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.


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, vigilance and the act of witnessing. The reciprocities of the conversation are held up to constant scrutiny. In times of force majeure, the language is itself stepped up: acts of God, civil commotion, acts of state, insurrection, embargo...


The powers of self-propulsion enjoyed by artists were always thought to provoke new thinking. But now, should the ‘houses’ prove less ‘safe’, the levels of shared invention and cultural ingenuity are expected to stretch higher than ever.