Practice about art,
memory and history

Enrolment

Student registration is open

Classes start in August

Duration of the course

24 weeks of meetings in
lecture format,
working sessions, workshops, artist talks and practical work
Lessons 2-3 times a week
Evening time on weekdays and daytime on Saturdays

Format

Offline lectures and workshops
Work on practical tasks
Optional access to the distance learning format

Price

7 months for 6 500 hryvnias
or 40 000 hryvnias in one payment

The program is aimed at studying, understanding and developing a cultural product that is thematically related to individual and collective memory, forms of social trauma, community stories and popular history.

The course Practice about art, memory and history is an educational program developed by the team of NGO “Museum of Contemporary Art” and implemented in partnership with Kyiv Academy of Media Arts. 

The program is aimed at studying, understanding and developing a cultural product that is related to individual and collective memory, forms of social trauma, community stories and popular history.

This course offers an immersion in the history and development of culture and art through work with memories, memory and communities, as well as hands-on work with imagery in individual practice, public and activism. The program is designed for artists, cultural managers, museum workers, designers, photographers, cinematographers, illustrators, and media professionals. The course is built taking into account applied problems and specific ideas of works or projects that students want to implement in the future.

Key aspects of the course include exploring and expressing memory through art, as well as understanding how memory affects social processes and the formation of collective memories. The study of sociocultural processes helps to better understand the contemporary context and values ​​and contributes to the commemoration rather than the exploitation of the community’s traumatic experience. Working with communities during expeditions, using art therapy methods and communication ethics form the basis of the practical part of the course. Critical analysis of participants’ works is aimed at improving ideas, forming specific tasks and assessing risks for submission to grant competitions.

The course is focused on offline lectures and practical classes, promoting personal communication with lecturers and mentors, as well as collective work on the development and improvement of projects. Participants will perform practical tasks that involve the application of theoretical knowledge in real projects, including preparation and discussion of ideas both in groups and individually, as well as presentations of projects to different audiences. The course also offers online learning and video tutorials for flexible self-study of the material at a time convenient for participants. Students will have the opportunity to discuss ideas and share experiences in an online forum, as well as have unlimited access to a learning portfolio with lecture notes, a reference base and study materials.

 

The course “Practice about art, memory and history” is an educational program developed by the team of the NGO “Museum of Contemporary Art” and implemented in partnership with the Kyiv Academy of Media Arts. The course is also implemented with the support of the Partnership Fund for a Resilient Ukraine (PFRU) , which is financed by the governments of Great Britain, Estonia, Canada, the Netherlands, the United States of America, Finland, Switzerland and Sweden.


The art practicum consists of two parts: the basic intensive and the main part – the advanced course.

Art practicum: basic intensive – program.

Program

  1. Historical aspects

    On the relationship between history and memory → History: public, popular, applied → Construction of history → Historiographical turn in art → Working with historical sources and archives in the work of artists → Archival impulse in art → History in social networks, podcasts and memes → Cinema- fixation and representation of history → Photography as a tool of narrative construction: artistic form, propaganda potential → Media, mediatization of history, new media → History in theater and performative practices → Artistic breakthroughs in working with memory. Searching for a language for the unspoken

  2. Culture of memory

    What is collective memory and how is it formed? → Construction of memory. Forgetting: mechanisms, concepts and manifestations in art → Landscape of memory and places of remembrance → Memorials, monuments, spaces of memory: artistic aspect → Memorial practices in working with music and sound → Crimean Tatar culture in the structure of Ukrainian national memory → Food as a capsule of cultural memory and tradition of consumption → Roma culture in Ukraine

  3. Expedition: ethics and psychology of working with communities

    Trauma theory and work with it → Working with communities: approaches and methods → Talk session with industry practitioners → Art and trauma, art therapy and its adequate forms → Participatory practices in art

  4. Management and organization of the process

    Art system, main actors and their functions → Curatorial practice in working with the memory of tragic events → Causal level in projects → Theory of changes. Systems thinking → Partners in implementation, attracting resources, financing. Work with international organizations and institutions of cultural diplomacy → Communications, work with the text: description, formulation, submission → Organization of the grant application process, interaction with donors → Legal models of implementation → Communication plan and work with the audience → Talk sessions with Ukrainian and foreign curators and cultural practices

  5. Work on the graduation project. The practical part

    Preparation: consultation with selected experts → Workshop tasks: examples of artworks, how they work with memory, analysis according to the information received, presentation → Discussion → Presentation + pitching for a professional audience

Practice

Practice on the course includes consultations with industry experts, workshops, case discussions with lecturers and homework presentations

The Basic Intensive offers you to create or take an existing idea for a project, which will potentially be implemented during the main course as your graduation project (exhibition, information campaign, etc.). The final task at the end of the intensive will be a draft grant application with a description of the project, i.e. quality preparation of your project for future submission or implementation. At the lectures, we will deal with historical cases and consider how everything works now on modern cases. During the core course workshops, students discuss with industry practitioners their ideas and cases they want to work on, create alliances/teams, develop ideas and receive “tutoring”.