Our own academic standards
ENDA is built on values other than those that govern art schools and the art world in general. Through its admission criteria, its program and organization, its methodologies and operating methods, its Lines of Research and Experimentation (LDRE), the nature of the content it offers, the aims and issues involved, its evaluation criteria and the diploma it awards, ENDA asserts its own academic standards. It is precisely this independent academic framework that gives it a singular identity, enabling practitioners to carry out genuine research and to delve deeper into the issues they consider essential.
An unlearning of arts education
Art is not necessarily dependent on culture and education. To take other paths in art supposes to get rid of the automatisms acquired in art schools, to put certainties to the test of realities in permanent transformation. In art education art is seen as an absolute value. ENDA relativizes art and its entire program is based on this primary value.
A school in permanent transformation
ENDA is impermanent and builds as it moves forward. This transformation is fueled, even encouraged, by the horizontality put in place.
A revisited notion of research
ENDA puts in place the first program that gives real meaning to the notion of research and experimentation in art that could not be envisioned as an exploration of the established paths. Its education of excellence experiments with other ways of looking at the practice of art than those existing today in the French and foreign artistic educational landscape.
A connection of art with pragmatism
Far from the ambient buzz of today’s art education, which confines art to workshops cut off from the real world, ENDA proposes to deal with artistic practice from the initial moment of reflection to the most pragmatic aspects inscribed in organizational, economic, social and political realities. Practitioners can be operational by the end of the session.
An extra-disciplinary approach
Although ENDA is an art school, the program allows investment of those lived experiences in all aspects of professional and private life.
An association of differences
ENDA brings together participants with very different profiles, backgrounds and needs: artist, architect, executive, employee, facility manager, administrator, teacher, photographer, historian, landscape architect, philosopher, politician, sociologist, scientist, theorist, etc. Each participant has his or her own expectations according to his or her background, process and current situation, but these expectations also converge towards common objectives in a set of new teaching and working methods as well as pedagogical experiences.
A horizontal school
ENDA implements the principle of horizontality, a mode of operation without teacher or pupil: a collaborative logic, based on the sharing of knowledge and experience and the mobility of roles. The candidate admitted to ENDA is considered as a kind of researcher-experimentalist and not as a student in the common sense of the word. Practitioners have decision-making power in the organization of ENDA and may propose one or more speakers, one or more working sessions, one or more locations for the working sessions. They can modify the organization of the program or the working methodologies.
A liquid school
ENDA is a school with offices but without fixed locations; it moves continuously from one location to another, in approximately 50 locations per year. Its work modules take place in different places and in a topological indistinction: car parks, museums, contemporary art centres, private individuals, gardens, metro, galleries, trains, cellars, foundations, embassies, associations, schools, universities… Some of the places are chosen according to the subject of the session. This general indifferentiation of places is not arbitrary and nor does it call into question the importance of the context; it permits a stimulating fluidity, a freshness of reception, an augmentation in attention.
Theory and practice interdependent
The work within ENDA is both theoretical and practical in a necessary interdependence. Practice is the result of reflection, which in turn is tested and adjusted by practice. The nature of the work developed, both theoretical and practical, varies greatly according to the profile of the participant but also according to the project that the participant chooses to carry out within the ENDA program.
A context of exception
ENDA offers a context of exception that brings together perspectives, activates potential, and enables fruitful meetings that will foster future collaborations. This context of interactions is built by the practitioners themselves.
An evaluation without scoring
The evaluation is not graded. It is done at the end of the course and carried out according to original methods, different each session. It is the subject of written observations crystallized in the evaluation letter that practitioners receive at the end of the session with the ENDA diploma. Continuous monitoring makes it possible to control the progression of the work. The evaluation criteria are attendance, quality of the work provided, ability to put it into perspective and articulate its stakes, the working method, perseverance, coherence, a certain state of mind freed from the normative constraints of the art, the structuring of one’s process, self-awareness, risk-taking, engagement, and curiosity.
No conditions for enrollment
There are no conditions for enrollment at ENDA, no prerequisite diploma (not even a bachelor’s degree) and no age limit. Admission is based on the candidate’s motivation, without the traditional artist’s portfolio and CV. What practitioners have done before ENDA is less important than what they do afterwards.