Dear Professor Frances Corner, Senior Management Team (SMT), and Goldsmiths Council,
We are writing this open letter from within the student community of MRes and PhD Advanced Practices programme, situated within the department of Visual Cultures, to express our deep concern of the Transformation Programme (TP) imposed by SMT and call for an immediate halt of its execution.
We see the Transformation Programme as inimical to the idea and value of education. We want to reclaim the notion of transformation from a market trend exercise imposed by the SMT. The real transformation is what we experience day by day through our education at Goldsmiths, thanks to the transformative and generative thought and practice of our professors, lecturers and peers. We refuse a market-driven use of ‘Transformation’ and the financial metrics for evaluating education.
The Department of Visual Cultures established by the visionary Professor Irit Rogoff is considered internationally to be foundational and a leading force in the field of Visual Cultures. We in Advanced Practices belong to Visual Cultures as a field and as a department and its cohort of innovative thinkers and practitioners. This drives us to develop world leading theory-driven, practice-based research in our field.
Our concern translates to lack of confidence in the university’s management for the following reasons:
- The layoff of over 25% of the Department of Visual Cultures' staff, which we understand to be implemented in this academic year. Our Professors and Lecturers are the force behind the research excellence which the department is internationally recognised for.
- This drastic reduction in staff will result in reduced supervision and tutorial hours affecting our research quality and timeframe. The drastic cuts of Associate Lecturer budgets as a sign that the university is dismissing students who want to be part of Goldsmiths -- as teacher trainees and teaching staff. As early-career researchers our future with the Visual Cultures department is unclear. You are advocating for an education to provide jobs, but you are actually taking away potential employment.
- The potential dismantling of the Visual Cultures department by merging it with the Art Department as a combined School will undermine the critical specialisation of Advanced Practices. This planned destruction creates simplification of the whole ethos of the Visual Cultures department. We stand against your implementation of the generalisation of knowledge, with no understanding of how Visual Cultures actually contributes to a broad landscape of art. Practice-based research does not simply reproduce settled categories of knowledge production but generates methodologies across multiple fields - between arts and science and between arts and humanities.
- We already felt the strain on administrative services from the Recovery Programme and previous damaging restructuring rounds affecting application, enrollment processes and communication between the University and students. Despite the administrative failure you implemented, so many of us and many more potential applicants still want to be part of Visual Cultures for what it represents.
In light of our concerns, joining the entire community of students at Goldsmiths, we urge you to take the following actions:
- Halt the Transformation Programme and staff redundancies.
- Provide clear and transparent information on how the Transformation Programme will affect Visual Cultures and Advanced Practices continued MRes and PhD students this academic year and next.
- Halt the inflation of administrative posts and provide a formal report of the administrative discrepancies that specifically affected enrolment to Visual Cultures as a whole this year. These failures have directly impacted the contribution rate of the department.
- Clarify the need for a further £8 million in staff cuts at this accelerated pace, since £10.1 million has already been saved through all aspects of workstream 1, and given that the College’s relatively healthy cash reserves put Goldsmiths well above the OfS 30-day cash flow minimum, even if all loans were repaid.
- An official consultation with students regarding the university’s finances and the use of our fees.
We ask Professor Frances Corner, SMT, and the Goldsmiths Council to confirm receipt of this letter and look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Advanced Practices MRes and PhD students, Visual Cultures
