FAST45

Taking a futures studies approach, the FAST45 project aims to imagine, map and shape a higher arts education landscape where participation, research, and education in the arts play a crucial and integrated role within the sector and society as a whole.

This project aims to imagine a futures perspective in which the participation, research, and education in the arts is playing a more important and integrated role. FAST45 will develop:

• Art School Futures Learning Platform: an online knowledge platform that fosters the process of futures thinking in IHAE.
• Art School Futures Thinking Guidelines: a work template and strategy framework to enhance futures thinking in IHAE.
• Art School Futures Lab: a set of high-level workshops, presentations and facilitated discussions in which stakeholders of IHAE co-create ideas and visions for futures images and scenarios for the education and employment of artists.
• Four Art School Futures Scenarios: a set of possible, probable, or preferable futures for the employment of artists and the role of IHAE in society.
• Art School Futures Discussion Document / Agenda: a discussion text with an agenda that fosters the debate on long-term policy and transformative leadership in IHAE.

Aims & objectives
 

Taking a futures studies approach, the FAST45 project aims to imagine, map and shape a higher arts education landscape where participation, research, and education in the arts play a crucial and integrated role within the sector and society as a whole.

FAST45 aims to collect knowledge, create and test new methodologies and implement them as part of Art School Futures Labs. Educators, researchers, students and business professionals together, are in the process of creating scenarios with the aim to operationalise them in policy papers, long-term collaborations and valuable tools that will empower arts institutions to not only anticipate an unknown future, but to actively shape it.

By working across sectoral boundaries and envisioning future scenarios for 2045, the Erasmus + Knowledge Alliance funded project FAST45 intends to achieve the following objectives:

• To explore and inventory already existing ideas and visions of possible, probable, or preferable futures for higher arts education (HAE) and the employment of artists.

• To organise Art School Futures Labs that enhance future thinking and imagine alternative futures inside HAE (staff and students) and outside HAE (external public and private partners).

• To deliver four alternative Art School Futures Scenarios that highlight the dissimilarities /distinction from the present and reveal the potential choices and their potential consequences that HAE needs to prepare for their longer-term future planning and decision-making.

• To organise a general discussion/debate on possible policy and decision actions that informs and facilitates transformative leadership for strategic steps forward.

FAST45 knowledge, methods and tools will create agency and sustainability for institutes of the arts and their stakeholders. The project duration is 3 years starting on January 1st (2021).

FAST45 is funded by the Erasmus + Knowledge Alliance programme of the European Union.

Our involvement
 

1. The Art School Futures Learning Platform is an online tool (i.e. information data map and training course) that fosters the process of futures thinking in IHAE. It consists of a well-ordered and user-friendly knowledge base (e.g. learning materials, webinars, excerpts of literature, excerpts of interviews with stakeholders, word clouds, mind maps, infographics, information kits) that transparently unfolds future challenges, problems and opportunities in the field of (1) art, education and technology and (2) transdisciplinary employment of artists. The Art School Futures Learning Platform aims to inform and support the exchange of knowledge.
2. The Art School Futures Thinking Guidelines is a work template and strategy framework to enhance futures thinking in IHAE. It helps to organise actions and delivers a methodology to develop futures images and scenarios. It consists of cross-referenced information to support the process of futures thinking in IHAE and guidelines for individual institutions to devise and organise Art School Futures Lab with their stakeholders.
3. The Art School Futures Lab is a set of high-level workshops, presentations and facilitated discussions in which students, teaching staff, researchers, heads of programs, heads of departments or institutes, business people and other external stakeholders of IHAE co-create ideas and visions for futures images and scenarios for the education and employment of artists. All results of the lab will be reported and documented in a user-friendly web-based tool on the Art School Futures Learning Platform. It delivers a living archive since it continuously (re)informs and (re)documents the process of futures thinking in IHAE.
4. ​​​​ Four Art School Futures Scenarios is a set of possible, probable, or preferable futures for the employment of artists and the role of IHAE in society.
5. The Art School Futures Discussion Document / Agenda is a discussion text with an agenda that fosters the debate on long-term policy and transformative leadership in and for IHA

Partners
 

• LUCA School of Arts
• Estonian Academy of the Arts
• University of the Arts Helsinki
• Cefedem Auvergne Rhône-Alpes
• Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF
• Technological University Dublin
• School of Commons (SoC), University of the Arts Zurich
• Microsoft Ireland
• Conexiones Improbables
• Xenorama Collective for Audio Visual Art
• ELIA
• Association des Conservatoires, Académies de Musique et Musikhochschulen (AEC)

• Project contact: koenraad.hinnekint@kuleuven.be

• Press & communications contact: derville.quigley@elia-artschools.org