A Two Year Model for Open School East:
An Introduction & Overview

We are excited to announce Building an Art School for the Future, a new 2 year model at Open School East. This also sees a move to a 2 year application cycle for our Associate artists to join OSE, with our next call for applications in May 2025, with the next Associate programme starting in September 2025.

Building an Art School for the Future is a new, ambitious, integrated model at OSE with the launch of two additional core strands, our Civic Programme and our dedicated Alumni Springboard Programme.

The Civic Programme is devised in partnership with our local communities through deep-touch art projects with invited artists, OSE alumni, researchers and community practitioners. Projects will develop new work, ideas and help build the school’s curriculum.

The Springboard Programme is dedicated to supporting and working with the artists and cultural practitioners who have graduated from our Associates Programme through varied professional opportunities.

Building an Art School for the Future is a sector step-change, designed to enable new generations of artists to create and lead high-quality, deep-touch arts projects with local communities, foregrounding collaborative and situated pedagogies. Our new model will continue to mitigate the inequity of arts training access, but also more effectively dissolve the walls of the art school, developing new generations of artists for whom community building and social impact sits at the heart of their practice.

Building an Art School for the Future is structured around a 2 year programming cycle, with each cycle exploring and responding to a specific theme. The threads of this theme run through each of OSEs programmes.

In Year 1 we will establish a two-year theme through the civic programme by working with invited artists, alumni, community stakeholders and local and international partners. It will build an active resource of local knowledge, skills and expertise and identify needs. This establishes the foundations for an active, community-led curriculum for our Associates Programme and initiates collaborative projects that are deeply embedded within our community and civic spaces to authentically address the most pressing needs identified.

In Year 2 the Associates Programme will launch an exploration of the programme theme, with OSE Associate artists developing their own practices by making work and programming events and partnerships within the local community.

In our new model we are developing ways to embed community building and social practice methodologies into our organisation, building a currency of local community expertise, local knowledge, and developing our new curriculum led approach by community and place knowledge.

We will enable future generations of artists to have the tools to be able to develop high quality work, made with and for communities, using community led and collaborative approaches to realise work that is embedded in our local community.

As part of the 2 year model we are launching Springboard a new alumni programme. Through the development of varied partnerships we will create opportunities for recent alumni as we recognise the challenges that some artists face in accessing networks and opportunities once leaving the programme.

At OSE we will continue to share our resources and offer support to our alumni in the development of their ongoing careers.

The two year model enables access to arts education within community settings. We will research and question the role of cultural organisations, exploring how we might adapt, change and respond to wider social, global issues, to ensure we are supporting our audiences, participants and communities.

Open School East is an organisation that strives to create real change and impact on society by developing models of working that sees artists, communities, young people and children coming together on their own terms, creating art and cultural offers in their own neighbourhoods and creating a profile internationally for the quality and ambition of this work.