What next for art schools?

Anna Coatman makes many important points in this thoughtful piece. Art schools now are indeed very different from their predecessors, not only from the schools as they were in the 1960s, but as they were well before that. Of course, today's arts universities must reflect the times in which young people live now and, even more importantly, provide them with the skills to earn their living as artists and designers well into the future. But some things have undoubtedly been lost in the last half century and more. I have tried to capture some of them in my book, "Art Schools in England 1945 to 1970, an anecdotal history" (2016), which offers a series of first-hand observations of what it was like to be an art student at different times during those years - a different world.

The most important part of art school that has gone is the presence of students, together, in the studio, for long periods of time. This enabled them to learn from one another through discussion, or by just listening and watching, which encouraged thinking and reflection. Tutorial advice to one student would be shared by the others. The loss of one-to-one tutorials is not as bad as it sounds, as a lecturer you often spent a lot of time giving similar advice to all students, especially in Year One. I'm about to complete my academic career having just one more external examining visit left. There have been loses and there have been gains, many of them well described above (and even better in the longer version in the RA Magazine) but the sen of open shared learning and the potential to pursue a wider range of work after education are the main ones - despite what is said above about having a more varied work pattern, the range of work art school graduates could pursue was more within art and design than doing other jobs to support their visual practice. The far greater specialisation offered now will bless supportive than the more general education that used to be offered.

Are there no art schools in England other than in London? It would appear not...

I studied art and design for 4 years at Hammersmith College of Art and Building under the old NDD (not mentioned in the article) in the late 1950's but, contrary to what the article states, art schools had been formed in most cities from the mid 19th century. I then went on to the Royal College of Art for 3 years. My tutors were Robyn Denny, Dick Smith, Ruskin Spear, Bernard Cohen, Michael Caddy, Geoffrey Bocking, Keith Critchlow, Norman Potter, Sir Hugh Casson, Tom Kay.....etc. I had the most fantastic grant assisted full-time educational experience. I then practised in London as a designer before starting to teach in universities from the mid 1970's until quite recently. Despite what current lecturers will say, I have seen an erosion of freedoms, healthy funding and real instruction disappear at the hands of new technology and coldly distant tuition bereft of funding to such a point that only the more wealthy students can survive. Th so-called 'openness' and large scale interactions between anybody in spaces (like the inhuman Kings Cross newbuild) serve to dwarf personality at the expense of architectural arrogance and which justifies a hidden research agenda aimed at enhancing the profile of lecturers at the expense of the student experience. Students now only have to attend the equivalent of two days per week whilst they look for part time jobs in the gaps of the academic programme. There is no such thing as a full-time degree course and universities should be held accountable under the Trades Description Act for mi-selling courses. Also students should only pay 2/5ths of the £9000 fees. The 'Art School' has been subsumed into these gigantic lumbering impersonal plc university machines which feather their corporate nests at the expense of an increasingly demoralised and poverty stricken student body. The increase in foreign students studying here is explained by their wealth and their ignorance of the historical demise that I haver just explained as well as having a detachment to our cultural roots.

I 'studied' at St Martins, (Ex)Hornsey, Gloucestershire College of Art&Design, Nene College....early 80s. Recovering from the misogyny, sexism, casual racism. It was a shit system then ( did the 60s ever really happen?) and will survive. Visual Artists are not a homogenous group of heros, some are self serving and over indulged, some will change the world, I learned which group the state was interested in supporting! It never stopped being elitist! I just worked 2 jobs, built a enduring relationship with debt to earn the privelage of discovering this. Hey ho. Still an artist. Still going to change the world.

A perceptive and well-informed article.