Save UWS Fine Arts

Professor Janice Reid, UWS Vice Chancellor

Would you be interested in helping out with a SAVE UWS FINE ARTS campaign?

We are planning a demonstration to protest the cutting of the University of Western Sydney Arts programs (Fine Arts, Electronic Arts and Performance). We are angry that Professor Janice Reid, the UWS Vice Chancellor, actively maintains presence in the arts: she is on the board of trustees of AGNSW, her term expiring December 2006; Patron for the Kedumba Drawing Prize; and past Trustee for Queensland Art Museum.

This protest questions why Professor Reid, as a Trustee and Patron of the arts, is not supporting the arts at her own tertiary institution. This protest questions her role on the board of NSW's major art institution, when art education in her own institution is cut. If Prof Reid is not supporting art education in western Sydney, hierarchical stereotypes that art is elite, better located in the centre, and housed in officially sanctioned contexts (like the AGNSW) are simply being reinforced.

Such attitudes demonstrate no commitment to fostering culture and the arts in the western suburbs when much cultural infrastructure is in place to facilitate a meaningful dialogue with a Fine Arts tertiary program in western Sydney (regional galleries, artist studios, artist networks, etc).