going for the gold

We've spent so much time these past two weeks exploring London and musing about British culture, but of course -- much as we'd love to be here just to serve as cultural commentators -- we actually do plan to go to school!!

Since Sergio posted about LSE last week, I thought I'd share some initial impressions about the institution I'll be studying at: Goldsmiths.
As you can tell by the crazy steel sculpture on the building above, Goldsmiths is London's "creative" university. It offers degrees in drama (which I'll be pursuing), visual arts, music, media and communications, as well as the social sciences, and humanities etc. etc.

Some of its best-known graduates are in the fields of art and fashion: including designer Vivienne Westwood, artist Damien Hirst (he of the pickled sharks and the diamond-studded skull) and Steve McQueen (not the 60s movie star, the video artist who represented Britain in the most recent Venice Biennale and whose first commercial feature was the extraordinary "Hunger," a beautiful and brutal depiction of the last days of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands).


What have I got in common with those three? Admittedly, not much. Except that I do fancy myself an artist (and, like McQueen, a politically-engaged one).

But the question reveals some aspects of why the prospect of starting a course at Goldsmiths is both exciting and a little bit intimidating for me...
Though there might be ivy on the wall of the school's main building, this is definitely not the Ivy League. From high school onward, I have been a big achiever, going to school only in really, really elite institutions (Yale, Oxford...). The culture of competition among the "best and brightest" is an environment I am thoroughly familiar with.

Goldsmiths will be different. For one thing, it has a different history. Founded in 1891 by the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths (as in craftsmen who worked with gold) its original mission was "the promotion of technical skill, knowledge, health and general well-being among men and women of the industrial, working and artisan classes." This was certainly not the mission with which Yale or Oxford were founded!
Goldsmiths history seems to suggest that it's a more "democratic" kind of a place, and a place where practice and craft may be valued as highly (if not moreso) than knowledge. I've always been good at testing and writing essays, all the academic stuff. I've also been very creative, of course, writing, directing and acting for the theater. But at Goldsmiths, the creative part will come to the foreground.
I'm very excited about my course: the MA Writing for Performance. What drew me to it is that it's something more than a "playwriting" program. Performance is defined much more broadly than just traditional plays -- it includes interdisciplinary and multimedia work, performances put on outside of traditional theatrical venues, and performances created through group collaboration, with other artists and with non-professionals.

For the past six years in New York, through my work with the All Stars as well as other groups, I've been engaged in an unofficial postgraduate course in collaborative performance-making and community organizing. It would feel strange to be returning to a traditional academic institution after getting my hands dirty and working in the trenches for so long. I've developed as a very different kind of artist, and have had very different artistic and political experiences, than when I had just graduated from Yale.

But, of course, Goldsmiths is still a school. I will be studying, not doing on-the-ground organizing. I will be writing things and refining them and getting feedback. And I'll be doing this along with a whole new group of instructors and colleagues (whom I'm supposed to be meeting tomorrow!!)

It's all very exciting, but the sense of the unkown is also very large...

I think I'll close this entry off with a few more images. Below is a Victorian bathhouse on the Goldsmiths campus that has been converted into artists' studio space.


Make me want to take up painting again!

And here are some shots of the neighborhood, New Cross, in Southeast London where the school is located.



Unlike Sergio, I won't be in the pulsating center of London, but then some of the most interesting art has always come from the margins, right?

Wish me luck!!