A student guide to AA2A

If you are reading this page it is probably because your college/university is hosting an Artists Access to Art Colleges 'AA2A' scheme. This means that there will be four artists or designer makers working on their own projects alongside students.

We are always trying to improve students’ awareness of AA2A and encourage more contact between you and the artists. We hope you are able to meet all the artists during their 100 hours of access, which are usually used between October and April.

This page aims to guide you through the most useful parts of the AA2A website, advise you how to find out who the AA2A staff are in your college, give you details on how to find the AA2A artists most relevant to your interests and introduce you to our networking site; AA2A.biz.

Find AA2A staff and artists from your college page

First go to the list of current AA2A colleges and then click on your college to get to their page. This gives you the details of the AA2A Coordinator (usually a member of the lecturing staff) and the AA2A Administrator (they are usually admin staff). They should be able to tell you more about your AA2A scheme.

The images on this dedicated college page are artists from your college past and present. If you hover over an image it will tell you who the artist is, and if you click on the image it will link to that artist's page. You can also get to artists' webpages through the list of their names or view the work of all your college's artists as a slideshow. To see slideshows of all the AA2A artists’ images, go to Slideshows

Find the AA2A artists most relevant to your interests

Use the search facility at the top of every webpage to do a search of the text on the website. If you type in a keyword e.g 'glass' you will find AA2A artists past and present who are working in this area and the colleges that offer this facility. NB: Look carefully on the page you are taken to, to find out if glass is their area of interest or just a chance word in the text. You can even just type in the first name of someone you have met in college who you think may be an AA2A artist to check if they are listed and find out what they are working on.

Contacting artists

We would advise that the best chance of a response will come from contacting current AA2A artists on the 37 schemes around the country. You will find them by going to the current artists list. This will give you artists' images, statements, weblinks and their contact email or phone number. If you wish to contact an artist with a question about their work please contact them by email if possible. Most artists are very open to enquires but please be patient if they do not respond quickly. Although it is not a requirement of the scheme that artists interact with students, most are happy to do so.

Exhibitions and artists weblinks

We have an exhibitions page which gives brief details of our artists' exhibitions, past and present, these details also appear on the artists’ individual pages. See Exhibitions list.

If you want to find examples of artists websites including myspace, flickr, blogspot, forums, group and exhibition sites, you will find them collected together on this page. See Artists weblinks.

Voting

Whether you've met an AA2A artist in person or have seen their work through our websites, you can show your appreciation by voting for them. Voting opens in November 2009 – for more details go to Vote for your favourite AA2A artist.

AA2A.biz networking site

Known as 'dot biz’ the AA2A networking site allows artists on the scheme to set up a profile page and keep a record of their work in progress, including images and blogs. These offer a unique insight into the artists' experience and technical issues as their AA2A scheme progresses. See AA2A.biz

AA2A.biz student group coming soon…

From October all students from AA2A colleges will be able to register on the site, send messages to artists and take part in the online forum. The new site will be launched in September, if you want to find out more about how to register, contact your AA2A Administrator or email georgia@aa2a.biz