Gray's in Crisis

Robert Gordon University (RGU) has declared that Gray's School of Art needs to make cuts in the region of £500,000 to plug a mammoth deficit. The University has extended an offer of voluntary severance to all members of Gray's School of Art in the hope to shed around 8–12 full-time equivalent jobs

All staff at the Art School, which is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year, were invited to a meeting outlining the institution's current predicament. “The School is facing significant financial challenges," reads the invitation letter, "including a projected budgetary deficit for 2010-11 of some £300k, which would be circa £370k if left unchecked by the end of this academic session.

"Therefore it is intended that a re-profiling of Gray’s is undertaken in order to meet future market demands and operational constraints, thereby creating a fit-for-purpose Art School that will be viable over the next 15 years, and which will support evolution in the regional and national creative industry sectors."

The proposed cuts for Gray's School of Art come at a time when RGU is beginning to move into the initial stages of a £170 million development of its Garthdee Campus intended to re-house and consolidate all the University’s activities in the one area. This new masterplan is a radical departure from plans submitted four years ago.

The re-profiling of the School and the identification of weak areas, encouraging staff culls through the voluntary severance packages, will be carried out by an external consultancy agency. It is assured that all cuts will be strategic and based on RGU’s priorities for the future, which amount to income generation and industry links.

The University came under fire this week when former Principal Dr David Kennedy handed back his Honorary Doctorate in protest at plans to confer a similar honour on tycoon Donald Trump. The degree is to be conferred on the businesman by RGU Chancellor Sir Ian Wood, who has courted controversy himself due to his financial backing and masterminding plans for a five-acre redevelopment of the city's Union Terrace Gardens, which effectively quashes a proposed expansion by the city’s Peacock Visual Arts, putting the organisation’s future in jeopardy. Peacock is a 35 year old initiative established by graduates of Gray's School of Art and is the North East of Scotland’s only significant centre for Contemporary Art.

This announcement marks another dark day in an ever gloomy situation for the arts in Aberdeen. Since the onset of the recession, institutions have set a bad example, choosing not to educate the country’s students about how to deal with the financial climate and avoid running into the same problems in the future. Culture, education, free expression and critical thinking are falling by the wayside in an ever-increasing drive for vainglorious displays of wealth. With a £170 million, ultra-modern university building project under way and fewer and fewer teachers, the future looks bleak for Aberdeen, and the country as a whole.