In 2002 I made a big mistake: I decided to continue studying and enrolled in a post-graduate course (that I eventually converted into a Master) in Journalism at Strathclyde University, Glasgow. I was maybe older than other students and therefore unwilling to take what they told me for granted, but I resented most of the stuff I was taught there, from the visiting lecturer emphasising the fact that journalism was a misogynistic world (while the rest of the universe was/is all in favour of women?) to the completely useless training about reporting for the Oxdown Gazette, a fictional newspaper that some sick mind at the National Council for the Training of Journalists had come up with for its journalism exam papers. Eventually abolished in 2006 (proving that I was right about asking lecturers to eliminate the classes from the course), the training consisted in reporting for this fictitious publication about whatever went on in Oxdown, a town with very high rates of deaths caused by fatal accidents, crashes, fires and other assorted tragedies. A highly damaging exercise for your style, reporting about Oxdown made you desire you actually had a funeral parlour in that town because it would have definitely been a lucrative business. While I wasn't suicidal, I felt trapped in an unhealthy environment, where it was impossible explaining to a shorthand teacher that I could take notes using my very own personal symbols rather than the hieroglyphics she was torturing us with to write down complex words that nobody would have ever told us in an interview such as "multi-storey car park". Anyway, enough about me.
I guess there are other people who are currently feeling trapped in schools, colleges and universities as I did then, while I'm writing this piece, especially students who may be enrolled in a fashion course at the moment and who may have been following the discussion that developed after a third year student in the fashion programme at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp committed suicide in March (the motivation behind the unnamed student's suicide remains unknown).
Led by designer Walter Van Beirendonck, this famous course was at the centre of a recent investigation published on the Business of Fashion (that bizarrelly now points its finger at the academy after having created last year a climate of hate among universities and fashion institutions with its ranking system). In the piece students interviewed questioned the emotionally damaging methods of assessment and workload at the Royal Academy, that pushed many of them to develop depression, suicidal thoughts, eating disorders, self-harming or drug habits.
According to some students the course is a bit like a reality show where some of them endured public humiliations rather than an educational institution where you actively learn things. The fashion programme at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp may not be the only one so strict: former students under the late Louise Wilson at Central St Martins will tell you about being pushed and prompted, but they will also admit that CSM produced remarkable designers or consistent graduate collections while Louise Wilson was in charge.
That said, as a lecturer you don't necessarily need to call people names, offend them and drive them up a wall to get the best out of them, after all you're not on the set of Whiplash and you're not training people to go on a war.
You can try and find the reasons behind a suicide: you can blame lecturers, you can blame fellow students, cultural and language barriers, homesickness, depression linked to debts, the weather, the constant struggling for new ideas and a sudden creativity rut. But there is probably one point we should all consider, education has got to change: Sir Ken Robinson (watch his lectures on YouTube or buy his books and you will find yourself nodding or crying tears of joy at hearing or reading what he says) tells us that education should be championing diversity and be personal, nurturing each and everyone's talents.
So far Sir Robinson has never spoken about fashion in particular, but often mentions art subjects, and you know he would be appalled to know that there are fashion courses that give false expectations to students, that herd them as if they were cattle and push them to become runway designers or turn them into meat for the internship programmes of fashion houses that may be linked with a specific university.
It is simply impossible that in five year's time things will still be the same in the fashion industry as they are now: if we go on like this there will indeed be no fashion industry and therefore no runway shows. Maybe there won't even be clothes as there are too many garments already on this planet.
So what should we do with all the energies and creativity in fashion design courses? Well, it's simple, we should nourish them as best as we could. This already happens in some universities that are maybe smaller and less glamorous than the ones with cool, trendy and cult designers as course directors. But there are other institutions that only seem interested in students' money (I always had the impression that Strathclyde University was only interested in students' money and in investing it in real estate properties for a personal expansion of Leviathan proportions...) and where lecturers aren't honest enough to tell their students they should become textile designers and leave womenswear behind, or focus on children's wear, or, why not, develop designs and devices that could improve our society rather than designing the umpteenth line of athleisure based on super soft yoga pants (I remember encouraging two students once to design prostheses rather than accessories...).
Our economy is moving fast and faster, and we may need different careers in future, what we certainly do not need is producing more unhappy, depressed and suicidal individuals. In his online lectures Sir Ken Robinson often wonders if schools kill creativity, but we are getting to the point where schools are killing students. What happened in Antwerp is a sign of a deeper malaise at university level.
No university is an abattoir nor should it be just about passing exams, getting good marks or winning a contest. In fashion education there are several issues to sort out from getting great people to teach (rather than frustrated, stressed and egomaniacal lecturers) to overcoming the discrepancies between what students get taught by their lecturers and the fake promises they may receive from social media that may lead them into thinking they will make instant money after an influencer wears one of their designs or a prominent stylist picks one of their crazy outfits for that pop star or for this celebrity.
There is no creative algorithm to direct at its best a university, but there are less known universities providing great staff and a human environment and they should be championed and supported by the media and not ignored for not having a celebrity as their star lecturer. Maybe their story should be told more often while at the same time education - and fashion education in particular - should go through a major revolution as Sir Robinson would say. Otherwise, rather than highly creative people, we will keep on producing generation after generation of resentful, depressed and suicidal individuals.
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