1. ART SCHOOLS IN THE POLYTECHNICS: FINE ARTISTS
RESIGNED EN MASSE FROM THE NCDAD P A N E L - B U T
WHERE WERE THEIR PROTESTS IN THE REAL
BATTLES OF 1968?
Dangers of
fragmentation
in art education
Tony Heath
• The major issue in art education is the
future of the 130 non-DipAD schools
rather than the worries of those fine artists
who resigned from the DipAD fine arts
panel in protest at the merger of some art
schools into the polytechnics. Mr Heath is a
Surrey county councillor who took a special
interest in the troubles at Guildford School of
Art.
The storm over the merger of a
number of art schools with the poly­
technics has reached gale force in a
remarkably short time. It is, after all,
less than two months since The Guardian
published the article by the distin­
guished artist Patrick Heron which
first caused north cones to be hoisted.
In his article Mr Heron sought to
arraign the polytechnics on a charge of
murdering the art schools which have
become constituent parts of poly­
technics.
Technocratic insensitivity and ad­
ministrative inflexibility were allegedly
reducing the former schools of art to
mere shadows of their past glories.
Powerful support rallied to the prose­
cution's side within days when 20 of
the 24 members of the fine art panel
of the National Council for Diplomas
in Art and Design resigned in protest
against the homicides being perpe­
trated. The row has generated so
much noise — the loudest voices coming
from the fine art sectors of art and
design education - that there is a
danger of the wider concerns of the
art colleges receiving even less attention
than they have in the past.
One important omission of the re­
signing members of the NCDAD fine
art panel starts with a failure to state
adequately the arithmetic of the situa­
tion. Of some 170 art and design
colleges about 40 hold the degree-
equivalent Diploma in Art and Design
(DipAD) status. Sixteen of the DipAD
schools are merged into polytechnics
and a seventeenth - Hornsey - is des­
tined to follow suit. Less than half the
DipAD schools are involved and it is
almost exclusively to these that the
anguished attentions of the present
furore have been directed.
What, it is being asked, is the future
of the 130 non-DipAD schools which
tend in some quarters to be regarded
as the poor relations of the art education
system? Their circumstances appear to
be little understood by those now pro­
testing about the overwhelming and
crushing effects said to be brought
about by the merging of some DipAD
schools in the polytechnics.
Many of the DipAD schools con­
sider themselves the elite of art edu­
cation. This being the case it is perhaps
understandable that the protests being
voiced on their behalf carry clear
sectarian overtones and concentrate
obsessively on the fine art content of
art and design education. It is perfectly
true that as Mr Martin Froy, who
resigned as chairman of the NCDAD
fine art panel only ten days after his
appointment, said 'great works of art
are among the highest human achieve­
ments'. What is questionable is whether
the pursuit of such a laudable objective
should entail the perpetuation of a
divisive education system which in­
corporates in its structure a few select
ivory towers built so as to ensure that
the occupants rarely see the growing
urban squalor and the mounting detritus
of a consumer society.
These are the kinds of concerns
which absorb the attention of many art
and design students and teachers in
addition to a broadly shared recognition
of the value of fine art. And many feel
that within the polytechnics art and
design education can play a useful role
in helping to improve the overall
quality of life, a goal at least as desirable
as painting beautiful pictures. Set in a
multi-disciplinary institution an art
college which sees itself as enriching a
widely shared culture can come much
nearer to attaining this objective than
if it remains in comfortable isolation.
Art and design education is in danger
of fragmenting into three groups — non-
Diploma schools, Diploma schools, and
Diploma schools merged into poly­
technics. Such a situation is as wasteful
and divisive as the old concept of three
levels of secondary education — tech­
nical, modern and grammar. A much
greater emphasis on comprehensiveness
should be welcomed by colleges which
define their function in terms of in­
fluencing society through involvement,
rather than in terms of passively accept­
ing the benefits of patronage which is
unlikely to be conferred without cor­
responding restraints.
The current shouts of murder con­
trast strangely with the NCDAD's
near-mute response to the joint report
of the council and the National
Advisory Council on Art Education
published in 1970. Perhaps this was
because, although the report concerned
the future structure of art education,
Education & Training, December 1971 405
© Emerald Backfiles 2007

2. 'Some of the over-ripe talk of murder most foul
may help to mask a more
important criticism of art and design education.'
the one thing that was not discussed
was the structure of the NCDAD. As
a body with a rather restricted member­
ship - both the National Union of Stu­
dents and the Association of Teachers
in Technical Institutions have com­
mented on the need to widen repre­
sentation — which seems not to produce
written reports when a college's DipAD
prospects are assessed, it would appear
to be in need of precise terms of
reference and a reform of its member­
ship.
The joint NACAE/NCDAD report
was a result of the art college upheavals
in the summer of 1968 when two major
concerns expressed centred round the
differences in standards between
Diploma and non-Diploma schools
and courses and the narrow confines
into which many courses were strait-
jacketed. Neither of these problems
claimed much attention from those
quarters now protesting against the
circumstances of the polytechnic-
merged schools. Indeed, it was pre­
cisely when help was most needed —
during the crucial weeks when the
LEAs were treating their colleges as
centres of rebellion instead of as a
positive force for reform - that voices
which might have got through to even
the most obtuse local government mind
stayed silent.
The prim horror now being expressed
at the prospect of working in the same
institution as white-coated technologists
is the more difficult to understand
because three years ago there was no
support from these quarters for a call
to refurbish an education system that
was patently failing to meet students'
needs and aspirations. And, of course,
some of the over-ripe talk of murder
most foul may help to mask a more
important criticism of art and design
education.
The vast majority - over three-
quarters of the 170 institutions - of
art and design schools remain in the
hands of the local education authorities.
The view of these bodies is simple
enough. Designers and artists, the
liturgy runs, are needed to supply the
wants of industry (particularly local
industry in many versions), to help in
the export drive, to recycle themselves
as future art teachers, and to paint
and carve for the delectation of whoever
attends exhibitions. When limited ob­
jectives are translated into reality it is
not surprising that the growth of art
and design education is so slow. For
nowhere is there a place for the sorts
of visions which were observed during
1968, the year of crisis for the LEA art
colleges and the year when students
and lecturers carefully constructed an
educational model in which creativity
and concern could flourish.
The narrow ladder up which students
were intended to progress was found to
have dry rot in almost every rung.
Those who managed to struggle to the
top emerged clutching a piece of paper
bearing some such legend as The
Loamshire Diploma in Graphic Design;
far from being a passport to a job it was
taken by some employers as to indicate
that the holder was not good enough to
acquire the elite DipAD.
So the ladder was to be discarded and
replaced with a network of inter­
related disciplines in which many
permutations would be possible and
flexibility of courses would be funda­
mental. A comprehensive ideal was
formulated which could have helped
towards creating greater concern for
the visual and aesthetic content of life
as it touches everyone at work and at
play. It was a concern that went
beyond the narrow specialisms of
designing trendy packaging to sell
more cereals or painting a handsome
scene to adorn a gallery wall.
If greater support for this ideal had
been forthcoming from the lofty heights
of the art and design establishment
perhaps today's outcry would not have
taken place. For the colleges by now
could have been well on the way to
establishing themselves in cooperation
with schools of architecture, faculties of
construction and engineering design,
town planning and environmental
studies, as pacemakers in a movement
to reverse the present drift towards a
garish, consumer-dominated society
which may profit but is increasingly
displeased with itself.
Art and design education could have
led. Instead, it seems doomed to remain
split, undecided and inward looking.
The resigning chairman of the NCDAD
fine art panel posed the question: will
the independent art schools survive?
Those with more than a nodding
acquaintance with the 1968 sit-ins and
their aftermath may smile wryly and
ask: what independence? There have
been marginal gains, of course. Staff
and student participation is increased,
new articles and instruments of govern­
ment formulated, a greater role for
academic boards, all help to give the
colleges in the LEAs' control some
measure of internal advance. But the
dominant forces still meet in remote
committee rooms and the testing time
will not come while the art and design
colleges stay grouped apart like football
teams of diverse skills.
Appreciating the difficulties of the
LEA colleges it is hard to conceive of
the polytechnic-merged schools wishing
to enter the municipal fold. To talk
in terms of survival is simply to ignore
the sheer destruction visited on the
Guildford Art School three years ago
when the complementary studies de­
partment, acknowledged to be as good
as any of its kind in the country, was
almost obliterated by an irate Surrey
County Council, or the equally severe
though more subtle decimation at
Hornsey conducted by the Haringey
burghers.
Some of the present outburst sounds
rather shrill and not all informed
opinion agrees with Mr Heron's con­
tention that Leeds Art School's in­
fluence in Europe is as great as that
of the Bauhaus. Revealingly, the argu­
ment is presented in terms of
'destroying' the art schools in exactly
the same way as upholders of selection
for secondary education seek to dis­
credit comprehensives by talking of the
destruction of grammar schools. Both
are the philosophies of elitists.
Increasing support for the creation
of a comprehensive network of post-
school education cannot be ignored in
this debate. Once the preoccupation
with status recedes and greater empha­
sis is placed on the need for equality
in terms of concern and resources then
the climate inside all types of higher
education institutions for such a concept
should be favourable.
The anguish of the art schools merged
with polytechnics is a diversion from
the situation of the majority of art
schools - and of the majority of art
students. Further, it will not assist the
development of art and design educa­
tion in the last quarter of this century
if the colleges remain isolated from the
rest of post-school education. It would
be an act of considerable folly if
sectional pleading - sincere no doubt,
but thoroughly misconceived — for an
isolation which is mistaken for inde­
pendence was allowed to hold back
progress towards comprehensiveness in
higher education any more than similar
pleading should delay such a move­
ment in secondary education. ■
406 Education & Training, December I97I
© Emerald Backfiles 2007