'Towards New Schools' is an essay series published by the Editorial Board around recent epistemic shifts in art and design education in Northwestern Europe. Practitioners, researchers and teachers have been invited to reflect on the knowledge systems that shape educational programmes and the power structures they replicate.

In December 2024 the editorial board comes to the end of its 5 year run at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie & Sandberg Instituut. In this second to last reflection report, the 4th cohort of platforms share their experiences running a research group together with and for other students: What were the challanges? What were the outcomes? What impact did being an organizer have on their study and what professional opportunities opened up?

Thank you to everyone who came to the launch of Extra Intra Reader 3: Swallowed Like a Whole. You can acquire a paper copy of the publication at San Serriffe, in the academy, or download a PDF below:

Starting in the spring semester of 2024 are the 2 latest research platforms — toitoitoi and Interlude. They deal with performance and listening practices, respectively, and invite you to join them in the coming year:

The editorial board was created in 2019 as a 5 year project part of the Quality Agreements. Its objective is to stimulate extracurricular, experimental and student driven education at the Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Instituut. Set out to facilitate 13 educational platforms during that period through an annual open call, it has now entered what is possibly its last cycle.

Each year the editorial board publishes a report where the previous cohort of platforms reflect on their experiences. These continous conversations are meant to investigate what self-organised intercurricular education achieves inside of the academy, what challanges organisers and participants face, and what the editorial board can improve in the future.
You will find the reflection report for the academic year 2022-2023 here:

Do you want to develop experimental education? Do you want to organise a research platform outside the structure of a department? Do you want to team up with students, teachers and workshops specialists from across the academy to explore a particular topic?

In these 2 videos the 2023 platforms introduce themselves & invite new participants:

This was the editorial board’s fourth open call and we are very grateful to the students, tutors, alumni and workshop specialists who applied to run a platform. Thank you for the work and time you put into writing your applications. Each year the proposals pose complex and interesting research questions and exciting content, and this year we were particularly impressed by their professionalism and ambitious nature.

Recap: on May 10, four student-led research platforms held their annual public presentation event, at Perdu in Amsterdam.

Thank you to everyone who came to the publication launch at San Serriffe on March 30 and got a paper copy of the reader!
Since the physical publication is now running low in numbers it has also been made available as a PDF here. Click to download >>

Do you want to develop experimental education? Do you want to organise a research platform outside the structure of a department? Do you want to team up with students, teachers and workshops specialists from across the academy to explore a particular topic?
The Editorial Board is looking for two new intercurricular platforms to start in September 2023.

Dear Olya,

I’m writing you a letter from my nose, in the sense that I depart and arrive from the nose and to the nose as I nose. My point is that I have traveled far, but I know that the place of my face that is the “I” where my story unfolds and folds in a void of not-knowing is a song of home-coming too as the paradox of leaving and the impossibility to leave within the breathing time walking upon the soils of the earth bordered by law and tongues drawn and woven into streams of images and semantics. We have known each other for a few months now and one of the things that connect us is the impossibility of speech and the perpetual trying, trying, and trying.

We are looking for:

1 bachelor student
1 master student
1 member of non-teaching staff / workshop specialist

The Quality Agreements is a funding plan which allows student-driven research platforms to run for 5 years. In 2022, now that half of that time has passed, we are sharing 2 anonymous reports with reflections from the platforms that have existed so far. Here, organizers and participants describe the challenges and rewards of running a platform, what they have learned, and what they would like future initiatives to know.

In these 4 videos the 2022 platforms introduce themselves & invite new participants:

To all of those who responded to our third Open Call we extend a huge thank you. It was a great pleasure to spend time thinking through and discussing your proposals, and we are grateful for the time and attention you took in applying. It is always rewarding to read about what broad and compelling work is being done around the academy, and it gives us a valuable insight in to what topics and urgencies students are currently working and thinking with.

In this round the decision making process was a challenging one, and we had long discussions in order to come to a final selection. We appreciate the commitment and consideration given to the proposed topics and questions, and are happy that they provoked discussion amongst the board members. We always encourage those who were unsuccessful to join our feedback sessions, and, if suitable, to apply again next round, which will be in the Spring of 2023.

On 18th May 2022, the Editorial Board organised an event at OT301 in collaboration with the Embodied Knowledge Bureau and aux).

These two student-led research platforms used the occasion to share their research around sound and listening practices, and embodied knowledge and cognition, with an audience. The programme included a listening session by aux); a conversation between the founders and participants of EKB where they shared some of the theoretical context and personal backdrop that drove their research; and a deep listening session and workshop with Liane and Micaela Turk, where the audience was led through breath and movement exercises to a soundtrack of deep techno.

Do you want to develop experimental education? Do you want to organise a research platform outside the structure of a department? Do you want to team up with students, teachers and workshops specialists from across the academy to explore a particular topic? The Editorial Board is looking for four new intercurricular platforms to start in September 2022. Please send your proposal before April 26!

This article presents a sequence of conversation transcripts from the making of Textiles of Resistance: Growing, Weaving, Printing, Archiving, a project initiated by Werker Collective with Gleb Maiboroda & studio bonbon at Sonsbeek 20-24, an art manifestation in Arnhem, the Netherlands, exploring the complex labour relations and inequalities that show who is (un)seen, who is (in)dispensable, who is seemingly worth our applause, and who is fawningly silent.

the last few years have seen art academies across the netherlands lurch from one crisis to another, suspended in a constant state of crisis-management. the responses have varied across, and within, academies, but a closer look reveals a number of root causes that contribute to the issues rife within our art academies. these issues are difficult to address on a micro, per-academy level, through short-lived instagram accounts, or in moments of rupture and crisis. they need to be addressed through sustained, ongoing efforts - in alliance, together. this is already happening in a myriad of ways, and our project - ‘tools of relation’ - seeks to create a commons of these efforts. to create a living archive of these conversations, actions, interventions, conflicts, resolutions, and alliances.

On November 30 the Editorial Board of Intercurricular Programmes at Rietveld/Sandberg held a symposium on the urgency of experimental forms of art education and the possibilities they offer in shaping future educational structures, practices and discourses.

We are so invested, many of us, in the idea of ownership. I came up with this design, so it is mine; I paid for this bag, so I own it. Upon this foundation, capitalism is built: we buy and we sell, we own and disown, and goods circulate from one owner to the next. But what does it mean, really, to own something? Can something ever really be ours? Might there be other ways, besides individual ownership, to relate to objects? And if so, what would that mean for our systems of production and consumption?

We are looking for:
1 master student
1 member of teaching staff
1 member of non-teaching staff / workshop specialist

What are the tools for alliances? How do we establish solidarity networks? Can a model of practice and form of governance be considered as a work of art? And what does it mean to publish/make public in a platform framework?

We, a group of five, came together because of a mutual interest in sound. We are interested in how we listen and how sound is being used in its own materiality to foster experimental and border-crossing ways of making and thinking. At the end of 2020, we started a small online reading group where each one of us proposed a book they wanted to read. One of them was Sasha Geffen’s book Glitter up the Dark, which explores the intersections of gender, pop culture, the body, and technology. We reached out to Sasha and asked if they would be interested in collaborating with us. The following audio is composed by a mix of excerpts from their book, Sasha’s own voice, songs, samples, and voices from our friends.

We would like to express a wholehearted thank you to those who responded to our second Open Call. We received 11 proposals in all and take great pride and pleasure that so many students, teachers and workshop specialists presented us with diverse and stimulating visions for the future of art education.

With the following reflections we offer you a synopsis of the proposals, an overview of the topics they addressed and aspects of their research that we found to be exciting. The Editorial Board is sincerely grateful to those who applied, and eager to focus on facilitating the two new initiatives we have selected as well as supporting other promising proposals in carrying out a section of their programme.

In a culture that persistently lures towards a distrust of what cannot be seen, our physical reality is becoming increasingly invisible. This text reflects on one of the most basic, yet important, factors of our physicality: breath. I will examine the phenomenological and ecological implications of a culture that too often takes breath for granted, and ask: What can a pandemic which targets the lungs teach about a cultural relationship with grief?

The editorial board invites students, teachers and workshop specialists from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie to team up for two semesters and create an intercurricular educational platform. The Quality Agreements 2019-2024 budget offers the possibility to support new educational platforms in the upcoming years. Three new platforms will start in September 2021, focusing on one of the following topics: ecology, future commons, embodiment, relationality, the future of materialisation, future pedagogy, future art and design economies, technology, future philosophy, future feminisms or future politics.

All around me's twisting, twisting draws from past research undertaken by Rosie Haward and Naomi Credé around embodiments of dizziness and giddiness, focusing on the affects, histories and political potential these sensations give rise to. Dizziness or giddiness can alter our spatial, temporal and bodily relation to the world, and result in feelings of disorientation.

1. A sincere thank you to everyone who responded to our Open Call!

With these reflections the editorial board wants to express a sincere thank you to everyone who has responded to our Open Call. We have received 21 proposals and feel honored that students, teachers as well as workshop specialists teamed-up and shared their thoughts and ambitions with us. The 21 proposals present a substantial collection of visions for a future of (art) education.

With these reflections we want to present a synopsis, highlight trends and share aspects we have signaled in the 21 proposals, as well as announce the 3 proposals we have selected. The editorial board feels proud and humble and will focus on facilitating these 3 new initiatives, as well as looking for ways to encourage and possibly support the other proposals in another manner.

Future Practices is the title of the multi-year framework from which the editorial board works in the coming years. The framework is in line with discussions previously held by the editorial board: where is the potential of the intercurricular programs in relation to future art and design education? What does studio practice and material research look like in the future and what role do the workshops play in this? How are students prepared for a field that is constantly evolving? How do they want to manifest themselves after their studies? Future practices concerns students and teachers from all departments as well as workshop specialists.