AA2A STUDENTS NEWSLETTER No.1 Year 9
Many of you will be aware if your college/university is hosting an Artists Access to Art Colleges (AA2A) scheme. This means that there are four artists/designer makers working on their own projects in your college. We are trying to improve students’ awareness of AA2A and encourage more contact between you and the artists. I do hope you are able to meet all theartists during their 100 'access hours' which are usually used between October 2007 and April 2008
Project background
AA2A is now in its ninth full year as a national project with 22 colleges across the country taking part. This year we are welcoming one new college - Hull School of Art and Design. Again this year's funding is routed through the Arts Council, England from the Grants for Arts scheme. The project continues to be managed by the Council for Higher Education in Art and Design (the membership organization for Deans)
Contact with students
It may be that your college has organized some form of talk or introductory meeting with the artists already. This usually takes the form of an informal event, with the artists using the opportunity to show their work and talk about it, or answer questions. Staff time is often very limited to arrange these type of events so do approach them if you or your fellow students would like to help arrange something.
How to find your AA2A Artists
When artists applied to your college for an AA2A place, they were asked for an image of their work and a short statement about their proposed project. The idea being that this statement and a photo of the artist should be displayed somewhere prominent within the department so that you and the staff know who the artists are and what they are doing. You may even find that there's an AA2A noticeboard.
As Artists information is not always displayed, we endevour to get this information from your college and put it online. If your college has done this, you will find your AA2A artists by clicking the appropriate links on this page http://www.aa2a.org/artists2008 This will give you artists images, statements, weblinks and their contact email or phone number. This will allow you find out about the artists both in your college and in the rest of the AA2A colleges around the country. This improves AA2As benefit for students who may not have an artist working in their area of interest at their college. Most artists are very open to enquires but please be patient if they do not respond quickly. This is not a requirement of the scheme although in artists' evaluation feedback the commonest complaint was that they wanted more opportunities to interact with students.
Your input to AA2A
While we are developing AA2A as a more student friendly website we would welcome information about how AA2A projects affect you and other students, any quotes, anecdotes etc. So do contact us and we will try to use the information on or offline.
Finally I wish you all the best with your course and maybe we will see you on AA2A some time in the future!
Wendy Mason AA2A National Coordinator
