The Ecole Supérieure d’Art et de Design of Valenciennes, is a Public Institution for Cultural Cooperation (EPCC). The school proposes two curricula leading to a DNAP and a DNSEP in the context of the Art and Design option.
The pedagogical project of the ESAD is based on the co-existence of the Art and Space Design options. It is characterized by their interlinking in an establishment that is accessible on a human scale (150 students), encouraging the organization of proximity, in addition to common teaching platforms. This exchange integrates the leveling of hierarchy in these fields and opts for a mutual questioning of skills, and of the limits of the singularities and confluences.
In the Art option the pedagogy that has been developed around the ensemble of mediums questions visual production and its contextualization, both as a tangible object in the world and the result of an attitude. It is also developed through a thinking on production, its archiving and its review. It questions the advent of a digital culture that has carried the reproducibility of the work of art to its extreme, and makes digital one of the new mediums of the work of art.
The Design option is dedicated to Space Design that attaches importance to designing outside spaces, urban and/or landscapes, interior or domestic spaces and set design. Under the title “situation design”, the pedagogy insists on the capacity of the designer to integrate different information and restrictions to answer each time to a unique context and a unique project. The pedagogy is also seen as a dynamic that explores the relationships between the following three approaches: design and society, design and construction, design and representation.