Looking Back at the National Convention of Art and Design Schools, Marseille 2025
From November 4 to 7, 2025, I had the honor of being invited to the Assises nationales des écoles d’art et de design (National Convention of Art and Design Schools), organized by ANdÉA and hosted by the Beaux-Arts de Marseille, to represent the Alliance France Design. This event, marking the association’s 30th anniversary, gathered the entire French art and design education ecosystem around the theme “Tomorrow’s Art School: Horizon 2050.”
A collective mobilization for the future of art education
The convention brought together representatives from 44 public higher schools of art and design, 26 preparatory classes (APPÉA), and 55 territorial schools for amateur practices (ANÉAT) — nearly 35,000 students guided by 2,500 artist-teachers. An unprecedented mobilization that speaks to the urgency of the issues at stake. [+ andea.fr]
Round table: Structuring the professions — the school’s role
On November 6, following the round table Diversified Paths: Broadening Horizons—which explored links between education and professional realities—I took part in Structuring the Professions: The School’s Role, moderated by Amel Nafti, Director of ENSAD Dijon.
Discussions focused on a key question: How can schools anticipate, equip, and defend the working conditions of the artists and designers of tomorrow?
Key issues identified
The question of professional representation
Speakers including artist Gaëlle Villedary (CAAP), artist and ADAGP member Rebecca Digne, and representatives of territorial networks underlined the sector’s lack of organization. Artists-authors and designers form a fragmented field that struggles to assert its collective rights.
The gap between training and professional reality
A shared observation: many graduates face a hard landing upon leaving school. While political awareness and engagement are fostered during studies, the shock of administrative, fiscal, and contractual realities remains harsh.
Systemic precarity
Beyond the myth of the “starving artist,” this is about social and economic precarity. The confusion between authorship-related precarity and social insecurity must be addressed. Minimum incomes and fair remuneration scales remain fundamental battles.
Paths for action
Strengthening the link between schools and professional organizations
Structures such as Alliance France Design, ADAGP, CAAP, and regional networks like RAC (Réseau Art Contemporain)in Aquitaine exist but remain largely unknown to students.
Teaching entrepreneurial skills
Artists and designers are independent professionals who must master contract negotiation, professional vocabulary (fees, grants, production costs), self-promotion, and responses to calls for projects. These skills should be part of the curriculum.
Multiplying field experiences
Rather than six-month internships, favor shorter and more frequent placements to explore diverse ecosystems. Post-graduate programs, residencies, and transition schemes are essential but weakened by unstable funding.
Developing pricing tools
Resources already exist — remuneration scales (SODAVI Charter), La Fraap’s Remuneration Guide, and tools like the Calkulator (the forerunner of Copryce) for design. Yet these reference tools remain non-binding.
Ensuring access to continuing education
AFDAS remains a cornerstone for professionals, but its budget no longer meets demand. This mechanism must be defended in the face of challenges such as AI and sectoral transformations.
Structural challenges
Discussions also revealed broader systemic issues:
The recognition of research in art and design as an essential part of contemporary creation
The need to harmonize the highly disparate employment statuses across national and territorial schools
The development of Master’s and doctoral levels without sacrificing post-graduate programs
The fact that 75% of schools depend on local authorities in a constrained financial context
The need to make the specific values of public education visible in contrast to private schools and platforms
Student voices
A powerful moment of the convention came from student representatives who forcefully denounced systemic violence (sexism, racism, ableism) still present in schools.
They also called for genuine shared governance, with effective student representation in decision-making bodies.
Closing plenary
The final session featured reflections from three observers who followed the round tables closely.
Davide Bertocchi, artist and professor at École Média Art du Grand Chalon, reported on Axis 1 — Questioning the School: Teaching Creation, stressing the need to preserve pedagogical freedom while strengthening structure.
Frédérique Joly, sociologist and Head of Studies and Research at École supérieure d’art et de design Toulon Provence Méditerranée, synthesized Axis 2 — Equal Opportunity and Public Policy, highlighting tensions between egalitarian ambitions and budgetary realities.
Myriam Mihindou, multidisciplinary artist, offered insights from Axis 3 — Being and Becoming an Artist and Designer, reminding participants of the importance of preparing students for professional realities without standardizing their practices.
Their complementary perspectives outlined concrete directions that enriched the discussion with the audience.
Perspectives
Naomi Peres, Director General for Cultural Democracy, Education, and Research at the Ministry of Culture, reaffirmed the Ministry’s commitment while acknowledging the complex budgetary context. She mentioned several priority initiatives:
Reviewing the employment status of teachers (scheduled for 2026).
Aligning art schools with the national Research Programming Law.
Strengthening the fight against gender-based and sexual violence.
Enhancing visibility and recognition of the public schools’ excellence model.
What I take away
These three days were filled with emotion, debate, and proposals. Several convictions grew stronger:
The urgency of building a structured sector: Public art and design schools must form a coherent pathway, from early training to lifelong learning.
The need for genuine social dialogue: Among management, staff, students, and supervisory bodies.
The importance of professional representation: Unions and professional associations are essential to defend collective rights.
The entrepreneurial dimension: Training autonomous artists and designers also means teaching them administrative and business skills.
The imperative of inclusion: Accessibility, the fight against all forms of discrimination, and support for student precarity must be at the heart of school projects.
The creative professions generate artistic and economic value whose importance is well established. In a world shaped by AI, ecological crises, and social upheavals, artistic thinking and design are essential forces of transition.
Thanks to ANdÉA, APPÉA, ANÉAT, and the Beaux-Arts de Marseille for organizing this event. The path ahead is long, but collective mobilization offers hope.
The Assises concluded with a call to protect a fragile model, reaffirm the essential contribution of creation to the common good, and build a sustainable policy for the future of art education. Alliance France Design and Copryce are part of this collective effort, contributing to the professionalization and economic recognition of creative professions — serving all designers, whatever their educational background.
A long-standing commitment to schools
The situation of art schools came as no surprise to me. I studied 35 years ago in a public territorial school. At that time, the public sector stood for excellence, ahead of private institutions.
But under the Ministry of Culture’s supervision, public schools took more than three decades to realign their teaching goals with the professional realities of design. Society keeps evolving — faster and faster. Today, private schools reassure students (and their parents) by highlighting their adaptability, while too many public school administrations remain bogged down in bureaucracy, struggling to assert a field-based vision. A bit more transversality — so dear to design — would do no harm.
This is paradoxical, given that the cultural and creative industries (CCI) represent a greater economic force than the automotive sector.
My commitment has never wavered. I taught communication design for ten years. Between 2012 and 2013, I joined the steering committee for the Design Professions Framework, jointly led by the Ministries of Industry and Culture. In 2021, I was interviewed for the Overview and Challenges of Higher Design Education in France. Over twenty years, I’ve given numerous talks in schools about the professional practice of design and coached more than a thousand students in their transition to working life. I salute Barbara Dennys, Director of ESAD Amiens, for her methodical work structuring student professionalization in the Master’s program since 2005.
I even considered taking the head of a public design school to bring a more practical vision — but was dissuaded by the reality of an administrative workload that leaves little room for autonomous educational innovation. Once again, this reflects structural inertia that, despite goodwill and ministry initiatives, continues to slow much-needed progress.
In short, I have never lost touch with schools.
Public or private, all schools have their place and their specific value. But public schools are struggling right now. That’s why I built student accessibility into my Copryce project.
Copryce: A complementary ecosystem to equip design schools
Building on the discussions and shared findings of the Assises regarding the need to equip creative professionals, I announced in Marseille the creation of Copryce, a partner of the Alliance France Design — a new pricing and negotiation tool for designers and creators.
An important distinction: though art and design are often taught in the same institutions, their economic models differ profoundly — even if they sometimes overlap. The art market and institutional support paths (galleries, art centers, residencies, grants, public commissions) differ from the design market, which is tied to industry and services (private clients, businesses, public tenders, intellectual services). Copryce specifically serves designers and their professional ecosystem.
A necessary evolution of the Calculator
After 17 years as a non-profit initiative, the design pricing tool Calculator is evolving into a new model. To comply with European free-competition regulations and avoid being construed as a price-fixing agreement, we’ve restructured it as a dedicated company: Copryce.
This transformation is more than administrative. It enables us to develop a broader ecosystem built around two platforms:
copryce.info — a resource hub (videos, interviews, articles) featuring voices from across the design ecosystem
copryce.com — a pricing tool allowing professionals to build offers on solid foundations
Beyond pricing: Negotiation as a key skill
The real challenge isn’t just to provide simulations, but to help professionals learn how to negotiate. Negotiation is a complex skill to acquire — at any career stage.
A tripartite partnership model: Schools – AFD – Copryce
Our proposal is open to all design schools, public and private alike.
ANdÉA, with whom we exchanged during the Assises, plays an important liaison role, but each school’s leadership remains entirely free to decide whether to adopt these tools.
The model is based on complementarity between three key players:
Alliance France Design (AFD) provides free access — through its no-fee affiliation system — to all contract templates, estimates, and general terms of sale. These form the essential legal foundation for a secure professional start.
Copryce, AFD’s partner, provides what professional organizations cannot — for economic or legal reasons (competition law): the pricing tool, educational resources on negotiation, and access to a network of professional stakeholders.
Schools remain in full control of their teaching methods and partnerships. They may integrate these resources into their professionalization programs as they see fit.
A commitment to the new generation
For students, access to Copryce will be offered at a symbolic price (€1), complementing free affiliation with AFD.
Why this commitment?
Train upstream: It’s more effective to equip future professionals during their studies than to intervene once they’re struggling.
Prevent rather than cure: Having contractual and pricing tools from the outset helps avoid many pitfalls.
Build a shared culture: Foster a generation of creators who understand the value of their work — and know how to defend it.
Creativity as expertise
Our conviction, shared with Alliance France Design, is that creativity is an expertise.
Art and design schools excel at teaching how to shape the tangible outcome — the work, the object, the project. But the true expertise lies upstream: in the conceptual process, research, and iteration.
That’s where intellectual property resides — the real added value of artists and designers. And that’s precisely what must be learned, valued, and protected.
This conviction applies to both disciplines, even if the forms of value differ: artists operate mainly within the art market (galleries, collectors, cultural institutions, grants), while designers work in applied expertise (industry, services, innovation, public and private commissions). Copryce focuses its tools on this latter field — the design business.
Working hand in hand with schools
We don’t claim that Copryce can replace the pedagogical mission of schools. Their role is to shape creative minds — not to train billing technicians.
But once graduates leave school with a Master’s degree, they are, by definition, entrepreneurs. The ability to understand business structures, markets, clients, and contracts becomes decisive for sustaining their practice.
That’s precisely where Copryce positions itself: as a bridge between artistic education and economic reality — a tool serving professional autonomy.
Next steps
The platforms are currently in beta version. We invite public and private design schools, their students, and alumni to:
Subscribe to the Copryce newsletter for updates.
Join Alliance France Design for free to access contract and sales templates.
Each school remains free in its pedagogical and partnership choices.
Our goal is to offer a complementary ecosystem of tools, developed in dialogue with the educational and professional communities, so that the next generation of designers has the means to achieve economic autonomy.
