Website: https://www.toma-art.com/
Created in response to the hierarchies surrounding accessing higher education, TOMA is a 12-month artist-run education model in Southend-on-Sea. It was set up to offer responsive, affordable, accessible art education to artists. TOMA is unaccredited, but provides a programme of learning that will benefit artists in the same way. Works with those who do not have a formal art education or have been out of art learning for a while and want a route into entering contemporary critical thought, as well as those fresh out of an undergraduate degree or those who have come to art later in life. Actively works to reduce barriers to higher education for those often marginalised from the art world including:
- a lack of mental and physical space due to other life commitments
- not having specialist art language to access the contemporary art world
- those who did not go to higher education in the past
- time, cost, age, geography, disability, gender and ethnicity
- artists living with a disability, artists of colour + LGBTQIA artists
- a particular interest in women who have been concentrating on supporting a family, or single parents who are just now finding time + support to commit further to their art practice
This work has a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike License