Learning Lab Arts and Design: Re-Processing the Future of Art and Design Education

Abstract

In this article I reflect on changes of learning in art and design as shifts in methods and cultural practices. I link an historical overview of learning processes to contemporary art and design making to identify methods of research and teaching for the Learning Lab Arts and Design (LLAD). Western art academies supported learning as imitating aesthetic standards. Learning design in guild systems combined knowledge transfer and the invention of new products for changing societies. Later, learning in art and design schools moved away from pre-set métiers and media. It came to refer to individual creativity and transformation, a way to protest or express an attitude. In the 80s, learning art becomes a practice with focus on process, not outcome. In 2019, I propose that LLAD approaches the processes of art and design making as multifaceted practices of learning within digital and virtual learning environments. Learning is to be situated in various activities: imagining, repeating, improvising, documenting, researching, prototyping, playing, simulating or transforming.