Welcome- and some background on my study tour

TATE Britain, where I managed to see the Rachel Whiteread show on its very last day.

The Art Gallery as temple- staunchly upholding the idea of art as free for all.

Hello, and welcome to this blog, which is a record of the study tour  I am curently undertaking as the 2017 recipent of the Premier's University of NSW Creative Arts Scholarship. To start with, a little background on the project, the scholarship, and myself...

Actually, you can read a little bit about me under my profile. I am an art educator, and an artist, and I am Head Teacher of Visual Arts at Nepean Arts and Design Centre, TAFE, Western Sydney. If you would like to know more, you can find out about our vibrant centre, including links to our socal media, at the NADC webpage, and you can have a look at my art practice on my website.

My study tour is largely based in London, and centred around a unit of study in Museums and Galleries entrepreneurship at Goldsmiths. For those not familiar with Goldsmiths, it is a College of the University of London, with a vibrant multi-cultural student body, and offering studies in a broad range of creative and cultural industries. Alumni include Antony Gormley, Damien Hirst, John Cale, Malcolm McClaren, Bridget Riley, Mary Quant and Vivienne Westwood to name a few.

My study is in Museums and Galleries as Cultural Entrepreneurs, and to accommodate this, I have been able to extend the period of the study tour to ten weeks, which is the length of the course. This period of formal study is an opportunity to look closely at the way museums and galleries have worked in the past, and how the have altered and continue to expand their practices to cater to and include diverse audiences, create new ideas and debates, and solve the financial challenges that any organisation faces in the 21st century. The course is lead by Dr Sylvia Lahav, a Goldsmiths academic who brings with her  decades of experience in the Museums and Galleries sector.

The course involves numerous site visits, where we get to hear directly from a range of experts in the field. Of course, I will be taking every opportunity to visit museums and galleries large and small across London and beyond, to look closely at how current thinking is applied. I aim to record many of my visits here to share with you, and welcome your thoughts and reflections. I am sure that many of my posts will be stimulated by the teaching and learning of the course.

It is a great privilege to have the chance to think deeply about the forces that impact on the world of museums and galleries, and to engage in such an immersive study program. I hope this looking and thinking will contribute to teaching and learning in TAFE art schools, and inform courses aimed at  both artists (as content providers) or (future) art administrators. I see lots of potential to enact entrepreneurial models in the TAFE environment for the benefit of students, and hope that this will be one of the longer-term outcomes of the study tour. It seems inevitable that my art practice will be enriched by osmosis form all the looking and thinking. The committment to vocational currency is something that defines teaching and learning in the TAFE environment. The course is half of a post-grad certificate, and  there is a major written assessment to complete. I am excited, and only a little bit daunted, to be in the role of student again.

I would like to sincerely thank the University of New South Wales for their generous sponsorship of the  2017 Premier's University of NSW Creative Arts Scholarship.