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CHRISTINA LI: [Cantonese] Welcome, everyone, to today's discussion 'Artist Educators: The Interface between Artistic Practice and Pedagogy'. I'm Christina Li, guest curator for Shirley Tse: Stakeholders, Hong Kong in Venice. Over the 2 days of this weekend, in coordination with the exhibition currently underway in Venice, with the help of M+ and the Hong Kong Arts Development Council and the response exhibition to be held at the M+ Pavilion in May 20, the discussions intend to open up multiple points of entry into Shirley Tse's multifaceted practice.

Last night we held a discussion looking back at the history of the past three Hong Kong pavilions and current edition. In today's discussion, Shirley Tse and other artist-educators will explore the intersections of pedagogy and art as well as how mixed-media artists approach education as a possible extension of their art practices.

Conceived as a platform for exchange between peers, it is our honour to bring together four Hong Kong installation mixed-media artists from different generations and backgrounds to share their approaches in teaching. First, I will introduce today's rundown and then each of our speakers will have five to eight minutes to make a presentation, followed by about one hour of discussion and Q&A.

Allow me to introduce today's guests. First is Shirley Tse, a Hong Kong artist currently based out of Los Angeles who is also this year's representative of Hong Kong at the 58th Venice Biennale. She works in the mediums of sculpture, installation, photography, and text. While she was pursuing a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1990s, Shirley participated in the Education Abroad Program at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1996, she received a Master of Fine Arts degree from ArtCenter College of Design, in Pasadena, California. Since 2001, she has been a faculty member at CalArts where she was recently appointed as the Robert Fitzpatrick Chair in Art.

Next we have Leung Mee Ping. She received her education in fine arts in both Europe and the United States, her BFA from L'École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and her MFA from CalArts. In 2009, she earned a PhD in Religious and Cultural Studies from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her practices primary focuses on conceptual installations, than span across installation, public, socially practices, along with performance videos and mixed media. Currently she is Professor at the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University and Head of the Academy's Centre for Research and Development in Visual Arts.

Third we have Doris Wong Wai Yin. Doris graduated with an arts degree from the Chinese University of Hong Kong before going on to earn an MFA from the University of Leeds in the UK. She is currently a lecturer in the Department of Fine Arts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong where she teaches 'Drawing Fundamentals'. Doris works in a range of mediums, including painting, sculpture, collage, installation, and photography.

Finally we have Phoebe Man Ching Ying. She is a multimedia artist and independent curator who currently serves as Associate Professor of the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, where she also chairs the Bachelor of Arts programme.

In addition to the aforementioned four guests, we are also happy and honoured to have Clara Cheung here to serve as today's moderator. Clara is an artist, co-founder of the art space C&G Artpartment, art director of 'Art Together', a core member of the art group 'Project 226' and a part-time lecturer at several universities, including the School of Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong, the Academy of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Now I invite Clara to take the stage and give us a brief rundown of the agenda for today's discussion. Please.

[Audience clapping]

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] Thank you Christina, and thank you everyone for coming today. Our discussion today is about art practice and pedagogy and so the first question that comes to mind is can art be taught? This is a very vague and broad topic. That's why we have started this thread by email or in person with our four speakers before today's discussion. There are three main points that I would like to invite our speakers to speak on before we discuss them in depth. There is a key word that we all felt was very interesting. During email discussion, everyone agreed that that's the key point. It was 'un-learning' and 'un-programming'. How do we translate them into Chinese? Essentially these mean dismantling, disassembling and reconstructing what has been learnt. They were very interested in these keywords and from there, the second and third key points concerned the question of pedagogy, that is to say, exactly how do they write course outlines and conduct assessments, art critique assessments and evaluations? How do they decide whether a student's contribution in class is good or not? We would like to invite them to respond first to these.

Christina also just gave a rundown of their backgrounds and so perhaps everyone has come up with some relevant connections They've all had different exchanges and encounters in different places like Hong Kong and the US. Later, we will discuss this further and explore the sparks that come out of our discussions. Now I would like to invite Shirley to the stage.

SHIRLEY TSE: [Cantonese] Thank you everyone for coming here today and thank you to the organisers for providing me with this wonderful opportunity to come here and exchange ideas with these other artist educators. In response to the three keywords you just mentioned, I would like to first address 'un-learning' and 'de-programming', I think... As mentioned by Christina, I received an art education in Hong Kong, studied design in secondary school and graduated with a degree in fine art from the Chinese University.

The consensus in those days was that, if you wanted to learn art, you needed to follow a program of some type. For example, you start with the basics, then move on to an advanced course, then go on to figurative art, followed by abstraction. As a student in the US and even as a teacher, I've never used this approach because I feel that one can absolutely first teach or learn abstraction, and then go on to figurative art.

The point is that individuals learn differently. That's why you can't simply apply the same program to each individual.

In my three years as chair of the faculty at CalArts' School of Arts, the most profound experience I had at an art school, it is tremendously important to understand how to clearly write out your pedagogical approach. It's the same in Hong Kong, in the US, anywhere in the world. Higher education, and especially art education is being increasingly commercialised and turned into a business, and even non-profits are using profit-making methods to operate.

Under the premise of accountability and external... external demands, you often need to use a very quantitative method to write out the results of teaching, but my colleagues and I at CalArts are facing these external problems, often times we will not give a direct answer, because we know that behind these questions is a hypothesis, a kind of value judgment that, it's generally very singular and that students can be compared to one another. Our philosophy is that we don't... When each student has their own different way of learning and their own communicative capabilities, we cannot make it all uniform.

On the administrative side, we just won't answer these set questions. In our classes, we will continue to make use of this kind of openness. In my teaching, I am very focused on telling the students that they learn by learning to make judgments and setting their own standards. Actually there are many different approaches. The point is not to follow any particular one, but to let them know that there are many options to choose from, to teach them how to find their own path and choose an evaluation approach that suits them.

Eventually, I think that it is about educating them on how to educate themselves. Autodidact is an important concept. If they know how to educate themselves, they will have agency. When they have agency, they will not just follow these predetermined models. Like Clara said, they can construct, create, innovate, establish their own model. In the 21st century, only once they activate their agency will they be able to have sustainability.

On the screen, here are some keywords. In fact, only after having taught for several years, about five or six years, I realized, when I looked again at my research the history of this in the school I taught at, there is a history called 'radical pedagogy' which I realized only after I had already come under its influence. For example, how do they define 'professional'? You're not a professional just because someone is willing to pay you, you're a professional if you can affirm that what you do has meaning. The real artist must profess. This is a page from a book that records the early history of CalArts' 'radical pedagogy'. In it, it mentions a classic quote from one of their deans: 'No information in advance of need'. That is to say, if the students don't need you to teach them, you don't need to teach them. If the students haven't asked you to teach them something, you don't need to say anything. You have to wait until the students tell you they want to learn this, then you teach them.

The second thing is how you decide on a syllabus. When I started teaching, I would talk a lot about the things I found interesting when doing my own research. But after 19 years of teaching, I've found what I want to teach the most is for students to focus on developing their own content. So you can see in my syllabus, the first sentence says 'There is no syllabus at the start of the semester' because I will collect the opinions of all the students. I need to know exactly... Each class, the students' ideas will be different and so I have no way of presume, predict what they will want to learn When they're in the classroom, I will ask them what they want to learn and everyone can discuss it.

Let's say we have 12 students put forward 36 questions, everyone will discuss which ones should be answered first. In the course of the discussion, they learn how to set priority to find out what is important and then who will speak first and how to answer questions fairly. If this person has two questions and that other one has three, how do we figure out what is fair? In the end, the entire theoretical approach is actually a lesson on civic education.

The third is teaching students how to assess what counts as success and how to evaluate the good and bad of an art piece. I teach a class on critique but I don't like the word 'critic' so I use the word 'articulation', because 'articulation' is less focused on criticism and is more open. If we overemphasised on criticism, like saying 'this piece is good, this piece is bad'; 'this piece is successful or unsuccessful', it's like we've decided that everyone already knows the criteria for that criticism when that is not actually the case. What you think is good, your classmate might not necessarily agree with. What you think is a problem, other students might not think it is. Because everyone's values are different, I teach them how to express and determine their own standards for success I spend more time setting out this standard and then let everyone compare. A lot of the time everyone disagrees but the goal of this is to get them to 'agree to disagree', to get them to agree that everyone has their own particular direction.

Yes. The word 'articulation' is an interesting one. Its original meaning, in the field of anatomy refers to the joints and how they can make things that couldn't move, move When teaching, we are also looking for ways to make flexible what was rigid. I apply the theories that I learn in the course of that to my teaching practice. Due to time constraints, I won't be going deeper into this topic, as we... When we want to communicate on how we determine our standards, I also borrow some approaches from other theories. Among them is one called 'NVC', 'non-violent communication', which splits 'observation' from 'feelings' so that there isn't too much judgment on one's observation.

Finally, I would like to share a picture with you. This is what it looks from one of my critic classes Other than human beings there are also animals, cats and dogs. When I teach theories, when they read some texts because I want them to take these theories to practice, for example, if an article mentions Jeff Koons... What's that? I can't read it. I forgot. I will get them to take on role playing, some will play Koons, while some will play Amelia Jones. Then they work to understand [their creative practices] from the perspectives of these artists and theorists. Students have different opinions about what each other student says, and in the overall process they will get a clearer understanding of everybody's different methods of observation. I think I should stop here. We'll continue later. Thank you.

[Audience clapping]

LEUNG MEE PING: [Cantonese] The opportunity for this talk is very special because I get to see a few friends again. As teachers we are so busy with so many different things as well as all the administration, but this discussion gives us the chance to get together and chat.

When I heard about the topics we were going to talk about, I was particularly interested by the ideas of 'un-learning' and 'un-programming', especially of what the 'un' part of these words mean to us and to our students. And how does the overall artistic context demand we deal with or experience the world? These two essential words 'learning' and 'programming' show up in the education system or schools. I'm more focused on what the 'un' part is. What is wrong with the education system? This is a question that is constantly asked.

Its first premise is a simple art education, but it reaches beyond that there are many things we think of as questions of the system that arise in an establishment school, like how new students adapt and how they face their futures. How do we define the impact of education on artists? Whether it is teachers or students, they always ask this question or putting forward their reflections. How do educators use this 'un' perspective to answer them?

Then there is the question of what the result is actually like when we combine art and education. How do we understand these two words when we put them together? Even just when we talk about 'art', there are already plenty of questions and arguments simply on aesthetical standards. So what does 'art education' mean? Can I say that 'art' can in and of itself exist in a systematic form? We can discuss about this. Is it a body of knowledge? If not, then what is it? Let's take an overall view of 'art' from the perspective of 'education'. Then can we take the knowledge of 'art education' and the methods of transmitting it, and use that to think about and refer to the discourse around 'art'? On top of this, there are many other channels for 'education' outside the academic system, are those what we refer to as 'un-learning' or 'un-programming'? Whether this part is what we are referring to and then we'll discuss a few other issues.

Moreover, if art without education, then what is it? Has art never needed education or is there essentially no such thing as education in art? If we remove education, then what impact does education have when it emerges within art? Does it have any influence? After this proposition unfolds, then there is an education related to art. And after we have subtracted 'education', is there not still the question of art remaining?

Turning to the overall direction of today's discussion, is there the possibility of art without education? Do we need to redefine the question of what art is? However, I don't intend to go into defining aesthetics at this moment nor to discuss [the significance of] King of Kowloon Tsang Tsou Choi to public graffiti. He himself is not an educational direction but was he oriented toward art education or toward ordinary life? Within the scope of art education, we would consider him to be self-taught or self-developed or even a genius. I am not talking so much about these questions per se but more about what is behind these questions within the context of the body of art, is there education?

If there is or is not, what is it? Is it void or empty? I want to talk about teaching, teaching style. As it and art education are closely related to what we do as educators. Because we write syllabi, something the school requires to be written or are required by the overall educational system to be written. But these courses aren't for myself, they are for broader use and not just for me to write alone. This is a systematic structure: how to assess, monitor, review entire concepts. However, course outlines are written by teachers and based on what is included in syllabi. Then we set out classes for 13 weeks things to be taught in classes during the 13 weeks. And to respond to the so-called grading system required by the curriculum. We cannot change the grading system.

At the school at which I teach at, we have a grading system in which you enter the scores in different sections. You can input different scores into it. When you apply it on a curve, you will be asked by a popup window whether or not you agree the scores of the student. But I am very clear that with the course outline, no matter what, we will respond to grades within this system. And I can tell you that in my personal experience, I have a lot of freedom. I designed my own course outline and respond based on the subject in terms of the content I teach. To quote an old saying, 'teach students in accordance with their aptitude' and I believe that everyone particularly in universities should be taught in accordance with their aptitude. I am not responsible for whether students can get a job after graduation, or whether they'll go on higher level education. In the process, over time teachers should have a creative teaching practice which gradually becomes their teaching style. I'm not talking about any question of essence but about habit, about whether that teacher is creative. The key is whether or not the teacher can make un-learning or un-programming as part of the content of their course outline. Personally I use a variety of methods to guide students along and I particularly believe that visual arts education has never been focused on the nature of the visual so much as on the invisible - how to present or observe the invisible through the visible. It is very different from some mechanical teaching methods. There are no single choices but rather an interactive relationship between the visible and the invisible.

So in my personal teaching or creative work, 'reality' is something I can't leave. Regardless of whether the chicken or the egg came first. If I assume the chicken came first, generally students will be able to observe from reality how to look at the visible and the invisible. An example of this is 'Seeing and Training'. They are required in the syllabi and courses but you need to give them a perspective. You can see in the old Family Planning Association logo, these two narrower ones are probably male and the one female is dragging along another female. And you'll find at customs at Lo Wu, you'll see this sign, which doesn't mean 'child trafficking'. At first because a lot of male Hong Kong residents went to find wives in the mainland and their wives couldn't come over first but their children could, and so you'll see this to indicate a gathering point. These things you see but don't see or that you're used to not seeing how does everyday life give them an interpretation? I will show them this image in our first and last lessons. I'm sure we all have experience of going to this kind of class learning the ABCs. They teach you fundamental knowledge and explain what is a man, what is a woman. Man is doing a 'yeah' pose, and woman is posing wearing a hat. This is the foundation of the earliest visual education and when teaching, you need to give context to be able to see the invisible. Why is the plane on the boy's side? Why is the ball on the boy's side as well? Why are the gloves and more kindly animals on the girl's side? These are questions I don't believe will be addressed in kindergarten or primary school, but they are absolutely ones that need to be addressed in my course, reinterpreting the relationships of things unseen, of which this is one example.

The 'Plumbing Master'. Everyone knows who the Plumbing Master is, but also no one knows who the Plumbing Master is, except the newly release of his photograph. I think he is a very creative person. Why? In class, students said they'd never seen his tools that he uses to make a living. You've never seen him buying plumbing tools in a hardware store, aside from his liquid drain cleaner, which wasn't invented by him. But he was the first to solve this problem so he must use his own creative approach to solve it. I would tell him that I admire him very much. He's very creative. So I called him in class directly or get a student to call him and he'll tell you he's the Plumbing Master. Ask him when he can come to the school, and we'll have a talk with him. This is a course I have held recently on socially engaged art in cooperation with Zurich University of the Arts. How did we design this course? This course... To look at the real face of the community, we borrowed a recycling store. The store next door cuts up materials, throwing away things people have sent in or storing them. What is the value of storage or disposal for this recycling store? Everything that is stored was sent in from the neighbourhood or near the street. We used the things the boss collects to discuss the relationships between objects and the community, understanding the local residents through the likes of street culture and daily life. We even took the students to the recycling yard by truck and there a student found a piece of paper about what constitutes an ideal community written by a 13 year-old child in the 1960s. How did the students respond to this little essay left over from someone from decades ago? In demonstration, one student made this piece reflecting on the so-called 'ideal community'. It is important to respond. But the most important thing when doing a community piece is, the biggest discussion is whether we have this need.

Socially engaged art could just be a course organised around what the teacher personally wants. It's possible that the students may feel after the class is complete that there was no need for a teacher. That is the case in socially engaged art, but it is a process of mutual respect.

Let me say something off-topic about Shirley. When I graduated from CalArts happened to be right when Shirley started teaching there. My understanding about CalArts, before I got to know it, is that all the technical courses like painting and sculpture require the students to spend all day studying for the first three weeks. What's the purpose of the remaining courses? The rest are group discussions. We could spend six hours discussing in one lesson. Thirteen students take turns showcasing their work and discussing it with one another. This is the process of critiquing art And that's where I'll end this, thank you.

[Audience applause]

DORIS WONG WAI YIN: [Cantonese] Hello, everyone, I'm Doris. This short presentation will be based on the sketching course from the Faculty of Art at Chinese University of Hong Kong. Why talk about this course? This course... Because it hasn't been changed in decades. It's been part of Hong Kong art education since it started. I think both Shirley and Phoebe probably have taken this course as well and the content was exactly the same. It is the first course for first year's at the Faculty of Art of Chinese University of Hong Kong, one of those 11 courses. Frighteningly, I've been teaching this course for 10 years. This question already came up in my first year because at the time it was only a few years since I had taken the course myself. I had only graduated 4 years earlier And so when I was teaching, the first question I asked myself was if art can actually be taught. On the next slides we see these questions. In my 10-year teaching career.

I have tried 'yes' and 'no', trying to find an answer for myself. Actually, though, it might not even be able to be found since the answer changes every year. I remember when I had just started teaching. I asked a teacher, Mr Lui Chun Kwong, who had just retired by that time if he thought art could be taught. Of course he led me down the garden path for a while but in the end I realised what his answer was. He believes that art can be taught but no one knows how to teach it, not even him. Even him, with over a decade of experience teaching. In the end he told me the point is that you need to care about the students and teach them with that attitude. When the students need you to teach something, they'll bring it up. Or if they don't want you to explain, you'll know it's time to stop. The hard part about teaching art is not knowing when it's the right time to teach some things, when it's the right time to talk more or approach the students. That is the first question I asked myself.

And the second question is 'Do they want to be an artist?' The 'they' is those students. This question is really thorny to me Because in my point of view, choosing to study art means wanting to be an artist. One year I did a special experiment. As soon as they sat down, I treated them like artists, like they already knew everything and came to class to show their potential and talent. The students that year were particularly outstanding. It was like they really took it to heart.

Each one of them was like an artist. So this is... Of course I knew very well, like Mr Lui said when I talked with him, if one of those 25 students can become an artist, it's time to crack the champagne for a round of applause.

In the process of teaching, I still approached it like every one of them was going to go into artistic creation after graduation. All I needed to do was give them some preparation so that they could handle later creative work and that's what I needed to teach.

The third question is do you 'Respect their understanding in Art?' This one is related to 'un-learning' and when I first started teaching, my teaching was painful. Especially when I was a bit younger, I felt like my students were stupid, that kind of thing. I also felt that they shouldn't... I don't know if everyone is familiar with the art examination system in Hong Kong, how much students have to study, how much they need to use pieces to discuss social issues, like global warming sort of things. They brought a whole set of ideas to the art department and spent whole days painting all about the problems of the crowded city or how people don't take action about issues they care about and so on. In the class on the basics of sketching, the students felt like they needed to do sketching the way Jack and Rose did in the film Titanic, but I really wanted to tell them that doing something different is fine too, like in the 15th century they used viewfinders; in the 17th, lightrooms and darkrooms, or... During the Bauhaus period, their drawing style was different too. You really want to tell them there are so many possibilities but they still just want to do the Titanic Jack and Rose way.

So should you respect this understanding the students have? Now, I am very respectful. They might have spent all of their primary and secondary school time building up this Titanic-based method of drawing. Just immediately shooting that down might not necessarily be a good thing. Maybe they could develop some other styles building off their past decade-plus of training. So now I... Although deep down you might think the students shouldn't have this kind of understanding of art, you need to try and build on their knowledge to explore other possibilities.

Another question is '13 lessons to learn about XX?' This is the structure of courses at CUHK. '13 lessons to learn about Sketching', '13 lessons to learn about Sculpture', '13 lessons to learn about Sculpture II'. The courses move rapidly. I use a... For example, for my own exhibition. I had about 13 weeks preparation time too. Sometimes when you participate in a group exhibition, you will be notified two and a half months ahead of time to create some works that cater to the current market or something dealing with gender. Similarly, I will use this method, hoping that students will be able to make a sketch that they find satisfactory and know how to get to work after 13 lessons.

As Shirley just mentioned, everyone is different and 20 students will need 20 teaching methods. This kind of approach to teaching is quite exhausting and it would be easier to go teach egg painting at the Federation of Trade Unions.

Another question is are you 'Depend only on yourself with art?' This is actually... Everyone knows, including students. Sometimes when they are looking for a teacher, they just look for someone to talk to and get approval from. Ultimately everything depends on them and they believe they can handle everything themselves. Is 'Teachings are only there to be overthrown?' This is a classic line students frequently try in my classes. I frequently feel like no matter what a teacher says, students won't listen and will just take up an oppositional action. So I think the role of a teacher is to be disrupted by the students. Our pedagogical approaches are just there to give them hints. If an artist's work is already outdated, how should it be updated?

This person is... When preparing for this discussion, I happened to see a post by an actress on Facebook that said 'If I haven't asked for your opinion, you don't need to speak up. I'm not saying that just because you're a teacher, you absolutely need to give students your opinion.' I think this is right and a lot of the time I don't know what I'm doing. Especially when students are drawing, you'll think back to being in sketching class yourself, how you don't like it when teacher coming up to give you advice. 'Make this bit a bit whiter.' 'Make that bit a bit darker.' 'Give me a break', you'll think. You know, you'll start thinking that the role of the teacher is just that.

The next step is 'What to do during art critique', which is CUHK-speak for turning in and discussing homework. Back when I was at university, it was crazy, drinking and smoking with Professor Lui, throwing up all over the floor of the studio, but it's not like that these days. How do we criticise the drawings now? Now the students turn in their work and express their ideas. They'll talk about the difficulties they faced in the process it's quite different now than it was back then. It was all very emotional back then. Now they're very good at expressing themselves to the point that sometimes I kind of want them to stop. There are some students who don't do the expressing part at all. In the end, it's just me alone in the classroom talking to myself. So criticising the drawings is difficult and sometimes I feel like it's not good as a teacher to say this, but some of the works just leave you feeling nothing, you can't even tell if they're good, bad or just mediocre. When there's no feeling, how are you supposed to criticise?

Now I try to find places the students can improve but when paintings really get criticised, it can be very easy [for both teacher and students] to lose it. Even when it's between students, the student being criticised can really go out of control.

I am overtime. This last slide I personally think I am more like the first artist friend to my students, rather than a teacher. They'll come to ask questions when they encounter problems. For example, they will ask about... if someone wants to buy their work in the graduation exhibition, how should they price it or in what form should they sell it? Am I selling a bag of rubbish to other people? Things like that. Or perhaps... they'll always be at a low emotionally during each exhibition. We'll have these sorts of conversations. And I will taunt them like 'You don't need your boyfriend//to pamper you every exhibition.' 'How could you be an artist that way?' If the first one by their side is their artist friend, then gradually they'll get to know how they should go create. And that's as far as I'll share for now. Thank you.

[Audience applause]

PHOEBE MAN CHING YING: [Cantonese] Hello everyone, I'm Phoebe. People say that those artists who can't make a living are the ones who go teach. Make a living by selling their art. Personally I consider teaching like creative work and creative work like teaching. My main focus is socially engaged art and most of my works are related to social issues. Generally, they're conceptual and created under particular conditions that is, rule-based. I generally want the audience or students to have a little more room to imagine, starting with an open-ended question. I can't stand didactic art. Usually I'll create scenarios or platforms for discussion, getting the audience involved and the results are usually unpredictable.

In the beginning, I want to start with some interesting or humorous things. Generally themes around the topic of food and drink are more effective. Some of my works was eating some beautiful cakes that were hard to swallow or Love China Love Hong Kong Thick Toasts with some dots and hearts that everyone could draw to start with.

The approach to getting the audience to participate is always as simple as possible, like these colouring exercises. The whole process is to share some of the power with the audience. This is democratic participation where differing opinions can all be expressed in the piece. The detailed arguments of philosopher Jacques Rancière can serve as reference, with The Distribution of the Sensible presenting more detailed discourse. I enjoy creating this kind of piece and in the process one can learn from the audience. This is a convective flow of knowledge. If I have questions, the audience can answer them. The purpose is generally to draw everyone's attention to certain issues to question the common wisdom and from there, get the audience, students, or myself to find the ideas that are true to them and pursue what is righteous in society.

We are generally faced with three types of audience according to educator Pablo Helguera. They are voluntary, non-voluntary and involuntary. The first type, like volunteers and docents, participate of their own volition. Because socially interventional art is based primarily on personal beliefs. This kind of audience member is already familiar with the issues and tends to comprise a more high-quality or readily interactive audience, who have something to bring to the table. In training docents, one can touch on difficult issues like sexual violence or comfort women, we will discuss how we should respond if people come to cause trouble, if the right-wing people come to cause trouble or if an audience member should start sexually harassing a docent while discussing sexual violence. We engage in deeper-level discussions with this kind of audience and they take part in a more engaged way. For example, this exhibition near the venue there is some engineering work going on so the audience is smaller and the docent took part as the audiences and interact with the artwork more proactively.

The second type is the non-voluntary. Some students don't know they are lucky or unlucky to get a teacher like me. When they come to class, they may not be familiar with the issues so how can I successfully get them into discussion and to create artworks within three hours? It's quite challenging. Generally I will use data, stories from other people or of my own some official statements, or some controversial slanted reasoning to pique their interest. Take the issue of comfort women for example. I will use the 'attack number one' condoms and 'comfort tickets' of the time as a way to start the discussion, diving them to do derivative work. I also ask, hypothetically, if students were Japanese soldiers, would they use these 'comfort tickets'? They often have varying opinions, for example some say they would take the comfort women and leave, others would dance with them or demonstrate how this is a kind of violence. Some students disagree, like Doris just said, they'll present some opposing viewpoints to go against the teacher. Some students say they would have to follow orders and because they're a kind of benefit. They would absolutely make use of these sexual services. One student even put an actual condom in one of the replica 'attack number one' package. I have no idea why he just happened to have a condom on him. There were some Korean girls in the class that day who were very angry about that and yelled at him. I felt that was a good time to discuss the idea of human weakness or Hannah Arendt's theory about the 'banality of evil'. We should discuss these kind of theories.

The third kind of audience is the involuntary, those who just happen upon the exhibition. How should we start discussions with them or get them participating in the work? Usually, I will use short guided tours. In the past I've tried doing 30 or 40 tour groups in a day. Generally, after the tour is done, the audience will take part and get involved in heart-to-heart exchanges with you. At first I was worried that they might leave some malicious words when participating, but once you approached it sincerely, they will be rationally, constructively, leave you comments and ideas and won't respond with ill will.

For example, this piece of mine is called You Captured My Chariot asks the audience what they've given up to buy a brick (flat)? Their answers included 'liberty', 'life', 'self'. One said 'wouldn't be able to buy a flat even selling uteruses'. Many had different opinions like that 'of course have to buy one' and 'I won't think of buying, I'll live with mum', and someone said 'you useless kids, have you ever actually worked a day in your lives?' A lot of different opinions. When all different opinions are brought together, some audience members said to me that as these bricks kept accumulating, they were creating a lot of different opinions. Sadly, when everyone has to give up a lot to buy a flat, it creates a lot of pressure to reflect on why we used to think... Is it really important to do so, and whether there are any other options.

Lastly, in this kind of artwork, the artist is but a guide and the piece is the experience of the audience. The results of the final work are actually not that important. These are the keywords I have summarised in this presentation. My presentation ends here. Thank you.

[Audience clapping]

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] In listening to what they have shared, everyone must feel there are many similarities. When we talk about art education, overall we focus on two different levels. One is the level of people: students, or the audience; the second is the system, in different settings and different places, different schools have different traditions, right? And also different requirements. They all require syllabi and assessment criteria, but how do you implement those in a flexible, open way? As Shirley said... When I began I asked the question of what 'good' is. I would wager that all four here agree that the ultimate goal is for students or audience members in the process of an exchange of knowledge to find their own path Momo has also shared how she creates scenes, how it's about finding the reality, finding the most authentic thing in that moment and finding some things that are invisible, hidden inside it and in that process the scene was already there. The pedagogical approaches and ideas of our four artists aren't about the oft-mentioned programmatic learning, but rather as Phoebe mentioned, broadening educational ideas, creating a setting, and then engaging in discussion within it. Different schools use various creative and open approaches in teaching in practical terms you can cope with the needs of the system while creating novel and interesting perspectives and pieces among the students. However, in the process of teaching have you ever encountered students who simply do not understand what they're doing?

Phoebe mentioned that students will have a variety of different response. Will some of them not understand what's happening or start feeling uneasy? Could you share with us about how to deal with that? I think we could understand students' situations better through some examples.

SHIRLEY TSE: [Cantonese] Absolutely, just now a few brought up how students love fighting back or challenging teachers, not listening to teachers' opinions. I just mentioned that at my school it's a bit freer and more open, almost like the teachers don't have to do anything, but they'll still fight back, but it's a contrarian type of fighting back. In fact, the students are fortunate to have their independent studios in their first year, and when I'm teaching the fundamental courses. I'll tell them it's fine if you go work in your studios because our aim isn't to instruct students. Some of them will push back and say they are free to do anything but they want the teacher's guidance and assignments, or else they'll get anxious. As you said, they'll get anxious and won't know where to start, and so they need the teacher to give them homework which creates an interesting phenomenon.

In these situations I'll have a long talk with them. Tell them I don't want to just give homework for the sake of it, that I really want to find out what direction they want to develop in. An interesting example.

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] Students actually asking to be given homework.

SHIRLEY TSE: [Cantonese] Yes, to give them...This has come up a lot over the past decade or so. More and more students these days don't know how to find their own way and need someone else to take them by the hand and lead them along. Momo, could we go back to something you mentioned about your time at CalArts? You said students would discuss for as long as 6 hours at the time did you have any questions about that?

LEUNG MEE PING: [Cantonese] No

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] How did you feel?

LEUNG MEE PING: [Cantonese] I just wondered why it needed to be so long, 6 hours? But I assume every teacher has an approach. Looking back, Michael Asher's method was guiding us, through the parts our predecessors never thought about and this is what I learned in my Master's programme. In my personal experience, I don't know if it's been successful.

First off, never mind the students, I myself am always afraid. What does this homework actually require? What if there's no homework? Back in the early days, when I was taking sketching lessons at École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, I only saw my teacher twice in three months. There was no lamps when we were sketching, only the model standing in front of us. The light would change from morning to night and you'd have to come up with a way to deal with that but he wouldn't tell you how to draw. At the time I thought, oh great. what kind of school is this? The teacher's so lazy, only his assistant comes see us from time to time. No one tells us what we're supposed to do. We thought, well, we got into a prestigious school, so of course we have to stick it out. As you stick it out, you realize that three months have gone by and when the professor comes back to see you, we're rolling out newspaper after newspaper. We used rolls of newspaper. In the process I realized that like putting together building blocks like the drawing style in Titanic, measuring this, measuring that. I'd actually drawn some things. Then he explained that there was no need to train us to use a certain angle or look with one eye at things when we already had two eyes. What he wanted to uncover in those 3 months was our direction and sensitivities.

Observation is important. I remember doing my final piece. I felt like the model was sick. I could tell not from his expression, but from his behaviour and skin colour. When the class finished, he went straight off to see a doctor and confirmed he had AIDS. How do you... I'm not a doctor, I'm just observant. I believe that this is one approach, an approach of inaction. Beyond self-observation, the object of one's observation is not just a tool. You can see the changes. In those 3 months, from 9 in the morning to 6 at night going home when it got dark because without light, what can you draw? Throughout the process it was like this and this experience has helped me when working with students, especially with their graduation pieces, which take a longer time. And if they're just following a teacher, that's not an education system or a curriculum, that's an apprenticeship system. They're afraid of not knowing how to classify themselves of not knowing what they're doing. I can just tell the students that I've been there. Just do it, then when you're almost at graduation, you'll be able to make a piece without any guidance. When time's pressing, you'll find that under this presumption, you'll finally be able to have a real exchange with the students.

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] Doris, have you had this experience?

DORIS WONG WAI YIN: [Cantonese] In the 4 hours of my basic sketching class, I'll set out a lot of work for them to get done. That way, when they start class, they won't feel quite so at a loss as to what to do. Once they have the paper and pen at hand, they can do sketching and won't be perplexed. Actually I'll be more perplexed, they won't feel so perplexed. When it finally comes time to criticise the drawings, then they'll be more perplexed.

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] Have you told them directly that there's no feeling?

DORIS WONG WAI YIN: [Cantonese] I guess they can tell from my facial expression. For a few years I pretended to be a good person and tried to praise them, because once a few students have said they'll remember me, even when they're dead. At the end of the semester, that I've been too harsh and my requirements were too high, some have tried to come crying to me. They'll compare me with Professor Kurt Chan who always looks for strengths to praise, and so for a few years I tried to pretend to be nice. I think I'm probably not much good at pretending or maybe it was just boring, so now I'm very harsh, extremely critical.

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] Phoebe, workshops were important in your example, were the participants all students at the school?

PHOEBE MAN CHING YING: [Cantonese] To answer your question, the problem I had was that my classes were about 20 or 30 people. A lot of them just couldn't express whether they understood. But I really wanted to know so I would pass the microphone around and get each person to say something. They quickly expressed what was on their minds. Some people always have something to say, they will tell they don't understand when they have nothing to say at the time. I'm kind of a lazy teacher. I'll repeat bits the students don't understand, ask them again for their opinions and use those to get everyone discussing.

LEUNG MEE PING: [Cantonese] I want to add to what she said. Speaking of basic sketching classes, I've also taught one. At the beginning , some students tend to think realism is extremely important. However, when I'm teaching them, I tell them they just need to draw what I put in front of them, whether or not it's realistic is another thing entirely. If they want me to give them some things to draw, I'll give them some black beans. Tell them to draw black beans but with a 6H pencil. If they're drawing glasses, I'll give them a 6B pencil They have to find a way by their own. In the end, the paper is all busted up and they've got no way to finish. But during those 3 months, they might understand something about the weight of a stroke about adjusting yourself to the tools at hand and then they'll already have the skills, they need to get the realism they want.

CLARA CHEUNG: Shirley

SHIRLEY TSE: [Cantonese] If I could respond for a moment, when you said you discussed for six long hours, I was reminded of one of Doris' slides. You don't need to focus on genius now just get good at expressing yourself. This is a common thing to hear, especially in...contemporary art.

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] In contemporary art.

SHIRLEY TSE: [Cantonese] Like people feel like you can replace pieces with language. Personally I don't much like talking either. I don't much like talking actually, but I've found there was a kind of standard in pre-20th-century art. There was a kind of, how do you say in Chinese, master narrative, that the things people believed in were all the same, and the artists themselves didn't need to speak on the art's behalf because there was that standard. But since the 20th century that master narrative has disappeared, and artists need to take more responsibility, need to communicate their personal aesthetic values. So you need to spend more time on language, but it can't replace the piece. Whether it's an object or an activity, you really need to find a communicative approach to express its values and meaning. That's what I wanted to talk about.

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] Additionally, I would like to know when university starts and you're taking on students, how do you seek out students with an understanding of your courses and how do you distinguish them? Can you? Is there a standard for taking them on? Do you try and see if things smell right through conversation? See if you can get along?

As Phoebe mentioned earlier, there are different audiences for activities. What do their different levels of participation bring to the school? School is a framework, a space for mutual exchange. Or to put it another way, what king of people would you like to exchange knowledge with?

PHOEBE MAN CHING YING: [Cantonese] When taking on students, sometimes some students will have high grade, but I'll have reservations about them. Because they're good at handling the examination system, so their art class grades were high, but I'll have reservations. I'll pay more attention to the ones who are a bit odd who have their own ideas, I'll pay more attention to those.

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] Do teachers at CalArts interview students together?

SHIRLEY TSE: [Cantonese] CalArts isn't like CityU, CUHK,or what is it...

PHOEBE MAN CHING YING: [Cantonese] BU

SHIRLEY TSE: [Cantonese] BU, sorry. The situation may not be the same because we're an art school and not a university, so we don't focus as much on academic requirements. When taking on students, what's most important is looking at their portfolios and personal statements. Like, when you test into a university in the States, there's a public exam, the SATs. My department already argues SAT scores aren't important but it depends on what they put in their portfolios. A lot of the time secondary school students will bring out homework from school, we'll generally choose students, who put some of their own work in though.If the portfolio is obviously just full of homework, we're less likely to choose them.

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] What about at the Chinese University and Baptist University? Can you tell us about that?

DORIS WONG WAI YIN: [Cantonese] I haven't been part of the admissions process there since my position is a bit lower. But I do know that the CUHK Department of Fine Arts is a department within the university and their grade requirements are quite high, so I think the Department of Fine Arts' students likely got good grades. Honestly I don't particularly care about the admissions situation. As long as the students that get in feel like they fit in, then it's fine. If I were involved in admissions, I would only worry about whether another Hitler might show up, so I don't really care what kind of students they accept

LEUNG MEE PING: [Cantonese] As far as my personal experience with the [Baptist University] Academy of Visual Arts, it's not that we don't pay attention to grades from public exams, it's more that we have a special system. Before the exam results have come out, any students in Hong Kong who has completed sixth form can submit a portfolio. We'll look at the digital version first and then choose a few students to interview. We expend a relatively high amount of time and effort. I'm very grateful to my colleagues and the work that's being done now to put this into action. Students that get into school on the back of good grades will of course get interviews, but those whose grades aren't up to scratch, I'll always find out the reasons or circumstances behind that. There is also a chance that before the interview, they can submit the work as additional work and everyone will deal with it as long as they come. Then after they've all submitted, about 1,000 of them, we'll start screening them, the number we select is pretty huge, and we interview the applicants as much as we can. But before the exam rankings are released, when we do the interviews, we'll already have some we like. What do I mean by that? It's a non-formulaic thing.

Even if their DSE scores are impressive, that's just a collection of work systematically derived. A lot of students in the same classes will use the same themes in their applications, but it's about whether they've done their own work, whether they have their own visual journal that can express their ordinary concerns and curiosities. I don't need students who've got excellent technique that can be trained after they get in with the 6B, 6H training. At that point I'm looking at their potential and their ability to express themselves. Some students are very shy and don't talk much but that doesn't mean they don't have the ability to express themselves. It might just be that they use a different method like visual cues. Even if they're not linguistically outstanding, when we find a student we like, the other teachers and I will give them 1,000 points 1,000 might seem a long way from 100, but it's not as ridiculous as it sounds. It's just a sudden jump. It just makes sure that once the exam results come out, they're already at the top of the list. The portfolio and the live practice just account for about 30%.

At least I have those for references Then we look at their DSE scores. Some students get scores as high as 30 or more, some only get 15, 16 scores. How do we choose? If one's got 1,000, which means we like him and will be more accommodating As long as they meet the minimum requirements for admission, they'll be accepted. Empirically speaking, after all this time taking on students, none of those 1,000-pointers has ever let us down.

So in our system, overall we choose for ourselves. It's not that we don't care about the public exam grades. We care, it's just that we weight them relatively.

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] I really appreciate the artists here... Like CalArts, and what Phoebe said...[indistinct] And Chinese University values the scores. I'm trying to say I appreciate you thinking outside the box to seek out art students who are worthy of taking the long journey with you. I would like to ask one final question before we see if the audience has any for you. Going back to the teaching of the students, could you give an example of how you don't teach to a set formula? So how do you... I get the impression that in the classroom you will first create some situations, then lead the students or participants through that. Could you give a few examples or tell us about some of your more impactful experiences? Any students who offered special... who had special output in certain situations,that are memorable to you?

I would like to ask Doris first. I remember you said before that you had some particularly special homework assignments for your sketching class, like playing with sketching to a level of extreme realism

[Indistinct]

How did that start?

DORIS WONG WAI YIN: [Cantonese] How did that start? Sometimes... I have encountered one student who seemed like he was a master reborn who insisted on copying pictures. He believed that's the way going on to his position as a master. I would give him all kinds of examples from great masters, printing them out and getting him to copy them, but with the paintings in reverse. Somehow that was more effective than straight copying. He did it better when he copy the paintings in reverse. Yes. I'll often try using this approach to address habits I don't like. Artistic creation today is very rush. If I have to wait for you to just copy images like this, I don't know how long I'll have to wait. If you've only made it to Da Vinci and the Renaissance, I don't know how much longer I'll have to wait until you catch up. You know? I'm afraid I don't have centuries to wait. So sometimes I'll seek out activities to help them grow faster. [laughter] but sometimes some activities aren't feasible. Like the negative space drawing, the student would just turn in a picture that's a zebra crossing a zebra crossing.

[laughter]

I taught it a long time but they still didn't get negative space drawing. You know? But the picture was very well done and you could still tell they had potential. After a few weeks, I think if a person's misunderstanding of the world is this deep, I think he could also be a good artist, so I'll let him be.

[laughter]

Even if it's a zebra crossing a zebra crossing, I'll let him be.

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] Thank you for sharing. Anyone would like to respond?

LEUNG MEE PING: [Cantonese] I've had a lot [of interesting experiences], but right now...

SHIRLEY TSE: [Cantonese] A lot of that

LEUNG MEE PING: [Cantonese] I can't bring to mind right now. You asked what's different in terms of teaching. From time to time students will do things that really make our jaws drop, and then I'll explain to them what it is I appreciate about it. They won't get it. They'll turn something in, like you said with the zebras, black and white and black and white, and the black and white things just are black and white and to me it's wonderful, but they just totally don't get it. But you know that as long as they have that potential, that's enough. I remember there was one student who came for an interview and he had drawn plaster statues, page after page of them, and by the time I got to the 20th page, I just felt terrible for him. Why was everything a plaster statue? Then at the end I saw a statue and realised it wasn't one they'd bought at a stationery store, it was one that looked just like him. He said he made it, and I was a bit shocked. Because he just knew how to draw plaster statues and so he'd taken this mum's cosmetic and did himself a makeup like a statues, and then he could do a sketch of himself. You know? I was gobsmacked but my colleague said he wasn't very creative and wouldn't accept him.

But I said that he was very creative actually.

[laughter]

He had the ability to solve problems in his own way. I was very happy then because the first 19 pages were just very ordinary sketches. His skill wasn't even very good. But then there's a plaster statue that's not some great man, and I look carefully and realize that was him. Because every interview is basically the same, that actually it's that student, you'll remember among others. In the end we did accept him. He never let us down and right through to graduation he was still showing that independent creativity and problem-solving skill, didn't matter if it was design or art.

And also...I remember interviewing students in the mainland. Let me tell you about this too. It's quite funny. So the mainland students brought their portfolios. One was showing traditional Chinese paintings on their mobile phone and some would also show works their mums had done, said their mum belongs to this or that society.

[laughter]

It was quite amazing. I remember before the interviews, a lot of the parents would be more nervous than their kids. They'd come to see who the teacher was. They'd try to spot the teacher at the door of the hotel. I don't look much like a teacher since unless I'm going to a meeting, I don't usually wear shoes. I wear flip-flops more often, even in Beijing. So I don't look like a teacher and they had no intention of seeing me.

But in the end, they always wanted to ask for our opinions, what students should bring to interviews and I would always say don't bring your mother's things and I'd say off-handedly a cake would be fine. And the next day there would actually be someone who brought a cake.

[laughter]

But it doesn't matter when they really listened to their mother. But that cake, what was in the cake? How do you look at that cake?

Do they expect we'd eat? They didn't take those things into the account.

We could only look at how they handle things and explain things from the moment they're brought in. This is a problem we commonly faced.

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] Shirley got plenty experiences. Could you choose one to share?

SHIRLEY TSE: [Cantonese] I've got many experiences. Speaking of sketching reminds me of one... not my class, a colleague's class. CalArts doesn't have still life sketching classes, but I remember one year a visiting professor came and said 'Even though you don't have still life sketching, why don't we set up a bunch of objects for the students to sketch?'

A lot of the students thought it was just one class. So of course a few didn't follow the rules. One male student took off his pants and did a nude self-portrait and the visiting professor was so shocked. She almost reported the guy for sexual harassment. The other teachers all told her that, that's what the school's culture is like and none of us personally felt that was sexual harassment.

PHOEBE MAN CHING YING: [Cantonese] A friend once told me that... Because this is actually... In Hong Kong art examinations, they're responsible for coming up with topics and need confidentiality so I won't say who, I'll just say it was a friend. My friend... This is an official exam and my friend was thinking about what topics to put in. How about... Actually it was a topic about drawing, one had to be about realism and another about imagination surrealism, that kind of thing and yet another about abstract art. They were thinking about the realism one, and since it's a government exam, why not get them to do something about demonstrations, see if they can get it passed. Who'd have thought in these circumstances that'd get passed but they said a 'demonstration' could also be a kind of celebration, like celebrating a football team's win so that's how they put out a topic about demonstrations.

Then the second one was students in Hong Kong exams will memorise pictures. Do a picture ahead of time, so they'll be very familiar with it. Then they'll look at the topic, like if they've memorised a nature painting, they'll look for which topic fits best and add whatever they need to make it work. So they like to memorize paintings beforehand. I thought... Not me, my friend. My friend thought, since you like memorizing paintings so much, then how about for the surrealism topic we give you a picture, then you... My friend used a picture of Hong Kong siu mei as the topic. It's never been done before. That's just been in written questions before. So for this topic they prepared a photograph for them. and would see how they surrealized the siu mei. Some of them painted the siu mei dancing or turned it around and made siu mei people

[laughter]

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] Very impressive and very radical

PHOEBE MAN CHING YING: [Cantonese] They don't let him set the questions again

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] Now I would like to invite the audience to talk with us. Does anyone have any particular questions they would like to ask our speakers here? How they bring their practices into teaching?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: [Cantonese] Thank you all for sharing. I would like to ask Doris, you just mentioned you have a few students. you would give 1,0 points to, I...

DORIS WONG WAI YIN: [Cantonese] It was her.

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese]: Momo.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: [Cantonese] Excuse me, I messed that up. What I would like to know is roughly how many of those 1,000-pointers are there in a year?

LEUNG MEE PING: [Cantonese] Because we interview students as a pair, it's split up over the course of a few days. I have the sense that it's about six or seven or more a year on average.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: [Cantonese] Given this education system, how would you push for this approach to increase the quota from six to seven,

to take more students with 1,000 points?

LEUNG MEE PING: [Cantonese] If they didn't get the 1,000 points, then all the ones at the top of the rankings would still be the ones there on the basis of their DSE scores. They just need to meet the minimum requirements but we don't have any particular rules saying, we need to choose specific number each day. The two of us might not agree with one another's choices and in meetings we'll look at the overall picture, the DSE information and their work. Sometimes we'll find that in their portfolio... In the interview process, there's a worksheet topic. Someone only draw one line and we won't measure to see if the line is straight, but they need to write a statement for the line; based on the question, a few simple things, and from that we can judge their English ability. The second thing is how they draw the line. So sometimes we'll choose from that line. We'll choose a line that has a point. You talked about quota, but we don't have any limitations in number and we don't discuss how many, but on average it's six or seven. We're quite insistent on this.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: [Cantonese] Thank you everyone for your interesting comments. I have a small question. A few of you just mentioned that you basically all teach adults or tertiary students, I want to see... Because art has its own body of knowledge, it also has historical context and a developmental process. If you were to teach primary or secondary school students, how would you go about teaching children? Thank you.

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] Doris, maybe you go first. How do you play with your son now?

[laughter]

DORIS WONG WAI YIN: [Cantonese] I haven't deliberately taught my son anything. It's all up to him. But I have indeed taught primary and secondary school students. When I was studying art at CUHK, it was quite popular to go teach children's pottery classes. Teaching elementary school students, I think you need to give them activities that will let them really have fun. Most of my family is involved in art, my aunt teaches art at primary school.

They will use famous paintings from art history, like doing something based on The Starry Night. I think it's actually better for kids to play on their own terms, that's always better than having rules set out. Personally I think, especially at the primary school stage, no matter what you ask them to do, children subconsciously want your approval so I think at that stage, you don't need to give them too much instruction. I've taught at secondary school. Since they all need to prepare for exams, they're very focused on what the Education Bureau or Examinations and Assessment Authority want from them. The school I was teaching at the time was a semi-international school. They were seriously out of control but out of that loss of control was born creativity. Sometimes you have to judge for yourself and education isn't easy. Sometimes the principal wants students to do well in exams and it can be hard for us to get the most out of the students.

SHIRLEY TSE: [Cantonese] First of all, I don't have much experience teaching below university level and actually what I have done isn't at primary or secondary schools, but in community centres after school.

I've taught in community centres and those were more technical For example, they will be taught how to cast moulds and at the technical level. I did my best to let them freely explore. But the most important thing I want to say is that under the American teaching system, I'm actually not qualified to teach below university. To teach what they call K1- students, you need to have studied pedagogical theory and child psychology, only with a degree like that can you teach them. I actually haven't studied these. I just have an MFA degree. In the USA, that's considered... Because we don't have DFAs. It's the minimum requirement of degree that can teach at university in US but I'm not qualified to teach students below university. To flip it around, think about why teaching university doesn't need an understanding of child psychology or pedagogical theory.

That's because the assumption is that that it's more peer-to-peer exchange than top-down teaching.

PHOEBE MAN CHING YING: [Cantonese] I don't have much experience, teaching primary or secondary schools. Actually, I have no relevant experience. But I've tried, when I open up my studio, letting anyone come into the studio in Fo Tan Some children and families would come.

After the #metoo campaign started, I opened my studio and did some work on sexual violence, some colouring exercises that helped people empathise with the victims. What would you do in the role of bystander or victim? There were some colouring pictures. That were not really... And there were families who came to visit. Once a family came in and I said my works were related to #metoo, they came in and found out that they'd come to the wrong place. The kid was probably in primary school. I said it'd be okay. The kid was probably about six or seven years old, who really wanted to draw, because he saw markers and colouring paper on the table. I said they could all take part together. I immediately asked the child 'When you're at school, have you seen other kids being bullied? If you saw a classmate getting bullied,

how would you feel?'

He said he'd feel happy and his mother's expression just changed immediately and then she discussed that with her kid. Later, I saw his colouring paper and it had changed, saying if he was a bystander 'I will be sad.' I've tried this kind of thing.

DORIS WONG WAI YIN: [Cantonese] I would like to add something maybe since there are a lot of teachers present. I often feel like secondary school students moving up to major in art find it difficult I think they're used to the exam-based model and sometimes I worry that they aren't able to relax. Sometimes we misunderstand the exam model and think that's the only way to achieve excellence. I didn't think too much about exams at the time. I just did what I liked but I still got good grades in the exams. Exams might also not be how teachers or I think.

LEUNG MEE PING: [Cantonese] The primary/secondary and university are like we were just discussing, systemically different, but to me, I don't... I've been a substitute teacher and taught workshops at art centres and in the process, I've taken the things I've learned, especially on the creative side, reduced the materials side down to basically zero, even just one hand. I believe that whether it's primary, secondary, or university, they'll all have a particular reaction. We basically had no materials. We've just used our hands to do, shadow puppets, play marbles, play rock-paper-scissors. Your body, your hands are a kind of material The more materials you give them, the more you buy from stationery stores or art stores, the harder it gets to really exercise creativity. This is something a lot of women have learned. They just need $1 and they can make a week's worth of meals they need to change how they spend money and so they can find all kinds of solutions for problems. At the same time, that highlights some problems that can't be solved and highlights that they haven't thought of how to solve those problems. So I often say that if an infant or child can get their face dirty after eating and can play around for 2 hours, they'll definitely find something that they find interesting. Just that we don't understand. Primary and secondary school students are similar and when they get to university, they just think about finding solutions for problems using the minimum of materials. Now if they don't have computers, they'll call or WhatsApp their friends. If they don't have that, they'll meet in person.

It's that simple, getting back to basics. I think this is feasible.You give them experience but on the materials side you get back to the simplest, get back to a space of scarcity, and their creativity will naturally start to flow. Personally I feel like there are a lot of facilities in Hong Kong. The government has given us a lot but in terms of creative education, honestly, the creativity level is really low, because we're too well-off. We need to return to some of the poorest places I've seen, the children in places like the Philippines or Yangon, they can design anything, they can do anything with just their own two hands and it was inspiring. How can they be so happy? If there is a lack of basics like that, a lack of the ability to create freely, instead, they use a lot of materials to solve things, and if they don't have them, they can't do it. After getting to college, or later when doing their own creative work, they already have such a big box limiting themselves, and so I comparatively use a method, like if you want to draw realistically, there's no right or wrong, and like you said, turn things around. Use a 6B or 6H to train yourself I'll use a method like that Some students from the art centre from before, some drew big pictures, some drew small ones of the lessons I wanted to do I had to do only one, which was teaching those ones who drew small how to draw big, and the ones who drew big how to shrink things down. When you're used to drawing small pictures, when drawing a large body, the physical strength involved and the things you face are different. Your methods have to change subtly and imperceptibly. At first it was very painful and the drawings were bigger than their body. There were some really tiny kids Those who were used to drawing big pictures, I gave them 1 inch by 1 inch canvases, where one stroke could basically fill the canvas. You need to completely change your habits and then they'll find a way to create content. Any other questions?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: [Cantonese] Thank you very much for what you've shared. I would like to follow up on the question just asked. I don't know how many of you are teachers but I'm sure you've had some unique cases at university that you may not necessarily be able to find at CalArts. There are some people you need to teach to create but they don't have any intention to become creators or at first they think they are creators but ultimately find out they aren't. Personally I'm an art graduate but I've never become a creator As an educator and an artist, will you start from a different point when you encounter these students?

PHOEBE MAN CHING YING: [Cantonese] Maybe, if you turn it around when I'm teaching students I can refer to statistics. More than 100 students graduate each year. In the end, how many can become artists? Only a few. So from the beginning I don't train them with the expectation that they'll definitely become artists. I just teach them to work, in life, or their future jobs more creatively, to 'think out of the box'. If they can do this after graduation, I'll be satisfied. Like the courses I design are actually very related to daily life. So even if they... Even if they... If they... Let me give you an example. Say I'm teaching curatorial practice in class. I'll get them to visit artists' studios in Fo Tan, to visit the studios of different artists and play the role of curators, choosing a few artists to take part in an exhibition, then come up with a theme and this way they'll be thinking more concretely. I think this is also the case when I'm shopping Of course, there are a lot of areas to observe and not just consume to use some actual situations let them follow along or not, unleashing their personal creativity. I think, it's very important to... I often believe that... If they think that it's important or there's a need to do, they'll be more interested in doing it. I won't start with some more staid artistic arguments. When teaching art, like socially engaged art, I'll put forward to everyone different ways to observe social problems and then if you want to use art methods, how you can go about using them? Are there any another examples? Could other examples apply at the local level? Bringing out the art from the problems around me.

DORIS WONG WAI YIN: [Cantonese] Personally I'll teach with an attitude that they will become artists. For example, I need to be in this mindset to... Maybe in 53 weeks, they'll get a grasp of making a good sketch and if you don't choose to be an artist in the future, you'll still have this ability. I think... Personally I'm afraid of reading the numbers like art school produces losers. I don't think that's the case. Everyone should have a choice. You might have the ability but you don't have to be an artist, so I approach preparing them with that ability with this mindset.

LEUNG MEE PING: [Cantonese] To a large extent I feel like they need to transfer to a different department. That happened, I mean it. We've tried having students transfer in from departments other than our own.

It was by their own decision, not because they did or didn't have the talent. What education can give them... I've become a creator from education, but whether or not education can make you a good or bad artist? That's another thing entirely. All education is like this really, so you have to take the attitude that you can't expect that they'll become artists. If you tell me at the interview that you want to become a designer or an artist, we won't give you bonus points. If you don't want to become an artist, why are you coming for an interview? But if you have some creative element, the homework they turn in can be adjusted to make them more interested. In particular, if you can see visual art with sounds but sound doesn't necessarily have visuals, they could be very open, the main thing is whether or not they like it. We can teach people who have creativity. So maybe they won't become an artist after graduation. Maybe they won't become one of the two or three artists who sell paintings. Maybe we'll have students that become DJs. Ning is a DJ who graduated from our school. He writes his own stories writes creative stories he gives to Winnie Yu. Winnie tells him to write a bit more, he writes a bit more, to write a bit shorter, he writes a bit shorter. Then he goes in and does his work. He had the initiative, he knew that the way he was going was more important. But after he came in, he found he didn't like this mode of expression and wanted to transfer. Actually there'll probably be a couple like him in every department. We've had a couple like that, transferred to other department.

SHIRLEY TSE: [Cantonese] Even though I teach at an art school, my personal requirements aren't demanding that every student become an artist. That's not even really possible. I am an art practitioner.

The reason I like art is that to me, the freedom to pursue ideas with an independent mind is the most important thing. To me, when teaching students, if you can get that across to them, then they can apply that to different professions. On the other hand, even if the proportion of students who graduate from the art school isn't very high, it's not because after graduation they think, this isn't the subject they want to study, or the work they want to do, it's because of the actual environment. In this world, in this time and space, in an environment driven by the economy, being an artist is difficult. So a lot of the time they won't choose to be artists and it's not because they don't want to or think they're not right for it,it's because objectively speaking it's very difficult. You need to train them to think independently and not just accept the established models so readily, so that they can find a way to create their own models.

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] Anyone else have questions for them?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you everyone for sharing. Shirley, you just shared with us something about 'radical pedagogy'. I would like to know a bit more about which subjects are better suited to this approach? Are there any subjects where it might not be suitable to use? Also, when you've finished sharing that, I would also like to ask the other speakers if they feel there are any subjects for which this method might be worth trying within Hong Kong education? Thank you.

SHIRLEY TSE: [Cantonese] What do you mean which subjects? The schools I am teaching at don't really divide things into subjects like painting, sculpture, performance, conceptual art, they're all taught together without a clear dividing line. So-called 'radical pedagogy' can be applied to every subject. For example, Momo has mentioned the approach of having a workshop-based... Oh no, what's that called? Practicum, for two or three weeks early in the semester, that's not generally something that any teacher can teach. It's getting a professional from outside to teach some more practical things. In the first few weeks, they've already been taught, a lot of technical knowledge, so to reduce their anxiety, the worries that they haven't actually learned anything. If they were bombarded with info at the beginning, they'd be very anxious. So later semesters can involve slow discussions where they can slowly find what it is to think freely and observe a thing.

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] I'm interested in asking about this because what you teach at the School of Creative Media, the school Phoebe is teaching at, is about new media Is it easier and more open, more like critical pedagogy because of the diversity of medium?

PHOEBE MAN CHING YING: [Cantonese] I...

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] Is that related?

PHOEBE MAN CHING YING: [Cantonese] Our discipline is focused on art built around computers. So...

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] I know critical theory is included in the compulsory courses of the the School of Creative Media. There's a lot of good left-wing literature and the like in my observation. I've observed that students in the School of Creative Media in recent years, and I don't know if it's related to the course, but they'll get really involved with social issues so I want to know if you've got any observations on this front from among your students in terms of the fusion of critical thinking into their creative work.

PHOEBE MAN CHING YING: [Cantonese] My personal observation is that they're not being taught that by us but rather they're already concerned with social issues by the time they join the school. I think social awareness among students in Hong Kong has grown and of course our subjects teach them how to create and develop their artworks that touch on social issues.

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] Finally, I would like to ask Doris and Momo, how education in recent years has responded to the current moment in society and whether you yourselves have a lot of ideas related to the community like those observed in the students of the School of Creative Media in recent years?

LEUNG MEE PING: [Cantonese] Our students are well in the lead. It's in their nature. Or perhaps when testing into schools, because of Hong Kong art education's unique nature not being professionally-oriented nor being career-oriented. Although they already have these kinds of ideas, they're actually voluntarily looking for odd jobs, like their current model of work isn't. About getting to work at a particular time So they can freely and in line with their own orientation escape the social structure when choosing subjects, they already know the value of their own independence. As a result they have a lot of reactions to society and courses also talk about these topics, for example when talking about performing arts, you can't not talk about issues around the body, gender, race, and so on and they'll put those to use in their own works. I remember we were... There was a chance of being cancelled by the government once back when we were on the Kai Tak campus a decade ago but the students, who would usually turn in their assignments late and sit right at the furthest corners of the class, they had this sense of identity and approach to social identity that we didn't have to teach them. It was inherent to them and they managed to raise over $600,000. To this day we haven't used them.

Going out and selling things and raising fund, that was all them A lot of teachers and outsiders all said how amazing the students of the Baptist University Academy of Visual Arts were and we thought they were amazing too. But I think it's because when they chose this subject, they came into it with potential or their family background gave them a different way of valuing society. So they may not be very critical when they've started with us but at the most you could say they're more independently minded. Although we teach art history, within art history you have a lot of examples of overturning the previous order that, then go on to become contemporary issues. I think this is a subtle influence on them but it's never been the explicit direction of the class.

SHIRLEY TSE: [Cantonese] As for which subjects radical pedagogy is more appropriate for and which are not, I think our leaning is more that if you can think of a subject, it shouldn't be that radical. It's the subjects that haven't been thought of that involve radical pedagogy. For example, in the 1970s [CalArts] hired some feminist artists to teach, and feminist subjects and theory were not in the curriculum, and so radical pedagogy led to them taking these courses that didn't talk about these issues and going 'well, why not make our own lessons' but they weren't the kind of lessons that can be done in classrooms. They wanted kitchens or places to sew clothes, so they rented a building in which they made Womanhouse, which then entered the pages of history. So I say the classes you can imagine aren't the radical ones and the ones you haven't imagined can encourage teachers and students to create together.

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] How about Chinese University? What's the atmosphere at Chinese University, like?

DORIS WONG WAI YIN: [Cantonese] Everyone's very clear on what the atmosphere at CUHK is like.

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] Give us a word or two.

DORIS WONG WAI YIN: [Cantonese] It's already been called out as such I'm sure everyone understands. I think they're already like this and thus they choose this school It's not cultivates them into it after they got in. Trying to cultivate that is bordering on fantastical.

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] Because time is short, let me quickly summarise. In response to Shirley, they have a class that's even more unimaginable which they've done before, Advanced Drug Research.

SHIRLEY TSE: [Cantonese] Right!

CLARA CHEUNG: [Cantonese] I don't know how you teach that but there could be some very forward-thinking ideas, very open creative work, trying things that have never been tried before and looking for the invisible. Because of time, we'll end this here today. Will Christina say...

After this wonderful discussion, there will be more to come online. Please stay tuned and keep an eye on the M+ website.

Thank you all.