Ours is a discussion paper which addresses, chiefly, the conference themes of: ‘equity & social justice’ and ‘theory & methods’. The paper is based on long-standing professional expertise in the area of Widening Participation (WP) in Art, Design and Architecture (ADA) in Higher Education and on research interest in the traditions and conventions, both bureaucratic and linguistic, which serve the infrastructure of formal education in ADA.
The first part of the paper argues for a strategic approach to WP agendas within ADA to be informed by 1) the theory and methods of Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002), specifically his work on the ‘aristocracy of culture’ and the operations of ‘cultural capital’ and 2) the recent work of James Elkins (b.1955) on the conventions of contemporary art education, in particular his application of Stanley Fish’s concept of ‘interpretive communities’ to ADA. The emergent strategy is one which recognises that socio-economic class remains the predominant obstacle to achieving credible diversity of student background in creative education at HE level.
As Bourdieu makes clear, the non-acquisition of the codes and behaviours of operative cultural capital creates an acute and erroneous sense of incompleteness on the part of a reflexive working class applicant to art school who inwardly registers his/her perceived difference in capital inheritance.
Elkins is right, we argue, to draw our attention to the explicit and implicit sharing of bureaucratic and evaluative vocabularies within the art academy: he usefully demonstrates the ways in which such vocabularies reinforce a complacent sense of liberal tolerance while cementing interpretive positions in ADA familiar to those with an appropriate level of cultural and educational wherewithal.
For the second part of our presentation we will introduce to delegates GSA’s Prato Project: an international exchange programme between GSA and Monash University. This unique project sees Scottish students from lower socio-economic backgrounds join Australian liberal arts students in Tuscany. An intensive project, it has a twofold impact – on both ‘non-acquisition’ and ‘decoding vocabularies’, following Bourdieu and Elkins – by helping to familiarise less culturally privileged students with world renowned examples of renaissance culture, and by offering them a discursive environment in which to share and decode cultural preconceptions, build confidence, and help them identify as genuine participants in local, national and international culture. Often lacking confidence in, and alienated from, the dominant culture that pervades UK art schools, the following quote is a typical example of the project’s impact: ‘I thought I was prepared for what was going to happen on the trip. I don’t think I knew exactly how much it would have contributed to the person I am today. It changed many things about me such as my confidence, independence and my hunger for learning. Since the trip I have been to Prague, Berlin, Barcelona and Riga. This is all because I now have the confidence to travel’.
In sum, our paper recommends that socio-economic class, and the ‘coding’ confidence issues which ensue, be kept in the foreground when addressing equity of participation in HE ADA. For open discussion we wish to hear of colleagues’ efforts in these areas, and share good practice, with the Prato Project as touchstone, to further test the insight and potential for institutional change which these theories and methods present.

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