Open School East is a new non-fee paying art school for thirteen associate artists offering a non-traditional approach to arts education.
Commissioned by the Barbican and Create London, Open School East will provide workspaces and tuition to the associate artists, completely free of charge, as well as re-open a former library in De Beauvoir Town, East London. Emphasising cooperation and experimentation, the initiative is set up to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and skills between artists, local residents and neighbourhood organisations.
The associates, who were selected via an open call earlier this year, work across the fields of art, design, dance, film and community organising. In lieu of paying fees, they will each give the equivalent of one day a month of their time to run public activities in and around the building, ranging from dance classes and reading groups, to a community choir and a gardening project.
Open School East will deliver a non-accredited 10-month teaching programme delivered by international artists, writers, curators and theorists, during which time the associates will develop their practice and work on projects that resonate with the area, its social fabric and its history, collaborating with local residents and organisations. The associates have also worked closely with the school’s founders in setting their curriculum and in the redevelopment of the various spaces that make up Open School East, marking a significant change to the usual top down approach to arts education.
Central to the school is a shared activity space which will be used to host the school’s ambitious public programme. Every month, a number of lectures, workshops, screenings, performances and talks will be open to the public. These diverse events have been devised in collaboration with guest curators and organisations, including Bulegoa z/b, an organisation based in Bilbao, Spain that exists to bridge the gap between art practice and theory, and LSE Cities, an international centre based at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences that studies how people and cities interact in an increasingly urbanizing world. This communal space will also be open for use by neighbourhood groups and organisations.