The Academic Council (AR) would like to tell you about the quality funds. What are the quality funds and what does the AR have to do with them?

The quality funds are money that colleges and universities receive from the government. This money has become available since the basic student grant has been abolished and students have to borrow money to study. The quality funds must be used to improve higher education. The government has given guidelines on what this money may be spent on. This has led to the creation of 11 platforms:  10 platforms were created by the ATD Management Team (TB) and 1 platform by the AR.

Platforms 1-10:

Third; Five o’Clock; ID-Lab; Studio space rental; Technical department support; Care & Advisory team; Student Life; Improving general areas and meeting spaces; Diversity & Inclusion / Professionalization teachers; Fair Practice module.

In June 2019, the AR agreed with the ATD management with its consent on the spending of the quality funds, that co-participation will be involved in the co-creation and evaluation of the 10 quality funds platforms, which had been proposed by the management.

Platform 11:

This includes projects that are paid for from the extra quality funds, money that the co-participation body itself can spend. This has resulted in a number of projects that the co-participation council was able to initiate itself (co-create). These projects were conceived and set up in the previous academic year and the majority of them will become active this academic year 2021-2022.

The 8 projects are: Online auditions; Online platform/portfolio; Collaboration between departments/Art education in transition; Queer pedagogies; Dialog Circles; Internationalisation; Notebook; Social safety.

When collecting the ideas, it became clear that there is a connection between what is already included in the current 10 platforms and the plans from the co-participation bodies. The first step was therefore to link, where possible, participation representatives to the platform leaders. This process was completed last academic year. In June, the AR decided how the budget for the academic year 2020-2021 will be divided among the various proposals.

This academic year, the AR started with One-Offs, meant for students who have only recently joined the AR or OCs (opleidingscommissies), to give them a chance to also send in a proposal (possibly after consulting their peers). The deadline is at the end of January.

We are curious as to what initiatives we as a participation body can finance to enrich education at the Academy for Theatre and Dance.