As protests go, students at Glasgow School of Art surely merit points for ingenuity. Following what they refer to as being “betrayed” by management, students are refusing to release works for their end of year show.
Of the final year master’s class, 17 out of 18 students have withheld pieces for the final show, including video installations and sculptures to protest weeks of cancelled workshops and no studio time.
According to the students, attempts to negotiate fee refunds or even to postpone the show have been ignored by the institution for the past two months. They have also been refused the opportunity to include a collaborative protest piece as part of a substitute website.
The department published a letter from their students on the official website which read: “Under the current conditions I refuse to showcase either finished pieces or work in progress as I have not had access to my studio and to facilities.” This has subsequently been removed.
A student has said that: “The way it has been phrased makes it seem like we have just refused to submit, I feel really betrayed by that. That statement was an abridged statement of what some of us had sent in as part of a much bigger letter.”
They continued: “The degree show is very important but it is not the show itself that we are not happy to have had. It is the time and the education. It is hard to talk about what is going on because
“I feel like I am in a privileged position going to school in the first instance and I feel like there are much more urgent conservations going on in the world at the moment. But it is frustrating to hear from other art schools that there are alternatives set up already.”
The school alleges they have been in contact with students to offer money for a “self initiated and organised” which would take place in the next year. They declined to comment further on the complaint.
