Covid-19 and the London School of Mosaic Experience

Written by Dr Silvie Jacobi, London School of Mosaic

London School of Mosaic is an independent provider of art and design education with a focus on mosaic studies. We teach up to a Level 4 Diploma and have a running programme of short courses and specialist symposia. Our mission is not only to further the understanding of mosaic, but foremost to embed it in our community, where we work often with people who are marginalised.
We generate our income from course fees, local offer provision and licensing workspaces for artists and craft makers. We closed the school as of 23rd March, suspended our license fees for studio holders and postponed short courses with some of them being cancelled. Our commissions have come to a halt as staff are unable to travel to the workshop.  As for our diploma students who are studying on a 1-year Level 4 course, they had just finished 2 terms of teaching when Covid-19 struck. After an intensive time learning in our workshop and familiarising with design approaches and traditional mosaic making techniques, at this point they are ready to work independently with tutorial support over the phone and through online conferencing. Of course, there are challenges of working at home with specialist materials and tools, and we have asked students to continue drawing and working with found materials while we are in lockdown. 

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We have now reduced our summer course programme, as we expect there to be a decline in course uptake in the short term as we work with some of the most vulnerable in society, some of which have underlying health issues and who will have to continue self-isolating. We have just applied for emergency funding from the Arts Council England to cover the shortfall of earned income, so that we can continue to deliver services to the community when we reopen, in particular young offenders who we support through weekly community service sessions. We are also grateful for the governments’ furlough worker scheme and are yet to apply for reimbursements, so we hope that this will be a smooth process with as little delay as possible.
As a small and niche institution whose HE students are primarily self-funded, in the intermediate term we have to plan for a scenario in which our Diploma course has a lower intake. We could teach some aspects of the course online, but feel that this is not a substitute for the teaching in the workshop. Production costs for online tutorials as well as the shipping of tools and materials are too high at the moment for an audience we cannot estimate. Fortunately, as an independent provider we can tailor teaching to individual students’ needs, even if this means their teaching is extended into the next academic year.   In the long-term we have built ourselves a strong footing in the local community through the Mayor of London’s Good Growth Fund, awarding us funding to turn an underground parking space into artist studios housing over a hundred artists. This will ensure our sustainability in the long-term while we build a BA programme in Mosaic Studies, which is in the process of being validated.