Art, Prejudice and Privilege: Disciplinary Elitism, Students from Working-Class Communities and Epistemic Justice

This chapter illuminates the challenges of studying art at university for students from poor and working-class communities. In the UK, art is simultaneously perceived as a cultural enhancement in the service of the elite, and a skills-based discipline unworthy of an honours degree. This combination of privilege and prejudice is toxic for undergraduates from lower socio-economic backgrounds. At university, contextual studies curricula seek to correct the misapprehension of art’s non-academic standing by inculcating students into highly complex conceptual discourses. Young people from disadvantaged communities in the UK are unprepared for this new pedagogical environment because they have been steered towards art by an education system that writes both them and art off as academically lacking. This chapter critiques the way in which discourses on art construct a deficit of credibility for class by mobilising examples of contemporary practice in conjunction with the relational pedagogical strategy devised for York St John University’s Contextual Studies programme, whose pedagogical approach introduces students to the history of art while drawing on what that they bring to campus. This enables them to build the epistemic confidence to produce creative outputs that voice the felt experience of class in a space where they know it will be heard and valued.