Questions for the Board

International acclaimed artist and Professor of Sculpture at Royal College of Art London, Richard Wentworth, has gone on record stating that Cardiff School of Art and Design Sculpture Dept is the best of its kind and if someone asks him to recommend a BA in Sculpture this is where he recommends:

‘I speak with firsthand experience of the powerful agency of the department’s work. Needless to say it’s not a little ‘welsh’ thing, it’s a magnet internationally, and of uncountable value to the modernising forces in Welsh culture in the 21st C.
When people ask me how to organise a dynamic fine art department, I tell them ‘go and look at the Cardiff Sculpture Department, observe carefully the interpersonal trust and the ambition of what they do’.

 Based on this peer esteem why is it proposed to be closed?

Whilst there is a consensus that cuts need to be made the question is why take away 100% of one area? Why not make the cuts across the board cutting each department down by 33%?

How many dedicated sculpture experts will be teaching the current first and second years in their third years?

Professor Kavanagh has said that any student wishing to request specialist tuition within the field of sculpture can contact Philipa Lawrence and Ingrid Murphy. One being Head of ceramics and the other Senior lecturer of Textiles. Are these viable solutions for students wishing to pursue sculpture in Fine Art? Surely a tutor who has specialised in Sculpture must be available? Addition to this Philipa Lawrence has signed the petition to reverse the decision to close the sculpture department.

The whole basis of dedicated departments is that the staff fully understands the medium in which the students are working. Do you not feel that those studying sculpture without appropriate tutelage would be at a disadvantage to those at other art schools with fully dedicated specialist staff members?

Can there be a compromise in cutting costs and still have the Sculpture Department formally part of the Degree course at UWIC?

If it is an all inclusive 'fine art' course that will incorporate all disciplines then why is it proposed to specifically axe sculpture? Why not take a little from each area reducing staff and students?

The Sculpture department predominantly organizes the contemporary art lectures and it also through sculpture that the links are made to art establishments such as G39 and Chapter Arts Centre, whose curators have all signed the petition. With this in mind have you considered that detrimental effect this will have on students to cut these links with the greater arts community?

With the negative consequences as a result of the cuts being made to the CSAD, such as a decline in interest of future students, how does UWIC see a future for the CSAD in…?

Five years time?

Ten years time?

Twenty years time?

With closures of Fine Art courses regionally is it not more important to have a strong, diverse and complete Fine Art Degree, (Painting, Sculpture and Printmaking) for Cardiff, the capital city of Wales?

In March in 2010, Gaynor herself said, in a News Article on Walesonline.co.uk, "Spending cutbacks must not result in the butchering of Wales’ cultural riches’’

Surely recent decisions concerning the CSAD are in fact a 'Butchering of Wales cultural riches' and will they not result in a decline of the strong and recent surge of the Cardiff Art Scene?

Without specific specialized Sculpture teaching staff do you, like we the student body, fear that prospective students will now chose to study at other establishments, outside of Cardiff and outside of Wales?

Won’t this be a great shame to this great capital city? 

Will there be full time dedicated specialized Sculpture staff teaching the MA course?

For how many years as many of us may take a year or two out of education?

Will there be a designated and appropriate space for students wishing to study Sculpture?

Our own Foundation and BTEC tutors throughout the country have said they will find it difficult and some have said, impossible to send students like us to UWIC without specific specialized Sculpture teaching staff and space to study sculpture.  

Do you, like we the student body, fear that prospective students will now chose to study at other establishments, outside of Cardiff and outside of Wales? 

Is the closing of Interior Architecture founded on purely academic and financial purposes or is it because the head of Interior Architecture, Patrick Hannay, is the shop steward for UCU?