to work within your own bubble, comfort zone and discipline. Collaborating with people from other disciplines brings new knowledge, perspectives, impulses and inspiration.
Specialisation programmes
In the second and third years of the course, you can choose between various specialisation programmes. You will work with two lecturers on the specialisation programme of your choice for one day a week. The lecturers will challenge your visual skills and provide input on the content of your work. You will go on an excursion together and work with guest lecturers.
Visual elective programme
The visual elective programme ranges from thematic works (e.g. 'representation based on verbal information') to in-depth painting, documentary making, portrait photography, typography or animation. You choose which subjects you want to take.
Workshops
You can also choose from a range of workshops to acquire specific technical skills, such as screen printing, graphics, InDesign, paint and pigment, liquid plastic or raku ceramics. You can also take theory workshops, for example on cultural appropriation. The workshops are delivered in our physical workshops, by lecturers and guest lecturers.
In the final year of the course, you will focus mainly on your individual graduation pathway: the final internship, the theoretical research and the visual arts graduation research in which you work towards your final presentation at the ArtEZ finals. You choose your own final internship placement, either in an educational setting or with an art institution. You also largely determine yourself what you research or put on the agenda visually, intensively supervised by those lecturers from the course who most closely match your plans and ideas. Besides individual supervision there are group meetings, there is a lecture programme (the Fine Art and Design in Education talks) and you encounter fellow students in your own workshops or shared workspaces.
- https://dbkv.artez.nl/magazine/sensueel-keramiek-om-van-te-eten-gesprek-met-elke-peters-finals-2020
- https://dbkv.artez.nl/magazine/gesprek-met-kasper-van-steenhoven
- https://dbkv.artez.nl/magazine/gesprek-met-sophie-thedinga-naaktfotos-en-menstruatiebloed
- https://dbkv.artez.nl/magazine/ellis-kat-een-feminist-op-zoek-naar-foute-openingszinnen
Internships
Every year you will do an internship. Internship experiences are an important part of your professional training. During an internship, all the skills from the professional profile come together and the knowledge you acquire during the course falls into place: you get the opportunity to actually apply what you have learned. You will discover which work setting suits you and which target groups you want to work with. You will also work out what kind of artist educator you want to be and what your own views are on education and art education.
In years two and three, you will do an internship at a secondary school. You will investigate whether education is for you and practise teaching under supervision.
I suddenly realised during the internship that my views on mainstream education have become more nuanced. I could also see how much effort the teachers put in to provide good education.
In year three, you can choose for yourself whether you want to do an internship in a school or elsewhere. School internships range from primary and general secondary education to secondary vocational education (MBO); settings for non-school internships include museums, festivals, publishers and arts centres. As a course, we have extensive contacts with the professional field and are therefore able to offer good internships.
In year three you will also do an interdisciplinary internship, working with students from the Theatre and Dance in Education courses.
I'm becoming more and more confident in front of a class. Whereas in the beginning it still felt a bit like a presentation, now it really is a proper lesson. I feel myself taking on the role of the teacher more and more. I help the pupils to become independent. If they have a question, I will answer them with another question to encourage them to come up with an answer themselves rather than me telling them straight away.
Projects
Each year, we organise projects in which you work on a theme for an extended period (often 2 or 3 weeks). Projects may take place within your own course or jointly with the Theatre and Dance in Education courses. Examples are Remix Reality and Hidden Histories. The course guide contains all the information about the projects that will be run this academic year.
In this project, you get to know all kinds of technical possibilities within the discipline of visual arts and design and you come up with an innovative plan for a social issue in the local area.
In this first-year project, you work with students from the Theatre and Dance in Education courses on the question 'what is an artist educator?’. This will involve going to the Bijlmerpark Theatre and visiting The Black Archives together.
In the Summer Project in the first academic year, you work on your own dream academy. The project starts with an exploration of the field, during which you will visit all kinds of art institutions and zoom in on education. In this way, you will gain a picture of art education in the professional field outside of schools. Based on that exploration, you will work on the assignment to design your own dream academy. In year two, the Summer Project will generally involve working towards a final presentation or exhibition at an external venue in a small group.
In this interdisciplinary project, you will develop your vision and ability to think critically and experience at first hand how great the impact of your profession can be in a community – not by telling others how it should be done, but by providing openings that enrich the lives of the people you work with. What does this mean for you in terms of didactics and pedagogy? In this project, you will be working with students from the master Artist Educator and the bachelors Dance and Theatre in Education.
Our projects regularly involve tackling issues put forward by external clients. For example, in the past our students have developed an educational project for an Expoplu exhibition and worked on visualising knowledge at the Vreedenhoff residential care centre.
During this project in year two, you will immerse yourself in a subculture which you do not typically come into contact with in everyday life and which you cannot identify with at all. Working with a small group, you will make a reportage about that subculture, which you will then turn into a production, such as a magazine, mini-documentary, photo shoot or essay.
During this project in year three, you will take the academy itself as your object of study. In small groups, you will develop and present artistic and educational concepts.
Activities outside the curriculum
The Fine Art and Design in Education course offers room to undertake all kinds of other activities in addition to the 'regular' parts of the course, organised by the course and the students themselves. For example, excursions, lectures, debates, professional symposia, exhibitions, a fair like Unfair and learning to write for the DBKV-Magazine. These activities are not about gaining credits. The focus is on responding to current events, taking the initiative, broadening your perspective and presenting yourself to the outside world.
Art teaches you to look at reality from multiple perspectives; art opens up a whole range of possibilities.
Academic career counselling
Thanks to an extensive range of options in the middle phase and the freedom you are given in the final phase, as a Fine Art and Design in Education student you can define your own path during your course. This means you get to shape your own course and develop your own specialism. Our academic career counsellors and lecturers will help you meet the challenges you face along the way. Your academic career counsellor will support you in maintaining the required progress in your studies and prepare you for your future career. He or she is your first point of contact when you come up against issues. If you encounter personal problems, your academic career counsellor will discuss with you the possibility of referring you to a student counsellor.
Facilities
The academy has well-equipped workshops. There are workshop assistants in all the workshops.
Here you will find all the required machines and tools for working with wood, metal and plastics, as well as a sewing workshop, blasting and spraying room and a materials shop. In addition, there is a storage area for the work in the basement.
Central workshop In the photography workshop, you will find all the facilities (computers/printers) for digital photo editing. You can also borrow a digital camera here.
Photography workshop In this workshop, you will find various types of cameras, monitors, projectors and computers for digital image and sound editing.
Audiovisual technology workshop Here you can make moulds, cast, model, work with plaster and much more. You will also find kilns for firing and glazing your work here.
Ceramics workshop This is the place for screen printing and large format printing, using a transfer press, cutting plotter and cutting machine, and for bookbinding and typesetting.
Print workshop Here you can program and automate tasks in computer programs like Illustrator and InDesign. You can also work with all kinds of electronics, for example using Arduino components/building motors and robots.
Hardware software lab
Working for yourself?
As an artist educator, you need an entrepreneurial attitude: the ability to take initiative, see opportunities and seize them. You will work on that throughout your course. If you choose to go self-employed after graduation, you will also need basic knowledge about entrepreneurship. This will be provided during the Art Economy workshops in the fourth year of the Fine Art and Design in Education course.