21st Century Art School: a new Drawing and Printmaking Curriculum

This paper, co-authored by Alex Martinis Roe, Dane Mitchell and Lisa Waup, will outline the principles and methods governing the design of the new undergraduate curriculum and pedagogy in Drawing and Printmaking at the Victorian College of the Arts and summarise its content.

The curriculum and pedagogy have been underpinned by an understanding of the powerful role of art practices in shaping cultural values and understanding art practices as forms of knowledge and action that can contribute to addressing the multiple issues that face societies today, and the way contemporary art is produced, discussed, and circulates.

The Drawing and Printmaking curriculum has also been redesigned to support First Nations art practices and to bring First Nations knowledges to bear on the structure and content of contemporary art education. We have designed eight, six-week modules that structure the first two years of undergraduate art school around key concerns/concepts, methods and technical skills:

Technologies, There Will Come Soft Rains: Drawing Machines – Diagrammatic Thinking – Drawing in the Round.

Place, Impressions of Place: Pre-Imagining – Embodied Knowledge – Storytelling.

Subjectivities, Embodied Minds and Embrained Bodies: Embossing – Staining – Endurance.

Natures, Clocks in the Rocks: Line – Ground – Time.

Publishing, Bound Volumes: Bookbinding – Economy – Dissemination.

Communities, The Mechanics of the Stage: Architecture – Interviews – Data.

Refusal, Denial is not a river in Africa: Protest – Laziness – Denial – Negation.

Politics of Memory: Erasure – Revelation – False Memory.