Frequently Asked Questions
An intercurricular program at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie is an additional small-scale and intensive educational program, related to current themes and innovative issues, that can be followed by students from all departments of the BA and MA courses. The aim of the intercurricular platforms is to add an enriching (extra) layer of content, without supplanting regular education. An intercurricular platform stimulates interdisciplinary and trans-departmental cooperation and/or establishes links with actors outside the academy, through projects in which cooperation, self-organisation, research and new ways of working are central.
No, it is not. There is a tradition of platforms and projects that originate outside or next to the educational departments. Some projects are student-led while others are organised by teachers or that are initiated by the executive board. The editorial board is working on an inventory to create an overview. On the website extra-intra a collection of current intercurricular initiatives can be found.
Intercurricular education is one of the eight goals that the Gerrit Rietveld Academie has formulated as part of the Dossier Quality Agreements 2019-2024 (see link). In the process of defining the eight goals, the Board and the MR invited students and staff to share ideas and wishes for the future, for instance during the Academy Assembly in November 2018. There has been a noticeable interest for interdisciplinary and trans-departmental collaborations.
The Quality Agreements budget offers the possibility to invest in intercurricular education until 2024. To make this investment sustainable, the editorial board aims to develop a sustainable infrastructure to support and communicate intercurricular programs better as well as create space for new intercurricular platforms.
The intercurricular programs are small-scale, and still the whole academy can benefit from the presence, results and developments of these programs. Naturally there will be different levels of participation or engagement, some students will be part of a core group and others will only attend a public presentation. Still with the structure to support intercurricular programs as platforms, the editorial board would like to see that educational programs and models for the future will be generated. Therefore, the intercurricular programs give a possibility to rethink education or reshape educational programs that will be beneficial to the whole academy.
The editorial board intercurricular programmes was initiated by the Executive Board of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in September 2019. The editorial board was assigned to determine the themes and framework within which new intercurricular platforms could be developed. It was the ambition of the editorial board to set up a structure that supports new intercurricular programs that function as a platform within the academy. Preference is given to create a structure in which qualifications are clear and transparent so that both new initiatives as well as existing initiatives can partake.
Aside from supporting student-driven extracurricular platforms the editorial board also investigates experimental education through comissioning essays & audio pieces, producing events & symposia, and through publishing yearly reflective readers, most of which are archived on this website.
Current members of the editorial board are: Elisabeth Klement, Elio J Carranza, Michal Dawid Sypien, Clémence Lollia Hilaire, Nell Schwan, Rosie Haward.
Previous members are: Luca Heydt, Ea Polman, Jorinde Seydel, Gleb Maiboroda, Joram Kraaijeveld, Ben Zegers, Jurgen Bey, Rasha Dakkak, Tessa Verheul.
With regular intervals the members of the editorial board change, when they do we publish an open call on this website for new members to join.
The editorial board has selected ‘Future Practices’ as a framework: What does the education of the future look like? How do students want to manifest themselves after their studies? What type of education does this include? How do we relate to a new reality that is partly shaped by external factors such as politics but also by the art world, labor market or technology? What will the professional practice of artists and designers look like in the future?
The intercurricular programs offer to the academy the possibility to create new, experimental forms of education as well as tools to prepare students for their future practices.
On January 16 2020, the editorial board organised an expert meeting with heads of BA and MA departments and other representatives within the school. See minutes here:
We had planned to discuss things further in April, yet due to the covid-19 measurements the editorial board continued to work independently on creating a structure for new intercurricular platforms. In addition, the editorial board planned to organise a Friday afternoon lecture series Futures of Education in the Arts, to discuss experimental forms of thinking and making and stems from urgent questions in art & design education and in society at large. Due to the covid-19 and the measurements, 3 of the lectures got cancelled. We are translating these 3 lectures into texts on our website.
Feel free to share your thoughts by contacting redactieraad@rietveldacademie.nl.
At least two student-members are part of the editorial board at any given point: one BA student and one MA student. Both students and teachers can become part of an intercurricular platform.
The intercurricular programs themselves are developed to benefit the education of the students who participate.
It is possible that alumni or future students will be involved: they can mediate between the academy and other parties, be asked to participate, help run a platform, give a workshop, or attend a lecture, document an event, help organize an exhibition, etc. However, at least one organising member of each platform should be a current students of Rietveld and Sandberg.
In 2018, the Minister of Education, Culture and Science signed a sectoral agreement, which sets out how study advance funds will be used. The resources that have been released through the abolition of the basic grant are invested in the quality of education through quality agreements. The quality agreements relate to the entire funded higher professional education (hbo) and academic education (wo) and apply for the period 2019 up to and including 2024. Each educational institution was asked to draw up a plan for spending the resources, in line with the themes from the national sector agreement.
We understand, sometimes we are confused too! That is why we have called our website extra intra. The shift from programmes to platforms is based on the strong belief of the editorial board to invest in new and more experimental forms of education.
In the Dossier Quality Agreements the new intercurricular programmes are defined by a structure that resembles the structure of the Honours programme, defining the roles of a teacher, a coordinator and a group of students. The editorial board has been discussing other forms of education in its meetings, that won’t fit and will challenge this hierarchical structure. This educational model promotes and allows teachers, students and/or workshop specialists to initiate a platform around a topic that concerns them, their study and/or their practice. We have taken into account that a variety of groups will emerge that want to develop a platform: student-led, teacher-led, workshop specialist-led or a combination thereof.