Transmission 2025-2026: Make/Do begins with a recording of artist Jesse Darling’s Opening Provocation from the 2025 Baltic x Northumbria University conference ‘Have Some Imagination: Towards a Manifesto for Arts Education’. The two day event considered the transformational value of creative learning and recognised the unprecedented crisis caused by educational policy changes and the impact of austerity on arts spending on the delivery of arts education in schools, colleges, and universities.

We will use Darling’s talk as a means to open up dialogue and ask essential questions about what Fine Art education needs today. It will set a wider context for this season’s talks. Darling, awarded the 2023 Turner Prize, is currently Director of Undergraduate Studies in Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford.