Introducing the Artist Collective Summer School

The Artist Collective Summer School is a lively, twelve-day programme of activities and events, in which the participants take a leading role. It offers the opportunity for art historians and art students to learn from each other, and for UK-based students to connect with their Yale-based peers and with other members of the UK’s arts community. It provides a forum for stimulating discussion and debate on a theme – this year, forms of artistic collectivity – that is of interest to both art students and art history students, that is of relevance in relation to both historic and contemporary art, and that is investigated through the prism of British artistic and architectural practice. Finally, the summer school brings together the creative and intellectual energy of all the participating institutions and enables areas of common interest to be developed.

As well as the Paul Mellon Centre, the Yale Art School, the Yale Art History Department and the Yale Center for British Art, each year the summer school is co-hosted by an additional partner institution. We are delighted that for the inaugural year this partner is the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London.

The Artist Collective Summer School programme is structured around:

• A series of day-long workshops, in which the participants will work with a number of artistic and cultural collectives
• A series of talks by, and conversations with, art historians, curators, critics and artists
• Visits to exhibitions, artists’ studios, archives, and arts organisations

The emphasis is on generating creative and collaborative forms of analysis and exchange on the part of the participants. Accordingly, the last two days of the programme are devoted to sessions in which the participants present their reflections and responses – artistic and scholarly – to the chosen theme, and to the materials, events, and ideas they have encountered. These sessions may provide the basis for future outputs – publications, for example – which would offer a permanent expression of the work done in the summer school.

• The summer school takes place between Monday 8^th July and Friday 19^th
• The programme runs from Monday to Friday during this period, allowing for free time over the weekend. The weekdays are full days, with at least four evening events.
• It is co-hosted by the PMC and the ICA in London.
• Participants’ travel and accommodation costs, and the costs of four evening social events, are covered as part of the course. The logistical arrangements are co-ordinated by Nermin Abdulla, Education Manager at the PMC.
• The summer school involves the participation of 4 PhD students based in the UK, and members of the PMC’s Doctoral Researchers Network; 8 MFA students from the Yale Art School; 8 PhD students from the Yale History of Art Department; and between 4 and 8 members of the ICA’s wider community.
• It is convened by Mark Hallett and Rosie Ram from the PMC, with Richard Birkett from the ICA and Ayham Ghraowi from the Yale Art School. It benefits from the input of other colleagues from participating institutions, including Tim Barringer of the Yale History of Art department and the PMC’s Deputy Director for Research, Sarah Turner.
• The programme features three one-day workshops led by members of contemporary artistic collectives, with an emphasis on their particular understandings of collectivity and their relationships to institutional forms. It also comprises a series of workshops, seminars and trips that focus on historic forms of artistic collectivity, and which are led by curators, artists, critics, and art historians.

There are four places on the summer school open to members of the PMC's Doctoral Researchers Network, please download the PDF below for more information.