Print Research Network

Print Research Network

I speak from my experience as a further education teacher of printmaking. This is a vital part of the cycle that feeds students into the system and often provides facilities post certificated-study.
I teach printmaking and am a member of a 30-strong group of Richmond Printmakers. We were started by a Richmond Adult College print tutor and have always looked, primarily, to the college for use of faculties. There are two good etching presses, an excellent Colombian press and, as a more recent tutor, I redesigned the facility for nitric acid etching and relief print.
The college is currently actively discouraging printmaking. Shame on them. There is no technical assistance. Printmakers have no facilities for computing or digital print. Aquatint was removed with no substitute facility. Part-time tutors provide absolutely everything organisational in their unpaid time. There is total management resistance to flexible use of the facilities, which are used for half of the week only. I have tried and failed to get funding to develop printmaking into the use of new materials.
I enjoy the stimulation of teaching and in desperation have left the college. I have developed a peripatetic printmaking kit. I now teach printmaking using two slightly less wonderful presses in two odd corners of the locality. I have developed copper-sulphate-based etching for this and am sad that print, which fascinates me, has been shoved into a corner.

Nicky Browne
020 8979 0548
07879852263
12 November 2007