Abstract/Summary

Reading International is a new contemporary art organisation located within the Reading School of Art at the University of Reading. It was founded and initiated in response to ongoing discussions with artists, academics, students about how we might establish new models of working in education and to respond to the growing pressures and the increasing frustration of students to see future possibilities or career progressions within the ‘art world’. At the same time it is an attempt to reflect on the existence of the art school within a regional environment, to find out if it could act as a regional contemporary art hub or centre, and to explore its possibilities in connecting and engaging with the different rhythms of the local arts community, to interrelate and raise ambitions for its co-existence and future. Building on my experience in collaboration and self- institutionalisation under the collective umbrella of Szuper Gallery in developing critical partnerships with challenging institutions, as well as working as an artist in a university we wanted to create a new ‘container’, an idea for a space that could involve artists, students and community in order to make the art school more site-specific, and more arguably more useful for its members. With partners and collaborators we set off to imagine the art school in the university as a public arena, which opens its life beyond the academic community and actively engages with a wider public. We asked how could we create a space that is less separated from the professional sphere, where artists collaborate with students and other organisations and how we might be able to create a dynamic cultural space in a regional environment?