Strand 3 has renewed its focus on the theme new strategies / new programmes.
The initially planned joint master under the heading of e*Mappa unfortunately can no longer take place. Instead a proposal has been developed, which tries to add an additional dimension by providing a platform for the wide dissemination of experimental approaches to curriculum development in Art and Design.

The history of higher art education is lined with many examples of cutting edge experiments in pedagogy, organisation of art schools and their relationship to a wider public. Many of them are forgotten.
The proposal will give a platform for such cutting edge experimental practice in the Higher Arts Education Institutions of today. Only history will tell, how influential the experiments of today will be for the future, also the future of the Arts and Design. But wouldn’t it be encouraging and inspiring to hear and learn from the experiments of others now and have the opportunity to learn from success and from failure?
Experiment here is understood as framed by the quality assurance and enhancement of our time, but also as challenging it and testing new approaches, sometimes maybe going against the current of the normal sense of qualitative curriculum management.

A Directory of Examples of Experimental good Practice in Art and Design Education (DEEP) will provide such a platform. It will collect some of the examples of such practice of today. In a pilot phase it could only scan the surface and would provide a subjective selection. But DEEP is planned to become a regular online forum and/or publication under the ELIA frame, presenting and discussing the most recent experiments. It will give the experimenting colleagues and institutions a platform for wider dissemination and it will give colleagues and institutions planning new curricula an excellent reference to the experience of others. It will also encourage scholars and researchers concerned with the history and present of Higher Education in general and Higher Art Education in particular to excavate more forgotten examples out of existing archives.

DEEP could help to claim new confidence that experimental curricula in art and design can make a difference and that Higher Art Education, if daring and bold, can provide important models and insights for our contemporary existence.