The Critical Academy: Cultivating critical mindsets through a new and challenging discourse.
edu.photoireland.org

@CriticalAcademy /CriticalAcademyPF @criticalacademy

Started: 1 October 2017.
What: The Critical Academy opens up a new radical space to learn, research and examine contemporary art practices around Photography and their contexts, as much as the arts management and cultural policy that affect them. It’s about the cultivation of diverse critical mindsets and the acknowledgement of a new and challenging discourse.
When: Talks, workshops, and seminars organised throughout the year.
Where: At The Library Project and other locations.
Why: The academy has been created by PhotoIreland in a bid to develop an educational space outside the traditional institutions where practitioners and theorists can gather to experiment and challenge contemporary ideas that affect their practice.

The Critical Academy offers a number of opportunities to actively participate in its programme, aiming at times at very specific backgrounds, with three main components: a new educational space for Seminars; group Research on key projects; professional Development and Support programmes for artists and Arts administrators.

• Seminars
  The academy presents a growing series of activities for experiential and theoretical education in diverse formats such as seminars, talks, lectures, workshops, reading groups, crits, and even weekend retreats.
• Research Projects
  The academy currently proposes two long-term research projects looking at specific aspects around photographic practice in Ireland, opening a public discussion, and sharing findings along the way. Such projects will be developed in collaboration with peers and through an open forum of activities. In the future, we will propose other projects, and meaningful research proposals are accepted too.
• Development Programmes
  The Professional Development and Professional Support mentorship programmes rethink and expand on the relationship between artists and Art organisations. The academy offers a comprehensive and wholesome upskilling process of professionalisation over a period of 6 months to selected artists.
  

The Critical Academy is hosted in The Library Project, where the current programme will continue evolving and expanding.