Islington Mill Art Academy (IMAA) is our free peer-led art school. It is open to anyone who wants to be an artist. Learning activity (workshops, crits, coaching, group residencies and projects) is shared and led by the energy and ideas of current student-members. The Academy is not formally accredited; students choose to graduate when they feel ready to work more independently as artists.

IMAA positions itself within the wider ethos of trust and an openness to try new things embedded at the Mill. It is a place to experiment and enquire; to translate arts education into something viable and meaningful in the real world. The Academy gives artists an opportunity to take control of their own learning through facilitation, practice and experimentation.

We encourage anyone interested in joining to attend an upcoming session (currently 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of the month in our 1st Floor Common Room) to discover if it is the right approach for you. Please get in touch for details: artacademy@islingtonmill.com

“I led the formation of IMAA in 2007, both as a means to develop my own art practice and as a response to the introduction of tuition fees. IMAA led the way for many subsequent alternative self-education projects responding to current questions around the relevance and usefulness of mainstream arts education.

Amidst a landscape of market-oriented and outcome-led education, I believe that IMAA and the growing movement of alternative art schools highlight the need for spaces where learning is viewed as an end goal in itself.

Alternative projects like IMAA encourage us to question and challenge the existing structures that are given to us. For me, the Academy is about ‘the education of desire’;  how do we begin to imagine and craft a more optimistic future in a world that has become increasingly cynical? “

Maurice Carlin, co-founder, Islington Mill Art Academy