Having fought and lost the battle for Hull School of Art five years ago (also reported in this magazine) and as a former student of David Hall and Tony Sinden at Maidstone College of Art (now UCCA), I find your report (AM317) makes rather dispiriting reading. It was therefore with some irony that I accepted the position of director of art at Dartington College of Arts earlier this year.
Unlike Arts Council England, the government seems to be developing an arm's length policy on matters of higher education allowing market forces and some university vice-chancellors' personal ambitions to rule. The much publicised call to give greater access to higher education appears somewhat hollow. If there's no local college there can be no access for those very people that 'widening participation' should be for: ie the economically, physically and culturally disenfranchised.
The foundation course in art & design has been very successful in the past in giving such people access and it is those institutions with such courses together with well-established under and postgraduate programmes that continue to be effective in this regard. The links between research, public exhibitions, publications and performances completes the circle. The merger mania can be antithetical to creativity when provision is centralised within large regions. Corporatism cries out for compliance and expression management not experimentation, risk or doubt.
Inevitably the announcement of the proposed merger of Dartington with University College Falmouth produced negative reactions even though the circumstances were very different to those at UCCA or Hull. Although the relocation will leave the local town of Totnes economically and culturally worse off, the other (and only) higher education provision for art in Devon is just 30 minutes away in Plymouth. Perhaps it's the romance of a rural creative idyll that will be lost, and it is true that, as such, it is irreplaceable.
I hope the political representatives in Kent recognise what such an impact will mean. A centralised Ebbsfleet Gateway Pathfinder Solutions Arts University is unlikely to enhance the well-being of Maidstone, Rochester or Canterbury. The effect of the relocation of the former University of Humberside to Lincoln cost the city of Hull in the region of £25m per annum and the demise of a number of once thriving arts organisations. It is only now, five years on, and thanks to the local FE college, that the Hull School of Art & Design is expanding again.
As I said earlier the circumstances at Dartington were very different. The expansion of Dartington College of Arts was something that was supported by the Higher Education Funding Council. This was difficult for various reasons because the college rented its premises from the Dartington Trust Estate. Some of the comments being made by the Save Dartington campaign are rather unhelpful in this respect and are more likely to give a negative impression instead of enabling the development of a new, radical and experimental institution. The ambition to create an arts university to provide education, research and professional practice in all the arts is an exciting one, and the institution can build upon the histories of both Dartington and Falmouth. The 'Dartington ethos' of experimentation and interdisciplinarity is its legacy. This will thrive, given the support of the arts community, through people's energy, commitment and ambition.
Rob Gawthrop Hull/Dartington, from the letters page, Art Monthly, July/August 2008.Go back to the debate about art education
