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Art, Design and Museology

The IOE is host to a vibrant art, design and museology education community committed to widening participation and promoting learning in and through art and culture.

Art, Design and Museology (ADM) is a friendly and stimulating place for postgraduate students and has a long and distinguished history.


Courses

Our programmes will equip you with the knowledge, skills and academic frameworks to engage professionally in schools, galleries, museums and other cultural organisations in London, nationally and globally. Art, Design and Museology (ADM) has at any one time up to 200 students following PGCE, MA and Doctoral programmes of study.

Graduate taught

Teacher training

Why study ADM at IOE?

Purpose-built studios

  • You will work in purpose-built studios which include a computer suite as well as photographic, ceramic and 3D construction facilities.

Access to the Monitor Gallery

  • You will have access to the Monitor Gallery, our compact venue for testing exhibition and programming ideas.

Collaborations

  • As a longstanding education institution we have developed significant, sustained collaborations with organisations that have provided opportunities for research and played host to professional placements - these include the British Museum, Tate Exchange, Design Museum, Engage, Freelands Foundation, Hackney Museum, Imperial War Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum and others.

Support

  • Specialist technicians provide invaluable support throughout the programmes of study.

Location

  • IOE's central location in Bloomsbury gives our students access to IOE's international education library, UCL's main library, and UCL's museums and collections. And there's also easy access to further arts and humanities libraries at Senate House, Birkbeck College and the School of Oriental and African Studies - all just a 5-minute walk away.

Careers

  • We shape career trajectories and inform the future of education in art, design and museology. A significant number of former students hold strategic positions in art colleges, schools, galleries, museums and other cultural organisations, in London, nationally and internationally.

Cultural diversity

  • Every year we welcome international students who have contributed to our programmes by bringing global perspectives, methodologies, and knowledge to strengthen cultural understanding.

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Research activities

Our interdisciplinary reach reflects the diversity of professional backgrounds. Our research spans art and design in education; education in museums and galleries; curriculum development and art as a cross-curricula subject; arts education and artistic research; learning outside the classroom; the influence of technology, critical performative pedagogy, informal learning at heritage sites and much more. 

Art, Design and Museology (ADM) has a rich research culture that has praxis at its core. Research is often, but not exclusively, allied to the promotion of professional and theoretical change across educational cultures in schools, art colleges, museums, galleries and heritage sites.

Publications

ADM's academic staff publish/present their research in academic and professional journals, edited collections, books, art exhibitions and related catalogues.

Cultural activities

Staff contribute regularly to public-facing cultural activities: lobbying and advocacy, programming and curating, sitting on committees and juries, organising conferences in order to shape cultural and educational debates. 

Lectures and seminars

Lectures, seminars and tutorials are informed by staff and student diversity and a commitment to meaningful international cultural exchange.

Research seminars

We hold regular research seminars that include presentations from practitioners, theorists, educators, and museum and gallery professionals that provide MPhil/PhD students and tutors with opportunities to present their work-in-progress.

Such seminars and exhibitions are open to all students (PGCE, MA, EdD, MPhil, and PhD) and academic staff both within and beyond IOE.

Seminar series

'We Need to Talk About This…'

A seminar series that seeks to increase opportunities for art educators to discuss practices across institutions and qualifications frameworks.

Recent seminars include:

  • Changing perception of art's role and value in society
  • Illusion of separation between us

OrganiserClaire Robins.
CollaborationKieren Reed (Head of Undergraduate Studies at UCL Slade School of Fine Art).

Journals

Journal Schooling and Culture

A new journal concerned with secondary education. The journal recognises a critical need for collective action towards models of avant-garde political methodologies in the classroom.

Schooling & Culture supports future generations to develop powerful, self-led practices of resistance and alternatives to those imposed by the state and the private sector.

Journal co-editorAnnie Davey.

Journal of Visual Culture

An international peer-reviewed journal that enables and shapes visual culture studies and the study of visual cultures by publishing contributions by academics, artists and curators, educators, and museum and gallery professionals.

Founder and Editor-in-Chief (Since 2000): Marquard Smith.
LinksJournal of Visual Culture (Sage).

Projects

Lecturers lead purposeful research projects often within public educational settings that have access, inclusion and social change as their remit. These include:

Child language brokering

Spaces of identity belonging and mediators of cultural knowledge

A project that investigates the practices of young interpreters (aka child language brokers).

Child language brokers

These are children or young people who translate or interpret on behalf of adult family members, siblings or peers who do not speak the local language.

Team

This project brings together a unique combination of researchers, including Dr Claire Robins, language networks and artists to raise the visibility of young interpreters by researching, documenting, promoting understanding, and enhancing the awareness of their practices.

More info
Kids in museums

An organisation that works with museums to help them welcome and include families, teenagers, and children.

Special Projects DirectorCaroline Marcus.
LinksKids in Museums website.

Ways of machine seeing: Learning experiments in computer vision

This research project aimed to update methods of teaching and learning about AI and machine vision. It ran from January 2023 to January 2024 and was funded by a Culture, Communication and Media impact seed fund. 

TeamAnnie Davey (project lead); Dr Geoff Cox, Yasmine Boudiaf, Dr Nicolas Maleve, Dr Dean Kenning, Janice McLaren, James Stevenson, Makaila McKensie, Yugyoung Choi (members).

Co-designing teacher-AI partnerships for the future classroom

The long-term vision of this project is a classroom where human teachers and AI systems work in partnership, leveraging each other’s complementary strengths, learn from and mitigate each other’s biases.

TeamManolis Mavrikis (principal investigator); Mutlu Cukurova, Laura Benton, Maria Kambouri, Enrico Costanza, Nadia Berthouze (co-investigators).

Networks

Engage

The lead advocacy and training network for gallery education. It supports arts educators, organisations and artists to work together with communities in dynamic, open exchanges that give everyone the opportunity to learn and benefit from the arts.

Editorial boardAnnie DaveyClaire Robins.

Group for Education in Museums

The Group for Education in Museums (GEM) champions excellence in heritage learning to improve the education, health and well-being of the general public. The organisation, as the voice of heritage learning, believes that involvement with our rich and diverse heritage is an enriching and transformational experience that provides distinctive opportunities for learning.

It aims to make that learning accessible, relevant and enjoyable for all.

Contact: Jenny Wedgbury, co-convener for GEM London Group for Education in Museums.

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Staff and students

Our staff and students contribute to public-facing cultural activities disseminating their research at international conferences and public events and participating in and curating exhibitions. Further, staff and students participate in lobbying and advocacy for better international understanding.

Academic staff and visitors

Visiting speakers include leading practitioners teachers, artists, policy makers, curators, cultural gurus and social activists – across a range of disciplines and organisations (orthodox and heterodox). They regularly share their expertise and experiences with staff and students in our lecture programmes and seminar series.

PhD community

The Art, Design and Museology group has a thriving doctoral community with a number of students registered for MPhil, PhD and EdD programmes of study.

Subjects

Our students work on various subjects such as:

  • co-curation as praxis
  • collaborative learning experiences' black visibility in museums
  • itinerancy, widening participation in art and design
  • children's encounters with photographs
  • narratives in arts education
  • queering the art classroom
  • 3D models as education the democratic potential of Instagram, and
  • potential of practice-based methodologies.

Supervisors

Useful link: find a supervisor.

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Transcultural exchange

Our broader world-view invites national and international dialogue and alliances as we develop a better understanding of the role of arts education and activism in transcultural exchange.

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