“Islington Mill Art Academy is a free self-organised art school based in Manchester, UK. It was set up in 2007 by a group of art foundation students, dissatisfied with the quality and standards in University fine art courses open to them at that time.

The Academy exists to experiment with what an education in art can be, where it can take place and how it can be paid for. It is open to anyone who would like to be an artist and who is interested in taking responsibility for, and direction of the way in which they intend to do this. The artists in the group take all of the decisions related to their personal learning process and put these decisions into practice themselves.

The group invites visiting artists to talk about their work and to give feedback on the work of artists from the Academy on a regular basis. Academy artists organise residencies and research trips to other parts of the UK and abroad for all members of the group. In 2008, we visited Glasgow, Bristol and Sheffield and held residencies in Berlin and the Lake District.”

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