Summer Spotlight on Back to Foundation: Professional Development for Teachers
This summer, PCA invites art teachers from around the world to come to Paris for a week of creating, connecting, and professional development. Head of Foundation, Chloé Briggs, shares her philosophy of being an artist-teacher and her motivation for bringing educators together to explore going “Back to Foundation”.
Watch the video above or read the transcript below:
“I’m Chloé Briggs and I run the Foundation Program.
So, it’s the first time that we have proposed a summer program at PCA that is for art educators to be students again. For us as teachers you’re giving out a lot, and to have the opportunity to be back in the position of student and to learn again is really exciting.
Having been to art school and with dreams of being an artist, it was a decision that I didn’t take lightly to choose a path of teaching. I thought a lot of the peer pressure and the—I suppose—the criticism from outside was that if you teach, it means that you give up being an artist, or you sell out somehow. And I found a way to dissolve the line: I am an artist-teacher, I’m a teacher-artist. There is no hierarchy for me. I am a creative person who works with creative people. And that dissolution has been my liberation totally. And I can see other people trying to find a way through that too, and if I could help people do that then that would be a great pleasure as well.
I suppose that the premise is to come with an open heart and not knowing, you know, not to already have everything sewn up. I think when you teach—most teachers—that is in a way our sensibility. I think most—we are—if you teach, you like learning, so… and it’s so kind of wonderful to share that all together and be with like minded people.
So, I would say that the majority of people who have been to art school say the foundation year was the most transformative, and if you want to return to that year—in June, in Paris—after spending a hard year teaching, and re-engage with that brilliant time, then it would be a great pleasure to meet you.
Sounds quite good, doesn’t it?”