Neil Walton

Neil's interests are in the history and philosophy of art education and philosophical aesthetics. Current work includes developing a historicist pedagogy of art and design, integrating art history into the secondary curriculum, and examining how Robert Brandom's inferentialism can inform art education.

Neil has argued for the centrality of knowledge and reasoning within the art and design curriculum. Specifically, he draws on Brandom's inferentialism, a theory that has not previously been applied to art education. This approach understands art as discursive and rational, as concept using and reason sensitive, as essentially a disjunctive set of historical-social practices. Art education is then best thought of as a rational-critical introduction to knowing those practices, as making explicit their proprieties, entailments and contradictions and the choices that are thereby made possible. This view emphasises learning in art and design as developing increasing levels of responsibility and commitment by integrating concepts in practice and theory.

Neil has also published articles on the journal Block, on the art theorist Anton Ehrenzweig and on the National Arts Education Archive. He has worked on various projects with the artist Cathie Pilkington, such as the exhibitions ‘The Ancestors’ at the Royal Academy of Arts and 'Estin Thalassa' and ‘The Covering’ at Karsten Schubert.