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- Title of Abstract:
Makers' Mentoring Scheme (Ref #226)
- Date:
- 27-10-2006 13:40:50
- Status:
-
Accepted
- Rating:
- 8
-
Details:
- Placing critique at the centre of practice, ETA curates and manages a 24-month programme of mentoring for the benefit of each of six contemporary makers with mature practices in the south east region. ETA considers mentoring to be a reciprocal relationship between mentor and mentee undertaken over sufficient time to allow reflection as well as analysis action.
Contact time with the mentor is guaranteed at a base of 102 contact hours per maker (616 hrs with six practitioners), arranged broadly over an 18-month period. Three months at the beginning of the programme is dedicated to recruitment and three months at the close of the programme is dedicated to evaluation.
Mentoring primarily occurs at the makers? place of work, focusing on both theory and practice. Mentors and mentees engage in dialogue and critical debate with the intention of establishing a reflective space where each practitioner can step back from habitual routines and expectations in order to re-examine their work from fresh perspectives. ETA?s review of the process is structured around 6 month reviews and annual reviews involving ETA, the mentor and each of the mentees.
ETA has worked with nine makers and seen dramatic advances in their practices. Habitual methods of framing, processing and solving problems have been brought into question through a process of task-setting mutually developed and agreed upon by mentor and mentee. In each case, these tasks required mentees to adopt different methods of reflection and different types of action from those normally employed in the course of their practice.
Through the mentoring process, individual makers have completely reconfigured their practices in terms of research and production methods and how they want their practices to be received by potential audiences. Shifts in thinking have occurred whereby makers are considering how their work can be visible other than through sales (galleries) or collections (museums). This, in turn, has resulted in their taking up new avenues of work or means of production. For example, one maker has had a research visit to Thailand funded by the Arts Council, working with local craftspeople and small factories, scrutinising the emerging concept of ?massclusivity?.
Makers have reported that they would not have previously considered these new approaches to their practices if it were not for the challenge and support of a mentoring scheme centred on critique.
The practice of critique is inherently challenging. Its searching processes are difficult and its outcomes unsure; its ultimate aim is to locate the practitioner and the practice in the world.
Reviewer Comments: