Famul Stuart School of Applied Arts
Archival article
Famul Stuart School of Applied Arts was initiated by sculptors Rene Rusjan and Boštjan Potokar in 1994 and focuses on practical creative skills. The school offers a variety of complex study programmes in three directions: Ceramics, Sculpture and Restoration, Ambient, and Digital Arts and Practices (including animation, video and film, photography, and new media). The three-year courses are flexible and adjusted to the needs on the market. Although offering informal studies, the Famul Stuart School of Applied Arts successfully facilitates the transition from studies to professional engagement in the arts and creative industries.
Famul Stuart also organises Winter workshops open to non-students which focus on a range of areas, including ceramics, sculpture, carving, mosaic, drawing, photography, printing, video, animation and web design.
In 2004 Famul started to co-organise the 5-day production courses in classical and stop-motion animation within the Animateka International Animated Film Festival. Although the cooperation continues, for the moment the school's regular animation courses within the festival period have not been offered to non-students.
Students at Famul Stuart School of Applied Arts present their work at regular exhibitions in the school and in public spaces, most often in the gallery of the Celica Hostel. The screenings usually take place in Kinodvor Cinema.
In 2006 Famul Stuart School's innovative local artistic and urban low budget projects were exhibited in Venice alongside an international urbanistic conference and received a loud thumbs up. The URBActions display included the following projects: reviving the Drenov Grič abandoned quarry, Park'n'Play functional park sculpture as neighbourhood communication tool (2002), Willowart & Constructing, willow pavilions and playgrounds at the Fužine kindergarten (2004), Underground City and Metroljub – a revitalisation of urban underground passages (2006).
In 2007 the Quest4 glorytreemachine site-specific projects were realised by the Famul students on the premises of the former convent of Sant'Elena in Venice. Both exhibitions were prepared in collaboration with the University of Nova Gorica.