ABSTRACT
It is important that as student teachers you advocate art, craft and design as fundamental to society, a useful, pleasurable, critical, and possibly transforming phenomenon. We ask you to question the orthodoxy, still prevalent in many schools, promoting art as an autonomous activity, something entirely distinct from other forms of social and cultural production. In acknowledging the diversity of cultural forms and practices Art & Design must accommodate the expanded and expanding field of material and visual culture, anything from functional footwear to live performance and virtual galleries. The significance of such forms lies in the uses to which they are put: utilitarian and symbolic, affective and discursive, physical and spiritual. These forms change depending on when and where they are produced, and how and by whom they are being used. Such change occasions shifts in function so that meaning becomes contingent on usage and intentions and definitions become difficult to fix. It is therefore not surprising that material and visual culture has generated discourses, from the purposeful construction of hierarchies and histories to their no less exacting deconstruction. Art & Design education provides opportunities for pupils to make and investigate art by exploring and discussing uses and by developing an understanding of values. It is only possible to develop this understanding if practice is placed critically in context so that pupils come to know how art can be more than self-expression, that it functions on different levels to support, critique and, significantly, produce the culture in which they live.
