04/05/2025
It is with heavy hearts that the SATELLiTE partners acknowledge the decision to close Fanshawe’s Fine Art Advanced Diploma Program after the current students graduate in 2027. Links with info are in our bio.
SATELLiTE’s partnership spans more than a decade, and has included Fanshawe Fine Art, BealArt, Museum London, Western’s Department of Visual Arts, the School for Advanced Studies in the Arts and Humanities, and the Faculty of Information and Media Studies. SATELLiTE affords students, faculty and community members with opportunities to professionalize their practices and prepare for their careers as exhibiting artists. To say that Fanshawe Fine Art is a cornerstone of the London arts community would be an understatement.
Marla Botterill is Coordinator of Fanshawe’s Fine Art Program. She has noted that, with its 56-year history and with the Canadian arts community being as tight-knit as it is, “everyone has less degrees of separation from Fanshawe Fine Art than from Kevin Bacon!” Though Fanshawe will continue to offer a robust foundation certificate in fine art, Fanshawe Fine Art’s closure marks the end of college fine art diploma programs in the Southwestern Ontario region. This means that an important avenue for artists to pursue postsecondary education in the fine arts is now even more limited and even less accessible.
We amplify Marla’s recent remarks for the 2025 third year student exhibition, “Somethin’ Ain’t Right,” currently on view at TAP Centre for Creativity. As Marla notes, “Each artist mines their own life and their own unique way of understanding and experiencing the world in the process of creation. Never stop paying attention. Artists are part of a collective that listens deeply to the pulse of our planet, to human circumstance, to the shifting of conditions. Art asks questions, art transforms, art heals, art reflects, and art can illuminate when Somethin’ Ain’t Right.”
SATELLiTE will continue to operate as a mobile and publishing venture for the foreseeable future, and it will continue to find ways to amplify and support students, faculty, and community members (including current Fanshawe Fine Art students and faculty). Stay tuned.
