AMSI Community Studios: Meet the Artists

Cubitt Education is excited to announce details of the artists who have taken on a studio at Arts and Media School Islington (AMSI), a secondary school in north London and the newest addition to our portfolio of community studios. Betsy Dadd, Esther McManus, Janetka Platun and the Schooling & Culture Collective have all taken residence at AMSI.

The programme sees a disused technology classroom repurposed as four artist studios. The resident artists receive a subsidised licence fee in return for donating two hours a month of their time to creative interventions shaped with and for the AMSI community.

The selected artists all share a deep investment in learning and participation. They will use the opportunity of holding a studio within a formal education context to extend their practice as well as contribute to AMSI’s cultural ecology.

The project also investigates how we might pool and share our resources at a time when the arts and education sectors are under intense pressure to deliver more for less. It is a direct response to the sidelining of art and other creative subjects in the curriculum – which led to the technology classroom falling out of use – and the dearth of affordable studio provision for artists.

Betsy Dadd

“I make experimental moving-image. This encompasses many things: drawing, film, sequence, sound, rhythm, time, movement – everything in a state of flux. I use these mediums as a barometer to trace time and document places undergoing change.”

Esther McManus

“Esther’s work explores approaches for collective learning, where publishing, art and education are all seen as practices of learning.”

Janetka Platun

“I make site-specific installations, sculptures and films. The themes that run through my art are our collective search for belonging, transient concepts of home and how we deal with loss.”