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What did it mean to have an art school in every town and what can we learn by discovering their fate?

Gate detail, Lancaster art school. Photo: Matthew Cornford

There were more 150 art schools in this country in the mid-1960s. Most of them are now closed or absorbed into other institutions and the buildings repurposed, remodelled or demolished. What did it mean to have an art school in every town and what can we learn by discovering their fate?

Exhibition notes for The Art Schools Of North West England, 2018

I’m playing catch-up, having been distracted by a big project, but wanted to plug this great exhibition which is on at Liverpool’s prestigious gallery Bluecoat until March next year.

Photo: @Rob_Battersby
Photo: ©Rob_Battersby

The show of photography and texts about the fates of 30 art schools is curated by academics John Beck and Matthew Cornford and flows from The Art School & The Culture Shed, their exemplary 2014 study of the ravages suffered by Britain’s once-revered further educational institutions. 

“The idea of art school as culture, as a way of life, is why, especially in the post-war period, ‘Art School’ as signifier in the UK has come to mean much more than the often prosaic day-to-day experience of being at art school suggests,” wrote Beck and Cornford in 2014. “The idea of art school permeated British culture to a large degree because there were so many, because they were available, and because so many people went there.”

Stained glass at Warrington art school. Courtesy: Bluecoat

The Art Schools Of North West England runs until March 10, 2019. More details here

The Art School & The Culture Shed is essential reading on the history and forward progression of arts education in this country. Copies are available here

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