Fears over future of city's arts courses | Manawatu-Wanganui News | Local News in Manawatu-Wanganui

A Whanganui UCOL graduate and one of its fine arts students fear changes at the polytechnic will downgrade or wipe out its arts courses.

They're reacting to a planned shift of arts courses to Campbell St next year, a second year without a full Summer School of the Arts and uncertainty in the face of UCOL's blank-slate rethink of arts and design.

Tom Turner graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2009. He's worried his degree will be devalued if the art school folds.

His partner Su Hendeles, a part-time photography student, is worried darkrooms and analogue photography will disappear from the polytech.

They said Whanganui UCOL students and staff were in a state of uncertainty and fear that had been ongoing for years.

"No-one knows what's going on. The end of every year that I was there there were degrees of uncertainty about the programme next year," Mr Turner said.

Dr Hendeles was looking ahead to her fourth year as a photography student. If there were no darkrooms at the polytech she might go elsewhere.

And she said there were several first-year students feeling the same way, and some had already voted with their feet. The move by fine arts students to Campbell St next year was part of the problem.

"The immediate concern is the inadequacy of the darkroom facility at Campbell St. It's barely adequate, but rumours are circulating that some of that will be shut down."

Also, she said, nothing definite had been said about the status of darkrooms when students returned to Taupo Quay, and the photography technician didn't have a job next year.

There was no certainty that analogue photography would continue to be taught in the long-term.

Mr Turner said the charter UCOL signed with Wanganui promised to enhance the special nature of the art school and build it up.

Since then it had lost its ceramics and trades courses, would have lost glass if the Wanganui District Council hadn't come to the rescue, and had lost its summer school.

Now there were threats to printmaking and photography, he said.

When he asked at UCOL's Palmerston North office in 2005 about studying art in Wanganui, he was told it was only taught in Palmerston North. Other students had the same experience as recently as last year.

"I continually hear people worried that UCOL is trying to take away the Wanganui facility and move it to Palmerston North."

Fine arts in Wanganui wasn't getting enough marketing, the two said.

What would reassure them? Dr Hendeles would like to be told the Campbell St darkroom would be fully functional next year, and a photography technician would oversee storage of the Taupo Quay darkroom equipment. Mr Turner wants a commitment to keeping the fine arts programme going at a tertiary level.

Both would be reassured by more marketing of the school and by the restoration of the Summer School of the Arts to a pre-2008 level.