fugitivespaces

Image:mi casa…my home. Fiona Dean. (1996), detail, colour lithographic print.

fugitivespaces was set up by Fiona Dean in January 2005. Fiona studied Fine Art at The Glasgow School of Art from 1979-84 and worked for a number of years as an art educator, researcher and consultant in a diversity of organisational and community contexts both locally and internationally. She received her PhD from the University of Stirling in 2004 for her thesis, Border Crossings: In/Exclusion and Higher Education in Art and Design, which explored ideas of inclusion and exclusion – in/exclusion – within art, education and community contexts. fugitivespaces was formed as a means of putting research back into grassroots practice and acting on concerns with art, education and community development.

Research and evaluation

Fiona has worked as an assessor and monitor on a number of national developments, including external monitoring and assessment of public art, educational and access initiatives for Scottish Arts Council and National Lottery funded projects. Recent and current research projects include work on South Lanarkshire Council’s Visual Arts’ Resume artist residency projects. The arising work is set for publication and offers insight into each artist’s perceptions of the residency process, alongside views of participants, including Gypsy/Travellers, Adult learners and a range of young people in diverse local spaces. Fiona is also currently working with the Arts and education Links team in West Dunbartonshire, continuing research into the effects of artists’ practice within the classroom, in particular teachers’ views on the impact on pupils. She is also currently leading research development for a new public art initiative being developed by The Scottish Arts Council – Public Art Resource + Research Scotland (PAR+RS). The work is focusing on 3 key areas, including a database of Capital Lottery funded public art projects; Learning and dissemination, through the Working in public: art, practice and policy seminars; and a dedicated PAR+RS website with news, in-progress and archived projects.

Previous work has included a Scottish Higher Education Funding Council project into Widening Access at The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) and an examination of students’ experiences of admissions and issues for retention and support. She acted as evaluation advisor to GSA for The Clydesdale Bank Art for All programme of art in schools throughout Scotland. Fiona has particular interest in the relation between higher education institutions and communities and Churchill and Wingate Scholarships enabled travel in the USA, researching a wide range of art and social projects, which involved partnership working between educational institutions and diverse localities.

Art education development

Fiona is currently a Project monitor for the Future Learning and Teaching Programme Arts across the curriculum, which is part funded by FLaT and from 2005-2006 was Programme Coordinator for Glasgow School of Art’s delivery of the Masters in Art, Design and Architecture in Education Programme – a joint Programme of Glasgow School and Art and Glasgow University. She is involved in Masters and PhD supervision (the latter with Grays School of Art) and currently coordinates and delivers the Arts and Education component of Glasgow University’s contribution to the Masters Programme.

In addition to project assessment and research, Fiona has developed art education strategies for the arts in regeneration, and has also helped deliver a range of curriculum development initiatives and community based programmes. These include Environmental change and student mentoring; Youth House Transition and Mentoring, a 3-year programme aimed at easing the transition from primary to secondary school for young people in Easterhouse through peer mentoring; Pocket Park project, a collaboration with Lochfield Park Housing Co-operative in Easterhouse that tested the wider educational role of art in community developments. She is currently working on the Italy.Scotland project with CREATE in Dumfries and Galloway, which aims to widen access and understanding of contemporary art amongst pupils, parents and teachers, by creating a range of CPD, learning and research opportunities.

Conferences and publications

She has participated in a number of conferences nationally and internationally and was keynote speaker at the Scottish Arts Council’s Arts for All conference and presenter at ENGAGE Scotland’s seminar on Public art and Education and South Lanarkshire Council’s Roundtable on the role of Artists Residencies in community development. Most recently, she presented at the European Access Network conference in Vienna, on stories of selection to higher education in art and design. She has published several articles and essays examining the factors affecting participation in education, in particular issues of social class and social exclusion. These include, Moving the mountain: linking higher art education and communities (1); Spaces of mediation:excavating arts boundaries Art, education and social inclusion: productive collisions Reconfiguring risk: art, education and social policy, Published Abstracts, New York, USA: International Society for Education through Art; A reconnaissance of the fortress: dismantling hegemony in the arts and education (2).

Notes

(1) In Kindler, A. and Irwin, R. (Eds.). (1999). Beyond the school, community and institutional partnerships in art education. Virginia, USA: The National Art Education Association.

Themes of collaboration, partnership, and community are central to this anthology. The text offers careful reflection to guide development of new alliances drawing on and strengthening communities through an arts involvement. It presents a strong rationale for collaborative partnerships that extend arts education beyond the school boundaries by demonstrating benefits that stem from such collaborative initiatives.

(2) In Walton, D. and Scheu, D. (Eds.). (2002) Culture and power ac(unofficial)knowledging cultural studies in Spain. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang AG.

This book gathers together essays by international cultural scholars, including a small group of academics within the growing, interdisciplinary area that is cultural studies on the Iberian Peninsula. The contributors to this volume use the idea of unofficial knowledge(s) as an interpretive device to reflect on forms of power within culture(s).

Image:house. Fiona Dean. (1997), watercolour.