Presentation

A WORD FROM THE DIRECTOR

Hello everyone and welcome to ENSA Dijon.

All the teams here at the National School of Fine Art are very happy to welcome you. I hope that the adventure you are beginning or have begun with us meets your highest expectations.

Our project is first and foremost one of art and transmission closely linked with international, professional circles in art and design. It is a question of making this school porous, receptive, and especially open to the outside world. To develop our collective ability to challenge ourselves and our requirement level, we rely on four founding principles:

• The Student’s Personal Project of Art Research that we help shape from your first few months at this school. This project, both theoretical and practical, will guide you through your undergraduate studies, and become the main focus during your graduate studies and the DNSEP.
• The plurality of perspectives: your teachers are there to provide you with a diversity of knowledge and ways of working that will sweep aside accepted notions. Do not expect a pedagogy that is slick and uniform. Teaching art and design should advocate the demands of questioning and analysis, that of awareness and distance concerning the developments in our world.
• The Research and Creation Workshops (ARC) are central tools at this school. They complement lessons as places of research and experimentation created to nurture your Personal Project of Art Research. You will be part of a transversal workgroup (combining all years and options) uniting weekly around a specific, multi-disciplinary theme, led by teachers and numerous external contributors.
• Research in Art and Design: Since September 2016, the Art & Society Research Unit, created in collaboration with the MSH – Centre CNRS at the University of Burgundy Franche-Comté, and supported by the Ministry of Culture and the Fondation de France, brings together all research activities generated by theoretical and practical contributions of the school. They result in conferences, study days, publications or exhibitions and commissariat.

The international is at the very core of ENSA. Convinced it is through a well-identified local foothold that the full importance of the international becomes clear, ENSA Dijon advocates that this double networking permeates every aspect of the life of this school. Far from being simply a topic in itself, the international is rather a way of being, thinking and approaching the world and our professions.

For this, the mastery of a second language is essential. You will find its hue as much in our regular curriculum as in the 4th year internships, workshops, ARCs, and especially the programmes of residence and preparation for professional life that we began to offer in 2015 to our recent artist graduates (the USA, Brazil, the Cité internationale des Arts among others).

To put in place our School Project, from 2015 we set about reworking our pedagogical tools with the teaching staff, student representatives and teams.

This restructuring is visible in a number of advances: the implementation of The Personal Project of Art Research, progressing from 1st to 5th year; numerous ARC workshops enabling us to cut across years and options and to create a link between pedagogy and research; identification of the school’s research interests and identity; creation of the Art & Society Research Unit; reallocation of school space; creation of permanent workshops for Painting and Art & Sciences. We developed programmes to prepare for professional life abroad; extension of the school outside our walls (a former gymnasium of 280 m² adjacent to ENSA, a workshop of 120 m² in Hall 38 made available to ENSA by the city of Dijon.

Indeed these changes are ongoing and brought about the creation of a new body enabling better collegiality in January 2017: the Improvement Committee in which everybody is invited to participate, takes place once a month on subjects that you can propose yourself.

It is worth knowing that over the past 4 years we have strengthened the advisory bodies of the school by specifying their field of activity and way of working to allow for more open governance and in which you have the possibility to be part: CA (Board of Directors); CRPVE (Committee for Research, Pedagogy and Student Life). Likewise, we intend to form a Scientific Committee in order to handle with greater precision the development of research at ENSA.

To finish, let us not forget the enormous effort led regarding external partners and specifically with academic and research communities. This direction is reinforced and developed by a local and international footing – 2 dimensions intricately linked – in particular confirmed thanks to the creation of a number of mechanisms of professional integration (Storefront, Permanent Marker, Dijon-Dallas, Dijon-Sao Paulo, The Cité international des arts…).

We intend to offer you more professional opportunities, internships, contacts with big names and the discovery of contemporary works and artists. We are also a founding member of CENA (Conference of National Art Schools) as well as the Platform of Art Schools in Burgundy-Franche-Comté with whom we organize seminars considering our teaching practices.

The past academic years have been punctuated by important real estate issues: your school is now more accessible to people with disabilities, it also sees the birth of a cafeteria open to all overlooking the garden (ground floor of the main building), and new workshop/pedagogical spaces in the adjoining former gymnasium (CROUS courtyard). I hope that this improved facility, with its new convivial and working spaces, will enable you to make this school even more your own.

I would like to end this welcome by inviting you to actively participate in the actions we have been implementing for several years in favour of a more egalitarian, less discriminating institution, and of human relations that reject domination, in particular with regard to women and minorities. There is still a long way to go, but I know that we will get there. For this to happen, each of us must feel concerned, and not hesitate to speak out or take action. Several contacts within ENSA are directly in charge of issues of sexist and sexual violence and discrimination: Laurence Jacquemart (administration), Lambert Dousson (teaching), and Mathilde Feurtet (student). There is also an external helpline set up by the Ministry of Culture: allodiscrim / allosexism, which you can contact anonymously by telephone (0800 10 27 46) or by email (culture.allodiscrim@orange.fr / culture.allosexism@orange.fr). I am also at your disposal if you wish to inform me of any difficulties related to these issues.

I would like to draw your attention to the need to keep an eye out for each other. If you have the slightest concern, do not hesitate to talk to us: my office is always open for you, and all the teams at ENSA Dijon are at your side to help you. 

I hope with all my heart that this new academic year will allow us all to live a serene and benevolent academic year.

Good luck to you all,

Sophie Claudel
Director