The Decorated School: 06/10/2013

Monday 7 October 2013

New Book published soon !

The Decorated School. Essays on the Visual Culture of Schooling is soon to be published by Black Dog.

see http://blackdogonline.com/all-books/the-decorated-school.html

Contributors have been participants in the research network. The book is beautifully illustrated and contains chapters with examples from England, Scotland, Norther Ireland, France, the USA, Japan and Kyrgystan. It has been funded with help from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and a generous grant from the Henry Moore Institute. Order your copies now !

Subjects include: the ‘Art at School’ movement in France; sculpture in Japanese schools, the Chicago mural movement; the Edinburgh ‘Schools Beautiful’ programme; the art-curriculum relationships of post-war British primary schools; London County Council’s educational commissions; Asger Jorn’s Decorations for Århus Statsgymnasium; abstraction and modern schooling in New York; Soviet and Post-Soviet school decoration in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan; and children’s art projects in Belfast.

The future of the Decorated School Research initiative

The Arts and Humanities Research Council funding of the Decorated School Research Network came to an end in February this year. There is scope now to put together an international research project drawing from the enormous interest that this blog has raised around the world. Please get in touch if you are interested in helping to shape the next stages of the research which can focus on looking more closely at how pupils and teachers respond over time to elements of decoration and colour in their school buildings.

The Decorated School Research network

We are researching the relationships between architects, artists and educators through the art which became part of the fabric of school buildings and their immediate environments in the 20th century. We are interested in understanding more about how the art came to be commissioned, how the subject matter was decided, what was its function, its life story and what ideas about education or childhood, if any, were intended to be conveyed.

The research is funded by the Arts and Humanites Research Council and is led by Dr Catherine Burke, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge and Dr Jeremy Howard, Art History, University of St Andrews. There will be 4 seminars, open to the public, at sites of significant interest over the next 2 years as well as a final international conference and book. We will use this site to announce events, collect material and report on findings. Do contact us to let us know of any school based murals, ceramics, textiles, sculptures by recognised artists - possibly in collaboration with school pupils - that you know exist. Many of these may be in danger as school buildings are becoming replaced often with scant regard to the treasures that they contain.

Project Partners
Peter Blundell-Jones, School of Architecture,University of Sheffield
Peter Cunningham, Homerton College, University of Cambridge
Ian Grosvenor, School of Education,University of Birmingham Roy Kozlovsky, School of Architecture, Northeastern University, USA
Kirk Niergarth, Art Historian, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
Professeur Annie Renonciat, visual education historian, Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique and Université Paris, France.
Andrew Saint, architectural historian, English Heritage Deborah Wakely, architect, ARK, UK Diane Watters, Buildings Investigator, Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland
Jon Wood,Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
Andrew Demetrius Visual Resources Curator School of Art History University of St Andrews