The decision to become a student is not the same as becoming an artist. Both contain speculative activity, transactions of all kinds, steering around constraints and taking pleasure in risks. Art schools are ‘safe houses’ that provide laboratories for all this: an elaborate shared conversation, of lasting consequence.

For a young artist to become a student again is a particular gamble: where to go, why, for how long, and what company to keep? ‘Artists-who-would-be-students’ are selected for the quality of their judgement, how they articulate what they want to contribute, their sense of timing and the expression of their appetite for climate change.

The climate in any school is created by its students, with a continuum of imaginative resourcefulness passed by sleight of hand. The general test of what goes on in this laboratory is conveyed by word-of-mouth, and that conversation is held up to an annual mirror: The SHOW.

The artists step forward. The audience enters. Fresh conversations circle the work. The laboratory takes stock. The artists take a deep breath.