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Dartington College of Arts
 
 
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Dartington College of Arts is a specialist arts institution near Totnes
Totnes

Totnes is a market town at the head of the estuary of the River Dart in Devon, England within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty....
, Devon
Devon

Devon is a large Counties of England in South West England. The county is also referred to as Devonshire, but that is an entirely unofficial name, rarely used inside of the county but often indicating a shire....
, South West England
South West England

South West England is one of the regions of England. It is the largest such region in terms of area, and extends from Gloucestershire and Wiltshire to Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly....
, specialising in post-drama
Drama

Drama is the specific Mode of fiction Mimesis in performance. The term comes from a Ancient Greek word meaning "Action " , which is derived from "to do" ....
tic theatre
Theatre

Theatre is the branch of the performing arts defined by Bernard Beckerman as what "occurs when one or more actor, isolated in time and/or Theater , present themselves to Audience." By this broad definition, theatre has existed since the dawn of man, as a result of human tendency for story telling....
, music
Music

Music is an art form whose media is sound organized in time. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm , dynamics , and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture ....
, performance
Performance

A performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which one group of people behave in a particular way for another group of people ....
 writing
Writing

Writing is the representation of language in a textual Media through the use of a set of signs or symbols . It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and the recording of language via a non-textual medium such as Magnetic tape sound recording....
 and visual performance
Performance

A performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which one group of people behave in a particular way for another group of people ....
, focusing on a performative and multi-disciplinary approach to the arts. In addition to this, lecturing staff are all in some way active arts practitioners. The college has an international reputation for excellence, and aims to promote a critical self awareness in contemporary arts practice, and as such is firmly entrenched in post-modernism.

The college was founded in 1961 having evolved as part of the original Dartington Hall
Dartington Hall

The Dartington Hall Trust, near Totnes, Devon, United Kingdom, is a pioneering charity, nurturing ideas to address pressing problems. The charity works for the advancement of the arts, sustainabaility and social justice....
 experiment
Experiment

In scientific inquiry, an experiment is a method of investigating causal relationships among variables. An experiment is a cornerstone of the empiricism approach to acquiring data about the world and is used in both natural sciences and social sciences....
 in rural
Rural

Rural areas are large and isolated areas of a country, often with low populations. Today, 75 percent of the United States' inhabitants live in suburban and urban areas, but cities occupy only 2 percent of the country....
 regeneration.






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Dartington College of Arts is a specialist arts institution near Totnes
Totnes

Totnes is a market town at the head of the estuary of the River Dart in Devon, England within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty....
, Devon
Devon

Devon is a large Counties of England in South West England. The county is also referred to as Devonshire, but that is an entirely unofficial name, rarely used inside of the county but often indicating a shire....
, South West England
South West England

South West England is one of the regions of England. It is the largest such region in terms of area, and extends from Gloucestershire and Wiltshire to Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly....
, specialising in post-drama
Drama

Drama is the specific Mode of fiction Mimesis in performance. The term comes from a Ancient Greek word meaning "Action " , which is derived from "to do" ....
tic theatre
Theatre

Theatre is the branch of the performing arts defined by Bernard Beckerman as what "occurs when one or more actor, isolated in time and/or Theater , present themselves to Audience." By this broad definition, theatre has existed since the dawn of man, as a result of human tendency for story telling....
, music
Music

Music is an art form whose media is sound organized in time. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm , dynamics , and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture ....
, performance
Performance

A performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which one group of people behave in a particular way for another group of people ....
 writing
Writing

Writing is the representation of language in a textual Media through the use of a set of signs or symbols . It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and the recording of language via a non-textual medium such as Magnetic tape sound recording....
 and visual performance
Performance

A performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which one group of people behave in a particular way for another group of people ....
, focusing on a performative and multi-disciplinary approach to the arts. In addition to this, lecturing staff are all in some way active arts practitioners. The college has an international reputation for excellence, and aims to promote a critical self awareness in contemporary arts practice, and as such is firmly entrenched in post-modernism.

The college was founded in 1961 having evolved as part of the original Dartington Hall
Dartington Hall

The Dartington Hall Trust, near Totnes, Devon, United Kingdom, is a pioneering charity, nurturing ideas to address pressing problems. The charity works for the advancement of the arts, sustainabaility and social justice....
 experiment
Experiment

In scientific inquiry, an experiment is a method of investigating causal relationships among variables. An experiment is a cornerstone of the empiricism approach to acquiring data about the world and is used in both natural sciences and social sciences....
 in rural
Rural

Rural areas are large and isolated areas of a country, often with low populations. Today, 75 percent of the United States' inhabitants live in suburban and urban areas, but cities occupy only 2 percent of the country....
 regeneration. It is now funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England. Academic degrees are validated in partnership with the University of Plymouth
University of Plymouth

The University of Plymouth is the largest university in the southwest of England, with over 30,000 students and is the fifth largest UK university based on student population....
.

University College Falmouth
University College Falmouth

University College Falmouth is a United Kingdom university college in Falmouth, Cornwall. Founded in 1902, it had previously been the Falmouth School of Art and then Falmouth College of Arts until it received academic degree-awarding powers in March 2005....
 merged with Dartington College of Arts on 6 April 2008.

The college's mission


On the Dartington website it says that the college's mission is to "...be a radical, innovative Higher Education learning community for contemporary arts practices in performance:

  • building upon, sustaining and developing the distinctive Dartington legacy as a high-quality specialist learning community in the creative arts, at the leading edge of innovation in practice-based teaching, research, and professional development in contemporary arts practices in performance.


  • providing life-enhancing, or transformational experience in creative practice for all those capable of benefiting from the Dartington experience, and adding value to the social, cultural and economic life of our region.


  • nurturing and sustaining distinctive and dependable partnership, through strategic alliances and collaborative initiatives at regional, national and international levels, for the development of our mission within the rapidly-changing context of a global framework for higher education in contemporary arts practice"


One thing that the college is notable for is an interdisciplinary approach to arts practice and to a certain extent students from different courses do not work in isolation from each other. For example the writing students may write scripts which the theatre students then perform etc. As well as this, the college is very keen on international collaboration and in the 3rd year all students go on the Socrates Erasmus scheme
Erasmus programme

The ERASMUS programme, or European Region Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students, is a European student exchange programme established in 1987....
 to various institutions across the globe with similarly prestigious institutions.

Dartington and Bloomsbury

Leonard Elmhirst, the founder of the Dartington estate, was a member of the Bloomsbury group from the 1920s. The college and Hall became a popular arts location for such figures as Julian Bell
Julian Bell

Julian Heward Bell was an English poet, and the son of Clive Bell and Vanessa Bell, the elder sister of Virginia Woolf. The writer Quentin Bell was his younger brother; the writer and painter Angelica Garnett is his half-sister....
, George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw, was an Irish people playwright.Although Shaw's first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, his talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays....
 and Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf

Adeline Virginia Woolf was an England novelist and essayist, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literature literature figures of the twentieth century....
. Dartington has also received special attention from Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar

Pandit Ravi Shankar is a Bengali people Indian sitar player and composer. He is a disciple of Allauddin Khan, the founder of the Maihar gharana of Hindustani classical music....
, Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore

, also known by the sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali people mystic, Brahmo poet, visual artist, playwright, novelist, and composer whose works reshaped Bengali literature and Music of Bengal in the late 19th and early 20th centuries....
, Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a major political and spiritual leader of India and the Indian independence movement. He was the pioneer of satyagraha?resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience, firmly founded upon ahimsa or total non-violence?which led India to Indian independence movement and inspired movements for civi...
, Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, Commander of British Empire Military Cross was an English poetry and author. He became known as a writer of satire anti-war poetry during World War I....
 and the Chinese poet Xu Zhimo
Xu Zhimo

Xu Zhimo was an early 20th century China poet. He was given the name of Zhangxu and the courtesy name of Yousen . He later changed his courtesy name to Zhimo ....
.

Campus

The college is rural and is divided into four campuses, Higher Close, Lower Close, Aller Park and Foxhole. Higher Close is home to the student bar, the Rat and Emu (commonly shortened to 'the Rat'). Many students find the community life enriches their art, and strong identities develop from the individual halls of residences. Accommodation at Higher Close constitutes Henning, Perry and Albermarle and the old Dartington Hall School at Foxhole is subdivided into the Red, Blue, Orange, Yellow, Green and White Houses.

Academics

All BA
Bachelor of Arts

Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin language Artium Baccalaureus, is an Undergraduate education bachelor's degree awarded for either a course or a program in either the liberal arts, the sciences or both....
 students embark on a Contextual inquiry
Contextual inquiry

Contextual inquiry is a user-centered design method, part of the contextual design methodology, that happens up front in the product development lifecycle....
 Project in their third year of study. The project is investigative, and requires the student to examine his or her work in a broader social context. This practice is an example of the College's roots in Dartington School and the alternative education
Alternative education

Alternative education, also known as non-traditional education or educational alternative, includes a number of approaches to teaching and learning other than Traditional education....
 movement which developed from the ideas of Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner was an Austrians philosopher, literary scholar, educator, architect, playwright, social thinker, and Esotericism. After gaining initial recognition as a literary critic and cultural philosopher, at the beginning of the twentieth century he founded a new spiritual movement, Anthroposophy, as an esoteric philosophy growing...
 from the early twentieth century onwards.

Now University College Falmouth: The Dartington Campus

Dartington College of Arts has now merged with University College Falmouth and will be relocating to Cornwall in 2010. This decision was controversial and generated local protest. Financial problems caused Dartington College of Arts to seek a merger with University College Falmouth, which was seen as the only way of securing a long time future for the College. The merger with University College Falmouth is seen as bringing increased resources, support and opportunity for arts students and greater opportunities for vocational study and post-graduate support. University College Falmouth aim to use the merger as a springboard to achieve University status and to create a University of the Arts in South West England. The Dartington Hall Trust will continue to work with University College Falmouth to provide students with the opportunity to carry out projects on the Dartington Estate, to work with visiting artists and make use of the resources of the estate.

External links