(Neoliberalized) Collaborative Turn and Art Education

Abstract

This chapter lays out the broader contexts from which collaboration comes to the foreground at this time and sounds a number of cautions against the collaborative turn as evidenced in the 21st Century Skills, new Finnish National Curriculum Framework, and cultural industries. Collaboration's promotion is due to post-Fordist labor models and the rise of network structures. Within this nexus, collaboration maintains a democratic aura of a horizontal, decentralized platform for learning and creating that resists and subverts more restrictive vertical power structures. To flesh out these movements, I consider the model of project work within post-Fordist labor along with precarious, post-studio practices associated with the cultural and creative industries. I assert an appeal for the autonomy of collaboration within art education apart from entrepreneurial ends.