Sarah Edge

Photographies, Vol. 2, No. 2, July 2009: pp. 113

1754-0771
1754-0763
RPHO
Photographies

PHOTOGRAPHY, HIGHER EDUCATION AND

THE SKILLS AGENDA

PHOTOGRAPHY, HE AND THE SKILLS AGENDA

photographies

This article outlines how higher education in the UK has undergone some significant changes
over the last ten years in which government departments and policies are linking the skills we
deliver to the nations economic growth. This is now monitored by agencies such as the Sector
Skills Councils. This article takes a first step in considering how photographic lecturers in
higher education have responded to this debate. It moves on to suggest that our relationship to
agencies such as Skillset could be most effectively managed through an examination of our
own, historical, ideological and disciplinary positions in terms of the delivery of photographic
skills. In this respect the article suggests that such a theoretically informed approach to skills
could, in fact, allow us to engage productively with this new government agenda.

There has been a significant repositioning of higher education by the UK government

during the last ten years. This change has been most clearly signalled by the merging of
the Department for Education and Skills and the Department for Trade and Industry to
create the new Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS, recently
renamed the BIS Department for Business Innovation and Skills).1 Ideologically, this has
repositioned higher education suggesting that it holds a key responsibility for the
nations economic development and prosperity. Practically, it has created a new department to oversee and assess the development, funding and performance of higher and
further education in which the criteria for success are to be linked to national prosperity.
Britain, it proclaims, can only succeed in a rapidly changing world if we develop the
skills of our people to the fullest possible extent, carry out world class research and scholarship, and apply both knowledge and skills to create an innovative and competitive economy in which The work of DIUS on further and higher education, innovation,
science and technology, intellectual property, and supporting evidence-based policy
making across government is therefore essential to national prosperity.2
In 2009, higher education is being examined and judged on how well it meets this
objective, and the public eye has become focused on measures introduced to prove
its worth in relation to its responsibility. These external measures include the introduction of the QAA benchmarks within present disciplines with a set of key skills and knowledges that are positioned as essential for graduates,3 and the Research Assessment Exercise
(RAE) that assesses the standard and worth of research undertaken by universities within
allocated disciplines, ranking them and allocating financial support accordingly (current
discussion on impact as part of the new Research Assessment Frame (REF), defined as
the economic and social impact of research, is another example of this shifting higher
education environment4). These two measures have been designed to asses the worth
Photographies Vol. 2, No. 2, September 2009, pp. 203214
ISSN 1754-0763 print/ISSN 1754-0771 online 2009 Taylor & Francis
http://www.informaworld.com DOI: 10.1080/17540760903116663

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and relevance of higher education in order to ascertain how well we are contributing to
the nations prosperity. However, the most controversial measure introduced to assess
the value of higher education is the Sector Skills Councils.5

Skillset, photography and the skills agenda

The Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) have emerged as part of the repositioning of higher
education in the United Kingdom as the providers of skills for economic growth. The
most significant government policy paper here was the Leitch report UK Skills: Prosperity for All in the Global Economy World Class Skills, which was published in 2006. The
report was commissioned by the government in 2004 under the remit to identify the
UKs optimal skills mix in 2020 to maximise economic growth, productivity and social
justice, and to consider the policy implications of achieving the level of change
required.6 Lord Leitch was then tasked with identifying how to better integrate
employment and skills services at a local level. This was achieved through the SSCs,
state-sponsored, employer-led organisations that cover specific economic sectors in
the United Kingdom which have four key goals: to reduce skills gaps and shortages, to
improve productivity, to boost the skills of their sector workforces, to improve
learning supply.7 There are now twenty-five SSCs in the United Kingdom which are
licensed by the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills.
In this political and cultural climate the funding of higher education in the United
Kingdom is now firmly linked to the impact it can make in relation to national prosperity and the economy. The Higher Education Funding Council (website confirms how it
is committed to enhancing the contribution higher education (HE) makes to the economy and society, where it provide[s] specific funds and support that encourages
them to do this more effectively.8 This is a substantial cultural shift in terms of how
higher education is perceived within the United Kingdom and it is something that
educators of photography cannot afford to ignore. The power of this discourse is that
positioning education as the saviour of the nation can be evidenced through the launch
of the Higher Education Funding Council for Englands (HEFCE) Economic Challenge
Investment Fund, which offers financial support for the higher education (HE) sector
in its contribution to address the countrys economic downturn.9
This repositioning is also evident in the physical structures of universities, with increasing importance being given to both the Office of Innovation and the Office of Academic
Enterprise,10 while anyone glancing through the adverts for academic vacancies will have
noticed how experience of engagement with the creative industries is now essential for
many senior-level positions. Furthermore, there is an increased interest in the university
context in assessing skills delivery (transferable, subject and industry), which are matched
against teaching and learning, employability and entrepreneurship policies.
This issue of Photographies has been commissioned to raise debate on the current state
of teaching photography as a subject in the context of recent changes in education, culture
and technology. The context I have mapped out above, I would suggest, is having or is
going to have a significant impact on the current state of photography education in the
United Kingdom. However, before moving on to examine how we might engage with
this changing set of circumstances (in which the various bodies that now monitor our

PHOTOGRAPHY, HE AND THE SKILLS AGENDA

success as economic drivers the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), RAE, HEFCE and
the SSCs award our funding accordingly), there is another factor to consider in relation
to photography education. In Britain, photography is positioned as part of the digital
revolution and thus falls within government concerns in relation to the nations digital
literacy. In January 2009 the government published an interim report titled Digital Britain. The report both notes the need for different levels of upskilling in digital technology
and also elevates the professional skills of creativity and digital production, proclaiming
these as essential for the future British economy. The digital economy, it notes, relies
upon these hybrid professionals who can bridge technology, creativity and business. In
confirming this, the report also emphasizes that there is more work to be done to
strengthen the understanding of the ways for education and business to work together to
create the skilled workers and leaders which businesses need. The way forward, it suggests, will be by working with the Sector Skills Councils to develop some practical action
points for Government, higher education and work sectors for the final report.11 Thus
the future of photographic education in the UK digital environment is to be partially
moulded by this partnership between government, the related photographic industries
and higher education. This article, then, will make an attempt to open up a debate on how
we might be able to engage constructively in this partnership.12

Photography, photo imaging and skillset

Responsibly for reviewing the delivery of photographic training and education falls
under the remit of the Sector Skills Council for Creative Media, known as Skillset. This
Skills Council is interesting because it is has already created a formal relationship with
the higher education sector through the creation of the Screen Academies for film and
the Skillset Media Academies (these include the delivery of photography/photo imaging). This is a relationship that is, apparently, the first attempt in the world to create a
formal relationship between higher education and its related industry. The Skillset
Media Academies were established in 2007 after a year-long application and inspection
process. One hundred and seventeen higher education institutions applied for this kite
mark of approval and seventeen were successful.13 A panel made up of industry representatives inspected each institutions curriculum, resources and staff profiles to gauge
the courses overall relevance to industry. This process heralds a new competitiveness
between educational institutions, in which industry operates as the approver of some
courses. In the now highly competitive market of higher education, this approval is
regarded as a valuable marketing tool by most universities. It also operates as a signpost
that those universities are meeting the governments skills agenda.
On the ground, however, the relationship between Skillset and those delivering
photography education seems to be less optimistic. The Association for Photography in
Higher Education (APHE), an organization made up of those involved in the delivery of
photographic education in the United Kingdom, has posted two reports on discussion
related to Skillset.14 These suggest that there is a general anxiety about the role of
Skillset, based on the following: its lack of understanding of the higher education
environment; its posing of additional quality assurance pressure on top of the QAA
benchmarks;15 and concerns over competition through course accreditation schemes that

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will result in the creation of a two-tier system (this has already happened through the
Skillset Media Academy Networks noted above). Most notably, I would suggest, these
debates reveal how the academic community is unsettled by the role being given to industry (via Skillset) to act as approvers of the skills being delivered in academic courses.16
The symposium connected to this issue of Photographies, held in London in March
2009, confirms how academics are internalizing the government-led agenda I have outlined in my opening. Participants discussed the current shift towards photography
courses marketing themselves via commercial distinctions such as documentary, fashion or fine art rather than just photography. The increasing pressure faced in the higher
education environment in addressing student employability through employer engagement and the curriculum was also raised. The positioning of universities as businesses
with the related need to generate income and prove customer satisfaction was deemed
an area of concern, as was the apparent mismatch between students expectations of a
photography education and academic requirements.17
While the symposium was marked by concern with all aspects of the repositioning of
higher education in the United Kingdom, in which Skillset is a major player, Skillset was
not discussed. It is possible that the reluctance to engage with Skillset expressed in earlier
debates held by the APHE has grown into a reluctance to even acknowledge its existence.
Whatever the root cause, this lacuna is significant given the increasing role that organizations such as Skillset play in setting the agenda for the future of photography education.
Therefore, it is necessary to explore whether a more constructive response to Skillset is
possible (because it is not going to go away), and, if so, whether it is possible to find some
common ground to allow us to engage with this skills debate productively.
The Skillset website has links to a dedicated Photo Imaging page, which offers the
user a search facility for higher education courses delivering photography; forty-four at
undergraduate level and fourteen at MA level. The majority are titled BA Hons
Photography while others, as noted above, reference specific occupations such as press,
documentary or commercial photography and wildlife photography. A further search
confirms that on their prospectus page most courses reference the acquisition of professional skills for employment and many list specific occupations such as journalism or
fashion as the potential career outcomes of their courses. In this respect the skills and
employability agenda is already being used as a marketing tool for most of our
photographic courses. So on one level course publicity is tailored to recognize the need
for specific skills that meet the requirements of employment while we as academics
remain reluctant to recognize how we might best take ownership of such requirements.
There is a clear need, therefore, to move on from this impasse. My suggestion is that in
order to move this debate forward it is essential to shift towards a more informed critical
and theoretical examination of our positions as educators of photography. The photo
imaging search page offers a good starting point for this in that it offers a simple means to
access what type of photographic education is currently available. It identifies how photography has been delivered primarily from within two different academic disciplines,
namely media and communication (media studies) and fine art. I would contend that the
pedagogies of these two disciplines are informing different academic approaches to the
delivery of skills. It is necessary to examine these different traditions, as well as some
popular misconceptions about each, in order to gain a clearer picture of the state of
photographic education and how best to map future strategies and policy responses.

PHOTOGRAPHY, HE AND THE SKILLS AGENDA

On one level, current understanding is informed by the perception that media

studies has a direct relationship to the media industries, making it akin to engineering
or computing.18 However, this assumption belies the fact that media studies is a quite
distinct academic discipline, often delivered with no production work at all.19 Photography delivered in a fine art context, in contrast, is conditioned by the traditions of this
discipline; this has led some with a cultural studies perspective to criticize it for its
tendency to separate production from its social conditions and I will return to this
below. Such misconceptions indicate the pressing need for dialogue between these two
disciplines. It is here that a coherent agenda crucially must be set because Skillset
focuses only on skills; it does not recognize disciplinary approaches. The photo imaging
profiles for the various career path lists are: high street, advertising, press, fashion, corporate, scientific, medical photographer; what is absent is fine art photographer.20
What I suggest here is that by importing critical theory into the debate on skills we
might be able to engage more productively with agencies such as Skillset. This is best
undertaken at ground level through an examination of how each discipline has
approached photographic education.

Photographic meaning, history, theory and the place of skills

Numerous theorists and publications have confirmed the way in which photography had
to struggle to negotiate its social and cultural meanings when it appeared in the early
nineteenth century. Price and Well note how the structuring debate about the nature
of photography as a new technology centred on how far it could be considered as
Art.21 This debate had to also establish the kinds of photography which could not be
classified as artistic. In this respect the very formation of photographic meaning was created from within two distinct fields of signification, namely the mechanical and commercial versus the creative and artistic. Such distinctions, as we are now aware, were not
intrinsic to photography but rather were being defined outside its frame. What this meant
was that it was necessary for art photography to mobilize signifiers created elsewhere in
the field of painting (shared subject matter, anti-realist techniques, soft focus, blurring,
double exposures). These practices were marked as essentially different from the commercial practices which have been examined elsewhere.22 Consequently, the art photographer was located as quite different from the commercial photographer, who was
positioned at the lowest level, being defined both in class and value terms as an itinerant
worker.23 This historical legacy has impacted on how we deliver photographic education.
Wells has noted how the result has been that the history of photography as Art focuses
not so much upon photographic communication as upon photographs as objects, reified
for their aesthetic qualities in which the history of photography tends to be presented as
a history of great, or master [sic], photographers.24 What this has produced, according to Wells, is an approach to teaching that divorces photography as fine art from the
larger history of photography with its ubiquity of practices, but also rarely engages with
the broader political issues and social contexts.25
I would suggest that this tendency to separate art photography from photographys
social and cultural position is a structuring element in this disciplines response to the
skills agenda. Such a theoretically informed approach to what currently informs

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photographic education should also be mobilized in relation to the place of the artist or
worker. Discussing the place of art photography during industrialization and the
creation of class difference, Simon Watney explains how the artist/photographer was
promoted as someone somehow outside of this mass, untainted by its values, gazing
onto the spectacle of the world, a privileged observer who observations are supposedly
of only artistic significance.26 Critical approaches to the study of artistic photography
have confirmed how this has resulted in a further split between creative expression and
intellectual intention in which thinking is further split. In this context the photographer as artist is viewed as transcending mere recording of events, offering a unique
perspective or insight into people, places, objects, relationships, circumstances.27 In
this context it is the role of the art critic or academic to articulate the creative worth
of the art photographer.
To my knowledge there has been far less academic examination of the legacy that
informs the relationship between photographic theory and production in the disciplinary
approach taken up in media studies (though there has, of course, been research on the ideological differences between high and popular culture) and to this end I will have to offer
some of my own thoughts. In media studies, because production work is connected to
commercial or popular photography, it does not carry the status of artistic production and
consequently the student/maker is not regarded as employing the same intellectual processes. Moreover, because media studies primarily examines the commercial uses of photography press, documentary, advertising and so on, or popular cultural artefacts such as
family, historical or tourist photographs this has resulted in a split between those who
theorize about the media the academics and those who contribute to the media
professional photographers (including students). While little work has been done to examine this hierarchy in terms of popular/commercial photography, feminist critics have noted
in a slightly different context how such divisions tend to locate the consumers of low culture
as mass drones, while the media academic, whose work it is to decode these messages, is
confirmed as a superior intellectual through the process of locating ideological inscription.
To put it bluntly, or offer this up as a polemic, in fine art it would appear that the art
photographer can be positioned as an intellectual only if what he does is located as quite
different from the everyday photographic practices of the commercial photographer, while
in media studies, which cannot avoid studying the everyday uses of photography, academic
or intellectual standing is signified by being above the ordinary consumers or commercial
photographer. Thus within both disciplines the ideological position given to popular or
commercial photography contaminates the ideological positioning of the artist or academic. My point is, then, that as academics teaching photography it is essential that we
interrogate our own belief system because, I would suggest, the hierarchical subject
positioning that we engage with in relation to skills, the commercial and training is
informed, on one level, by the protective discourse of snobbery.28
In this respect my suggestion is, then, that the current government pressure on
academia to address its relationship to the skills agenda and commercial practices of
work can best be dealt with by returning to a theoretical approach to the photographic.
In 1982 Victor Burgins highly influential text set itself the task of identifying the need for
a more theoretically informed approach to the study of photographs, explaining how this
collection of essays represented contributions towards photography theory and
noting that the articles collected here are diverse in approach, the present state of

PHOTOGRAPHY, HE AND THE SKILLS AGENDA

underdevelopment of photography theory precludes a more homogeneous collection, but

they share in common the project of developing a materialist analysis of photography.29
While in 1988, in discussing the emergence of his own critically informed approach to historical photographs, John Tagg acknowledged the synergies between critically informed
approaches to art history and his own work on nineteenth-century photography, citing the
importance of the approach taken by T. J. Clark in his attempt to synthesise historical analyses with his readings of French Marxism, semiotics and psychoanalysis coupled with his
rethinking of issues of realism, urbanisation and representation, the relations of class to culture, and the conditions of production and reception of specific works of art.30 This model
is driven by a desire to understand photography as specific form of communication that
makes no distinction between art photography and commercial photography.
However, such an approach was not fully endorsed by photography educators and
theorists, and the tendency to isolate different parts of the photographic message in
different disciplinary approaches is still problematic. Most recently this has been evidenced in the disciplinary restrictive approaches to examining the shift to digital
image-making (which, as noted in my opening, is also a key issue of concern for the skills
agenda). This has created a tendency for theorists to select just one aspect of this shift for
interrogation, examination or even adulation (one example of this is the recent concern
to examine digitization and the loss of materiality in isolation from other factors31). Such
concerns over the danger of isolating these technological shifts from the overall photographic message was voiced early on in the debate when Druckery asserted that such
approaches cannot afford to simply ignore theoretical questions of representation that
the field of photography and film have been grappling with over the last two decades.32
My suggestion is, then, that if we approach the skills agenda as part of a desire to
return to a more critically informed and holistic study of the photographic message a
more positive relationship with skills delivery may be possible. Moreover, located
within this historical tradition, academics are placed in the driving seat in relation to
skills and industry rather than the other way round.
This is because theorists such as those cited above remind us that we must not
privilege certain forms of photography or isolate some genres or photographic practices
from others. They argue that for photography to be understood it needs to be located
within its specific social, historical and cultural environment. Basically, a culturally
informed photographic theory proposes that photography can only really be appreciated if it is connected to its everyday uses at any one time. This question is not so far
removed from the questions being posed by the skills agenda, which are: what is the
role of the photograph and photographer in contemporary society, and how can higher
education help educate students for that role?
My advice is, then, that as photographic theorists and educators we need to adopt a
similar approach to the skills agenda and not separate it from the theoretical questions
of representation that have been central to both subjects for a number of years. If we
are to consider how any photograph signifies at any one specific moment, we need to
consider everything that acts upon it to give it photographic meaning. If all types of
photography are approached as forms of communication and all photographers as the
makers of that communication, then the distinction between art and the commercial is
redundant and the problem of skills versus theory is irrelevant, because skills, or
professional skills, are also a fundamental part of the photographic message.

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There is some theoretical material here to help us deliver a photography education

which offers skills in an integrated academic context if we are prepared to do the
translational work this will require. There are numerous texts on how the professional
codes of family photography signify, or how documentary or fashion photography or
advertising function as a genre.
There are, however, very few academic texts that have really interrogated the ideological role of professional skills. Stuart Halls seminal text on the Determination of
News Photographs33 is unusual, and I would suggest there is some very interesting
work to do here for photography academics. Furthermore, there are also key moments
in the history of photographic practice when these false distinctions have broken
down which can act as a catalyst for debate in relation to a cross-examination of the
theory/practice divide from within either discipline. A few examples might be: the
nineteenth century, when photography was engaged in its own discursive construction,
and commercial and art distinctions were unstable and in formation; or the 1930s, when
the distinction between academic (those who study photographic communication) and
the photographer as maker or worker collapsed; and finally those key historical
moments when political agendas and photographic communication converge, such as
the in the work of feminist or black photographers.
What I am suggesting as a pedagogic approach to the delivery of skills is that we
encourage our students to theorize all aspects of what they do, whether it is part of fashion photography, commercial photography or art photography.34 How they mobilize this
knowledge can be varied and unique; it may allow them to become more professional
and skilled or to interrogate and engage with the codes and meanings of the professional
and commercial.35 This latter position has mostly been adopted by the arts; however, this
is positioned primarily as part of the intellectualizing hierarchy I have mapped previously
and where changes are, I have suggested, required. Furthermore, within the UK agenda
of skills and economic growth, the commercial and artistic have been merged as part of
the creative industries36 a designation that repositions artists as workers and locates
their production within the current social and political environment.
There are, of course, enormous ideological differences between these two drivers
which are, to put it bluntly, the UK government, its agencies and their need for growth
in the economy through a partnership with higher education, and those academics who
have driven the radical and challenging traditions of leftist37 photographic thought.38
To conclude, I will turn to John Taggs most recent publication in which he draws the
work of Derrida and Foucault together to examine the current state of play in relation
to the study of photography from a fine art tradition:
Inside and outside, event and context, work and setting, the structural and the
empirical: these coupled terms familiar to us as those that fix the polarities of an
interminable methodological debate in art history are radically displaced by
Foucaults conceptualization of the discursive event and the discursive field. Yet
the effects of these dualisms persist with all that depends from the separation they
inscribe, between the pure interiority of form and the determinant exteriority of
context and social history. To understand what supports this seemingly insurmountable separation, we must look to the apparatus that keeps it so squarely in
place.39

PHOTOGRAPHY, HE AND THE SKILLS AGENDA

In this article I have attempted to draw the theoretical approach summarized here by
Tagg to open up a space for a productive discussion on the current governmental drive
towards skills which is impacting on the delivery of photography in higher education.

Notes
1

The Departments role is to:

Sustain and develop a world-class research base: Maximise the exploitation of the
research base to support innovation across all sectors of the economy: Raise and
widen participation in Higher Education: Raise participation and attainment by young
people and adults in post-16 education and learning: Tackle the skills gap amongst
adults, particularly equipping people with basic literacy and numeracy: Increase the
supply of people in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
(http://www.dius.gov.uk/about_DIUS/what_we_do.aspx)

2
3

Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, <http://www.dius.gov.uk/

about_DIUS/what_we_do.aspx>.
Subject benchmarks are described as statements that
provide a means for the academic community to describe the nature and characteristics of programmes in a specific subject or subject area. They also represent
general expectations about standards for the award of qualifications at a given
level in terms of the attributes and capabilities that those possessing qualifications
should have demonstrated.
As fields of study, communication, media, film and cultural studies are distinguished by their focus on cultural and communicative activities
The benchmarks include the following:
Graduates will demonstrate the ability to: produce work which demonstrates the
effective manipulation of sound, image and/or the written word: competences in
the chosen field of practice: demonstrate the development of creative ideas and
concepts based upon secure research strategies: understand the importance of the
commissioning and funding structures of the creative industries and demonstrate a
capacity to work within the constraints imposed by them: produce work showing
capability in operational aspects of media production technologies, systems, techniques and professional practices: manage time, personnel and resources effectively
by drawing on planning, organisational, project management and leadership skills.
(www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/benchmark/honours/default.asp)

4
5
6

<www.hefce.ac.uk/Research/ref/>.
They are controversial, I would suggest, because both the RAE and benchmarking
are perceived as being managed by the academic community while the SSCs are
seen as the voice of the industry.
<www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/prebud_05_leitch.htm>.

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The SSCs are currently undergoing a review process in which industry is being
given an increasing voice in higher education developments:
Education and training are changing, and striving to become far more responsive
to your needs as an employer Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) enable you to have
your collective voice heard. SSCs are about to go through a rigorous process to
determine whether their licence from the UK Government and the devolved
administrations should be renewed. As SSCs represent employers, your views
are being sought on how they are performing. This is important because the UK
Government and the devolved administrations are giving SSCs increasing levels
of influence over skills policy, qualification reform and the way in which learning
provision is delivered.
(www.ukces.org.uk/Default.aspx?page=4702)

8
9
10

11
12
13
14
15
16

17

18
19
20

Higher Education Funding Council, <http://www.hefce.ac.uk>.

Higher Education Funding Council, <http://www.hefce.ac.uk/econsoc/challenge>.
My own experience is that in the past these departments tended to engage with
those subjects where a tradition with industry and research has been easy to identify, such as Engineering or Biomedical Science. However, as part of the economic
shift to a knowledge-based economy, this has extended into what are now termed
the creative industries.
Digital Britain: Interim Report, Jan. 2009, Department for Culture, Media and Sport
and Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform: Section 5.1 Education and Skills.
In 2004 the Journal of Media Practice posed a number of questions in relation to this
shift. However, on the whole, the academic inquiry seems to be very limited. See
Roodhouse 3342.
There are now nineteen Academies in the United Kingdom; <www.skillset.org/
training/san/>.
<www.aphe.ac.uk/feedback%20from%20Skillset%20me.doc>; <www.aphe.ac.uk/
APHE%20Mins_Skillset.doc>.
It is interesting that only the Art and Design benchmarking was referred to.
There were some representatives there who were already working with Skillset and
who felt strongly that we needed to engage with the SSCs. David Bate concurred
with my own position that we should not take all of this personally we are just
part of a wider and more general government agenda that is affecting many other
professions (www.aphe.ac.uk/APHE%20Mins_Skillset.doc).
There was also an extended discussion on defunct technology in relation to analogue production, which was marked by our own unease in relation to our own
changing skills base. It is worth noting that this came primarily from those who
deliver photography in a fine art context rather than media.
The current government agenda here is to improve this relationship through partnerships
like the Council for Industry and Higher Education (www.cihe-uk.com/index.php).
Thus while Skillset and government policy now asks higher education to engage
directly with industry, what if there is no clear industry to engage with? For humanities subjects this offers some real challenges for the future in the United Kingdom.
Artist as a career falls under the Creative and Cultural Skills group; however, there
is no specific mention of photography on its website (www.ccskills.org.uk/).

PHOTOGRAPHY, HE AND THE SKILLS AGENDA

21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28

29
30
31
32
33
34
35

36

37
38

Price and Wells 13.

See Green-Lewis; Tagg, Burden of Representation; Sekula; Warner; and Pultz as examples.
Linkman 4968.
Wells, On and Beyond the White Walls: Photography as Art 253.
Ibid.
Watney 154.
Wells, On and Beyond the White Walls 255.
This divide is evidenced in the recent debates in which the technical shifts of the Internet, now commonly referred to as Web 2.0, have instigated a discussion around the
need or not for a Media Studies 2.0. This debate is, surprisingly, being driven primarily by a skills agenda perceived as the mismatch between the skills of lecturers who
deliver production and their students a problem of catch up. However, if, as I have
suggested, we debunk the hierarchal separation between those who make and those
who think, the need to catch up does not rest solely with those staff concerned with
the delivery of production skills but rests with all staff whatever their specialism, for
there is no area of the media untouched by Web 2.0. Such an approach is beginning
to be argued for by some academics in events such as The Challenge of New Media
conference in which Martin Lister and Jon Dovey, offered a powerful sense of a new
generation of teachers and researchers able to redraw the border of our discipline;
see report from ADM-HEA Networks Magazine 7 (Summer 2009).
Burgin 1.
Tagg, Burden of Representation 22.
See Edwards and Hart; and Lager Vestberg 4966.
Druckery 17.
Hall 22643.
In this respect the delivery of high-quality production skills should be seen as media
literacy. Photography students should be given the visual literacy skills to be able to
express their academic ideas.
Such a conceptual model is already in use in higher education to assess the intellectual
quality of photographic work in the United Kingdom. It is used by the UKs RAE in
which photographic practice can be submitted for either panel (UOA 63 Art and Design/
UOA 66 Communication, Cultural and Media Studies). Both RAE documents describe
this output as practice as research: practice based, practice led and practice as research,
noting how All outputs of practice-as-research are welcomed by the sub-panel, provided
they meet the definitions of research as defined for the RAE (61) but recommend that
300 words are used to clarify the research content of such outputs (61). The statement
might include: a brief description of the project and its stage of development; a rationale
outlining questions addressed; a summary of approaches/strategies undertaken in the
work; a digest of further evidence (<www.rae.ac.uk/> 5657).
There has been a notable amount of academic study on what constitutes the creative
industries over the past few years. However, once again, these studies operate under a
form of academic isolation: while they can project the kinds of business or industry skills
a creative worker might need, they offer no thoughts on how these might be delivered.
Simon Watney, in On the Institutions of Photography, notes how The revolution
in critical theory which has taken place in Britain since the early 1970s has always
been, in effect, a dialogue with Marxism (141).
This is a strange dichotomy that we find ourselves operating within, which in my
mind most readily comes together in our role as educators of young people in two

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ways, but there may be more I have not thought of yet. Firstly, in order to allow
them to engage critically and radically in a subversive manner with the codes and
conventions of photography in the mainstream; this is also motivated by my
position as a feminist, often termed as working against the grain. Secondly, that
young people now graduate from our education system with substantial debt,
which, realistically, can be paid off only by gaining employment.
Tagg, Disciplinary Frame 245.

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Images. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.
Green-Lewis, Jennifer. Framing the Victorians: Photography and the Culture of Realism. Ithaca,
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Hall, Stuart. The Determination of News Photographs. The Manufacture of News. Ed.
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Promote Workforce Development. Journal of Media Practice 5.1 (2004): 3342.
Sekula, A. The Body and the Archive. The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of
Photography. Ed. R. Bolton. London: MIT P, 1989. 34386.
Tagg, John. The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories. London:
Macmillan, 1988.
. The Disciplinary Frame: Photographic Truths and the Capture of Meaning. Minneapolis:
U of Minnesota P, 2009.
Warner, Mary Marien. Photography: A Cultural History. London: King, 2002.
Watney, Simon. On the Institutions of Photography. Photography Politics: Two. Ed.
P. Holland, J. Spence and S. Watney. London: Comedia, 1986. 18797.
Wells, Liz. On and Beyond the White Walls: Photography as Art. Photography: A Critical
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Sarah Edge is a full-time senior lecturer in Media Studies at the University of Ulster.
She is the Head of School of Media, Film and Journalism and Director of the NI Skillset
Media Academy. Her research areas include: class and gender in Victorian photography, gender and identity in Northern Ireland, and pedagogies of photography education.
She is also a practising photographer and regularly exhibits her work.