Dartington College of Arts was a specialist arts college located at Dartington Hall in the south-west of England, offering courses at degree and postgraduate level together with an arts research programme. It existed for a period of almost 50 years, from its foundation in 1961, to when it closed at Dartington in 2010. A version of the College was then re-established in what became Falmouth University, and the Dartington title was subsequently dropped. The College was one of only a few in Britain devoted exclusively to specialist practical and theoretical studies in courses spanning right across the arts. It had an international reputation as a centre for contemporary practice. As well as the courses offered, it became a meeting point for practitioners and teachers from around the world. Dartington was known not only as a place for training practitioners, but also for its emphasis on the role of the arts in the wider community.
History Dartington Hall Trust The College was one of a complex of organisations linked to the Dartington Hall Trust, mostly grouped on, or around, the Dartington Hall estate in South Devon. The College emerged out of the already well established activities in arts, education and social and economic reconstruction instigated and funded by Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst at Dartington Hall from the mid 1920s. Under the umbrella of The Dartington Hall Trust Arts Department, a variety of courses had been offered as privately run initiatives during the 1940s and 1950s, including the first music course started by Imogen Holst in 1944. The Adult Education Centre, which opened in 1955 under the direction of Ivor Weeks, mainly offering evening, short and part-time courses, provided a springboard for a fully-fledged college of arts. The 1950s also saw the formation of the Dartington String Quartet, 1958–1981, which became internationally famous and would play a significant part in the subsequent the musical life of the College for two decades.
Founding the College The new College was opened in 1961 within the public sector with local authority support. The Dartington Hall Trust would continue to own the College's buildings and to extend these as time went on. The College's development can best be described in a number of phases, as set out below, although with overlap of individual courses across these phases. In each phase the structure and rationale of the College shifted, largely as a survival strategy in the face of changes in local and national policy and funding. The College managed to keep its independence and ethos throughout, but not without difficulty. Peter Cox, the founding principal, who had previously been Warden of The Dartington Hall Arts Centre, did more than anyone to ensure the College's viability in the early years. He worked at Dartington for over 40 years, from 1940 to 1983.
Phase 1: training specialist arts teachers, 1961-1973 The initial focus was on separate specialist teacher training courses in Music (led by Michael Lane), Dance/Drama (led by Ruth Foster) and Visual Art (led by Ivor Weeks), each of which was housed in its own department. The courses were based on the belief that teachers in the arts should be practitioners in their own right. Approval of this programme was based on an association with Rolle College, a teacher training establishment in Exmouth, which would offer a top-up year following either one or two years at Dartington. Although the three separate departments went their own way to a large extent, there was some commonality of approach: a John Dewey-inspired philosophy of "learning by doing." The teacher training courses were established over a period of time, starting with Music, initially led by Doris Gould, and then Dance and Drama, initially led by Ruth Foster. The Art course was the last of the three to come on stream in 1967 led by Ivor Weeks. The strong influence of Corsham (Bath Academy of Art) was a feature of the art teaching at Dartington since the majority of the staff in the early years were Corsham trained. In addition to the new courses for the 18 plus age group, a two-year music preparatory course for 16 to 18 year olds, led by Nigel Amherst was established in 1961 and ran successfully for many years. Similar courses in the other arts were set up around this time, but ran on a smaller scale and for much shorter periods.
Phase 2: honours degree courses, 1973-1990 The James Report in 1972 led to a change of Government policy, which now required all teachers in Britain to be graduates. It signalled the beginning of the end for Dartington's involvement in specialist arts teacher training. At the same time there was a shift in funding sources for colleges in higher education from local authority to central government. Fortunately for Dartington, the College was able to apply for so called "assisted status," enabling Devon County Council to top up the finances and the students to apply for grants, then a key factor in recruitment. During the 1970s and 1980s, new degree courses were set up in Music, Theatre and Visual Art. The courses were now validated by the CNAA (Council for National Academic Awards). During this period, College resources, including space and technical support, were steadily improved and staffing was diversified and enhanced. For initial and for continuing validation, adequate levels of student achievement in practice and theory had to be demonstrated. Once established, the longer courses inevitably led to higher standards overall. The following degree courses were set up during this period:
The 3 Year Hons. Degree in Music, established in 1974 and led by Jack Dobbs, then Janet Ritterman and then Bob Hanson. The new degree followed a short experiment in running a degree in Music and English with the University of Exeter. While the specific teacher training focus was now dropped, the long-held Dartington belief in ‘music for all’ remained as an underlying philosophy. There were practical options not only in the Western classical tradition, but also jazz, popular music, folk music, improvisation, experimental contemporary music, electronic music and the music of other cultures. This last category was one where Dartington offered, uniquely at the time, practical studies in Indian classical music, in the Balinese Gamelan and in Japanese Shakuhachi flute playing. Work was also offered in the field of music and special needs education led by David Ward, with inter-arts collaboration from Bruce Kent and Keith Yon. A ‘Music in Society’ option was added when the course was revised in 1981 to replace the 2 year Dip HE. Music in the Community, previously established in the early 1970s by Gordon Jones. The 4 Year Hons. Degree in Theatre, established in 1976, led by Collette King, followed by Peter Hulton and then Claire Macdonald. The course included three areas of work: movement/choreography, writing, and acting/directing with some specialisation in one or other of these from the second year onwards. A unique feature of the new course was its 4 year duration allowing for a third year off-campus involving community-based work. The emphasis continued to be on the creation of new work, as distinct from training actors for the stage. Although integrated into a broader theatre degree, Dartington's already established reputation for Dance grew internationally during these years. It became known for its emphasis on experimental dance making and its early introduction of Release Work under Mary Fulkerson. Mary was succeeded by Katy Duck and then others in the next phase of the College. The writing element of the course was led by Peter Hulton, who worked in the College from 1969–1990, later becoming Head of Theatre and then Principal. He was the instigator of the Dartington Theatre Papers and subsequently the Arts Archive (a digital collection of theatre and dance research, now hosted by the University of Exeter). Assistant editors of the Theatre Papers included in succession: Alan Read, David Williams and Ric Allsopp. Acting and directing was led by Roger Sell who also led the Dartington College of Arts International Office supervising Erasmus student and staff exchanges and other international connections, for example with the Cornish Institute, Seattle. The 3 Year Hons. Degree in Art and Social Context, established in 1986, led by Chris Crickmay, replaced the two-year Dip. HE with a similar title which had been launched by Paul Oliver in 1977. By the time the three-year degree was launched, the earlier two-year course had already been much developed, with particular inputs from Chris Crickmay and David Harding who had both arrived at Dartington in 1978. The focus on social context proved generative on many levels. Besides the usual studio-based activity, the course included elements of group work, site-specific work and a student residency. Students were able to opt for work in the full range of media generally covered in fine art: painting, sculpture, print making, photography, video, live art and installation. The prevalence of social and cultural concerns in the work of many Turner Prize winners in recent years is just one example of a widening social consciousness in the arts suggesting that this Dartington initiative was well ahead of its time.
Following Peter Cox, College Principals in this period included Curtis Roosevelt, Peter Hulton and Janet Ritterman.
Phase 3: unifying and extending the programme 1990-2010 With the 1988 Education Reform Act, the College found itself again in a financially vulnerable position. Changes in national policy put an end to previous local authority support via the Assisted Status programme. To make matters worse, in 1989, accounts showed that the College was operating at a considerable loss. Extreme measures were required if it were to survive. Most contentiously, the relatively new BA Hons. in Art and Social Context was discontinued, with the loss of its staff and facilities. The College would now focus purely on Performance Arts. The unique four-year format of the theatre degree was another casualty, along with its urban outposts. The option to study Indian music was dropped. In the shake up, the Polytechnic South West (later University of Plymouth) agreed to play an active part in a necessarily unequal partnership, assuming a full quality assurance role and making some conditions for their support.
The parameters were set for a new academic structure: a single framework across the undergraduate programme leading to three-year courses as either single honours, or combined awards. The entire programme was established and initially led by the poet John Hall. A common modular structure would make cross-disciplinary work and collaboration across courses easier than it had been in the earlier years. Major and minor options were available, which also encouraged students to explore across disciplines. Existing degree courses were re-written within a common modular template, which included a common approach to off-campus work in the final year and a common approach to Cultural Studies which had previously been taught differently in the separate departments. A final year dissertation was now included as part of the common approach. During this phase, the following programmes were available:
BA Hons. Music led by Trevor Wiggins. The focus and content of the degree continued to be unique in comparison with other institutions. There was a focus on all genres of contemporary music, a requirement to combine practice and theory, and to explore this in relation to a specific context off-campus, as well as the possibility of work across disciplines. These precepts led to the development of a four-year "International" award in 2000 that included a year in a partner institution in Europe, the USA, or New Zealand.