Utilising primary sources such as parliamentary papers, official reports and
prospectuses to examine the development of policy on design education for the first time, whilst also expanding the scope of existing work on the history of design
education, this thesis argues that changing historical contexts and circumstances within which design education developed led to tensions and discrepancies between policy and practice. This resulted in a profusion of policy recommendations as policy makers attempted to address the circumstances of the time, and also highlighted the inherent difficulties in delivering a subject which requires instruction in both theoretical and practical components. It is only by taking an overview of 155 years of design education that patterns in recurring issues in debates around what should be taught and how, can be fully seen. An overview of this nature also reveals the changing questions and issues which those policy-makers for design education were attempting to address: What is design and how should it be taught? Should design education focus more on industry, and if so, how many students should we train and how? Design education has to become more practical and relevant to industry; what should be taught to make it so? Will changes in higher education affect design education and if so, how? The recurring question has always been ‘What should we teach, and how should we teach it’, though the answer to that question has changed over time depending on the wider context within which design education has developed, as this thesis demonstrates.
Chapter two examines the background to the issues raised in the 1835-6 Select
Committee and subsequent foundation of the School of Design. It argues that the Select Committee came about as a result of a mixture of concerns and interests: which
included criticisms of the Royal Academy as a teaching institution; the perceived economic benefits of design: the notion of ‘taste’ and its relationship to manufacturing;
nationalism; and a growing cultural interest in art and design. The chapter argues that there was no one single reason which led to the Select Committee, as other scholars have suggested, but rather it was a multiplicity of factors which were involved in the Committee and the foundation of the School. These themes develop in chapter three where it is demonstrated that some of the issues raised during the 1835-6 Select
Committee were to raise on-going questions of what design was and how it should be taught. The question of how design should be taught led to oscillating aims of the School of Design, with no clear intent or direction, through the initial years of the School. Resistance on the part of manufacturers to recognise the potential of design and designers to improve their products led to further reassessment of the School’s aims in 1849 which resulted, ultimately, in design education taking a backward step by moving away from practical instruction in the 1880s and becoming standardised and formulaic;
a system which remained in place for the following fifty years. Chapter four examines the 1930s which was the next juncture at which the question of design and its relation to industry was raised again, and by which time mechanisation had become commonplace in some industries and was just beginning in others. Policy-makers then had to contend with questions around whether design education would remain art and craft-based, or if it would begin to focus more on industrial processes and technologies, and if so, how much instruction in manufacturing could reasonably be expected to be delivered in art schools, and how should that be done? Before any of these questions were satisfactorily answered, though, war broke out, and the issues were temporarily laid to one side. By the time the Second World War ended and policy-makers began again to address the subject of design education, new materials and technologies developed during the war were beginning to be utilised by various industries. As chapter five goes on to argue, industries were increasingly, if not wholly, mechanised by this point, and it was clear that design education would have to take this into account if design graduates were to be of use to industry. It was no longer a question of ‘if’, but ‘how’ design education would focus more on industrial methods and provide appropriate training for design students.
There was agreement amongst policy-makers that design (and designers) was of use to industry; the question was what training should design students receive in art school so that they could be of maximum benefit to industry once they left. One solution was the overhaul of the existing art and design examinations system, and the National Diploma in Design (hereafter NDD) was introduced in 1946, and was intended to be a far more practical qualification than previous Ministry of Education exams, though in practice it came in for criticism from industrialists and manufacturers for being too specialised, and was seen as primarily a teacher training qualification. Although the NDD was criticised, it was the first attempt by policy-makers to bring design education back to a
more vocationally-based training, and to return to the original aims of the School of Design in providing designers trained for specific industries. Post-war developments in higher and further education more widely also began to affect design education; in the late 1950s the Minister for Education decided that not only should art schools be given the freedom to design and examine their own courses for the first time, but art and design courses should be reviewed and should be of a standard similar to that of a university degree, a decision which led to a second overhaul of art and design education and the introduction of the Diploma in Art and Design (hereafter Dip A.D) in 1963-4.
As chapter six demonstrates, not only did policy-makers now have to address the issue of industrial and technological components within design courses, but also questions concerning how to raise standards and introduce more academic elements to design courses to give them more parity with university degrees. In 1969 some art schools became part of polytechnic institutions, and in the mid 1970s art school diplomas became BA degrees. These institutional changes raised new questions regarding the standard and components of courses; art schools had previously been singular institutions or had shared facilities with technology colleges, now, as part of larger polytechnics, there were opportunities for design students to take a wider variety of subjects across disciplines if these were relevant to the overall aims of the design course.
As shown in the conclusion, changes in higher education more widely have continued to affect design education since polytechnics became universities in 1992, and the volume of reports produced since that time would provide a fertile resource for anyone wishing to undertake a study of design education and its continued development. Perhaps proving that debates on design education are truly cyclical, many of the reports
published since 2000 concern themselves primarily with the contribution design and the wider creative industries can make to the economy, and the need for Britain to compete with other countries in the area of design, echoing the concerns of the 1835-6 Select Committee.
Chapter Two: The background to art and design education in England
2.1 Introduction
This chapter examines the variety of factors leading to the Select Committee of 1835 and the subsequent founding of the Normal, or Head School of Design.40 This was the first school of design in the country, and was to set the standard for art and design education. The chapter argues that the direction the School of Design was to take was uncertain from the start due the multiplicity of factors which influenced its foundation;
economic concerns, the issue of nationalism and national identity through design, questions of taste and fashion, and concerns regarding the teaching at the Royal Academy all contributed to the founding of the School of Design. These factors are apparent in the Select Committee report of 1835, and have been explored by a number of scholars. Bell, Sutton, Carline and Macdonald have all tended to emphasise the perceived economic benefit of design as the primary factor leading to the School of Design, while Bird has noted the contribution of the painter Benjamin Haydon in events leading up to the Select Committee.41 Cunningham has also acknowledged Haydon’s influence but has also suggested that issues of nationalism and philanthropy were factors contributing to the founding of the School, while Romans concentrated on issues of taste and fashion as of importance to the Committee.42 Bell also suggested that the perceived failure of the Royal Academy to provide any meaningful instruction for artists meant that any artists who did then work in manufactures found their training was ill suited for their work. Analysis of the text of the 1835-6 Select Committee report
40 The title ‘Normal’ school is said to come from the French teacher training École Normal Superieure (Normal Superior School) founded in Paris in 1794. It was intended to be a model for other schools, and was to set the teaching standard or ‘norm’. Presumably, by calling the School of Design the Normal School of Design, the intention was that it was to set the standard of design.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/418257/normal-school - accessed 18/12/14
41 E. Bird The Development of Art and Design Education in the United Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century (unpublished PhD thesis: Loughborough University of Technology, 1992) p. 80 onwards. For full information on Benjamin Haydon, see part I chapter 2 of Bird’s thesis.
42 P Cunningham The formation of the Schools of Design, 1830-1850, with special reference to Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds (unpublished PhD thesis: University of Leeds, 1979) pp. 1-2 and chapters 1 and 2 Cunningham’s thesis. M. Romans Political, Economic, Social and Cultural
Determinants in the History of Early to Mid-Nineteenth Century Art and Design Education in Britain (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Central England, 1998) p. 164 and onwards.
itself provides evidence for the arguments that previous scholars have made regarding the foundation of the School of Design, and indeed, each argument is valid.43 This chapter, however, goes one step further in suggesting that all of these factors need to be taken into account when considering the foundation and subsequent nebulous aims of the School.
This chapter outlines each of the factors leading to the foundation of the School of Design in turn, starting with the Royal Academy and criticisms surrounding it, before moving on to examine the growing public interest in art allied with issues of patriotism and nationalism as examined by Cunningham. The chapter then goes on to explore the role of Benjamin Haydon in agitating for change and his influence on events leading up to the Select Committee of 1835-6. Following this, the Select Committee itself is examined, and the views of witnesses on the failure of the Royal Academy, the superiority of foreign goods, and the benefits of a school of design – particularly in relation to improving the taste of the public –are explored in order to further the
argument that it was a multiplicity of factors which led to the founding of the School of Design. The chapter thus builds on previous scholarship regarding the founding of the School of Design by presenting a synoptic view for the first time to argue that there was no one single reason that the School was started; rather it was a combination of factors which contributed to its foundation and, crucially for this thesis, led to the confused beginnings of the School regarding what it was to teach, to whom and for what purpose.
This was to have implications for design education for the next one hundred years, as is revealed through the remainder of the thesis.