Art Students and their Troubles

Leorrarrlo, Vol. 8, pp. 61-65. Pergamon Press 1975. Printed in Great Britain ART STUDENTS AND THEIR TROUBLES* Peter Lloyd Jones** Art schools in Britain are in trouble again. Not this time from rebellious students, but from what many see as a new wave of government purges, purges which threaten not only their traditional habits and ways of work but also their autonomy and, in extreme cases, their existence. What has sparked this off is a succession of official moves. Coming together suddenly, they seemed to many teachers to pose a threat to the entire system of art education-a system which was hailed as a great advance only ten years ago. And so in a way they did. They were meant to. We now know that the entire system will be changed, and that art school autonomy is over. Just before Easter, it was announced that from next year separate diplomas for art students will cease to exist. Instead, successful completion of an approved art-school course will be rewarded with a degree, a Bachelor of Arts or Science, with honours depending on the subject and level attained. The body which looks after the present art school qualifications, the National Council for Diplomas in Art and Design, will be dissolved and merged with the Council for National Academic Awards, the organization that controls all non-university degrees, notably those in the Polytechnics. There will then be only one authority controlling awards in the public sector of further education. How important is this? ‘Diploma’ or ‘Bachelor’what does it matter? What’s in a name? A good deal, maintain the defenders of the status quo. Art and design is a creative affair, and not an academic subject. Nothing except bureaucratic tidiness and administrative convenience will be served by lumping such different activities together. Artists will be heavily outnumbered on the new body by engineers and scientists, and understandably they fear that their vital interests will beover-ridden insimplisticeducational arguments which treat art and design simply as one more subject among many. They point out, tartly, that sinceno oneproposes handing over the nation’s scientificeducation to artists, why should they be flattered by the contrary proposition ? There seems to me little point in joining in this kind of argument. In the first place, it pre-judges how entirely new institutions might work, and in any event the decision has been taken, at governmental level. Looking back now, it’s obvious, from the lamentable collapse of any serious consultation with the profession , that there was never any intention to decide otherwise. Undoubtedly, the manner in which the current reforms were rammed through regardless of dissent has left an atmosphere of suspicion and resentment that will take some time to dissipate. However, * This article first appeared in TheListener (London)90, ** Artist and teacher living at 22 Bradbourne St., 265 (1973). Fulham, London, S.W.6, England. I think that the time has now come to try to judge the new proposals on their merits: what do they offer art education in the way of new opportunities, and what do they impose in the way of new costs? But let me describe the system as it is today. In the late ’fifties, Professor Sir William Coldstream headed a distinguished committee that in 1960produced a report which led to the setting up of the new Diplomas in Art and Design to replace the earlier National Diploma in Design. They proposed a new qualification which would be roughly comparable to an honours degree, to be organized, operated and examined by the colleges themselves with the aid of external assessors. At the time that report was written, there were almost a hundred different art, craft and design options that could be examined for the old NDD, and part of the job was simply to rationalize this proliferation into a simpler system within some equalization of standard and scope. This was done with a reduction to 11 chief studies of a more broadly-conceived kind. To give these new, broader studies a solid cultural anchorage, a mandatory period of study of ‘non-studio’ subjects was built into the course-the history of art and design and a group...