NAFAE funded Symposium at Sunderland University - a report by Joe Woodhouse

Thanks to NAFAE funding the University of Sunderland ran an event around a symposium for prospective students and staff from local schools and colleges. The aim was twofold. Firstly to bring students into a university setting so they could see the value of the Foundation/Level 0 course, also the merits of learning in a university environment and the access to current research that this entails. Secondly, to bring staff in from schools and colleges we have links with (and also those we don't) to enable us to open a dialogue about the issues facing students and the choices at HE. We were also interested to see what feedback staff could give us on the kind of event that would be useful in the future.

We organised a staff and student show of drawings that ran alongside the AV festival, which was shown at various sites in the North East including the University's Vardy Gallery. Further to this show there were scheduled several student video installations. A common occurrence when shows are on but, nevertheless, highlighted to those visiting that student work was shown alongside those of practising and current artists. The funding from NAFAE enabled the Foundation/Level 0 work to be professionally framed and it really held it's own.

The event enabled staff to being groups of students in and a good day was programmed fro those that attended including tours of the facilities, taster sessions and feedback on portfolio's. We also had a twilight session available for staff to discuss the value of the course in relation to progression and discuss ways of developing these links further. This proved to be really useful and we are looking at developing networks with staff in schools in new ways as a result. in general we are interested in staff using the university as a resource for sessions with students and encourage links to HE. We are also interested in ongoing staff development and the relationship between our own artistic practice and our teaching. This is more prevalent in University but it was felt that supporting these activities in teaching staff would create a better sense of community between these institutions as well as providing an impetus for these ongoing practices.

We are in the process of reviewing possible next steps with these issues in mind and would certainly be interested in what other Universities have to say, whether there are programmes or schemes such as the Fine Art and Education MA's or lower level activities that foster this wider participation in HE.