Sir Christopher writes:
“If a New Bauhaus, a new school of art and design, was being founded from scratch in 2009 – knowing all that we now know – what would it be like? What would it be for? How might it relate to the contemporary practices of art and design? The 150th birthday of Brighton School of Art seems an excellent moment to be asking these questions.
This lecture sees The New Bauhaus as:
• an agency of professional education
• a research institute
• a radical academy
• a place for learning through art as well as to art
• a place of convergence
• part of knowledge exchange rather than just the supply chain
• an MIT for design
The New Bauhaus looks at art and design education in the UK at the turn of the last century – when the system thought it was facing the challenges of the new twentieth century, but was in reality embedded in Arts & Crafts thinking – and then reappraises the legacy of the original Bauhaus of 1919-32, puncturing some of the myths and taking a look behind the outstandingly effective branding.
The lecture then, bearing these cautionary tales in mind, explores in detail The New Bauhaus as a genuinely contemporary expression of life within the academy.
I’m sometimes asked “what do you make?”. This is, of course, a reference to how much one earns. But if you’d asked this of a British student of 1900 or a student of the original Bauhaus in the 1920s, he or she would probably have replied “I make things, and I try to make things very well”. If you asked this of a student at The New Bauhaus, he or she would probably say “I make a difference”.
And they’d be right.
In other words, from ‘art, design and craft’ to ‘art, design and culture’.”
Professor Sir Christopher Frayling is a leading national and international figure in the arts and was knighted for ‘services to art and design education’.
His many significant national roles have included Chairmanship of the Design Council, Arts Council England and the Royal Mint Advisory Group. He is also a long-serving Trustee of the Victoria & Albert Museum, was a Governor of the British Film Institute in the 1980s and member of the Crafts Council. He was also a founder member of the Arts & Humanities Research Board (now Council).
A Cambridge history graduate, Sir Christopher’s academic career began as a lecturer in History at the University of Bath. In 1979 he was made the Royal College of Art’s first Professor of Cultural History, becoming Rector of the Royal College of Art in 1996.
A prolific writer, critic and cultural commentator since the early 1970s, Sir Christopher became widely known for his work on ‘Spaghetti Westerns’ and has also written and presented a number of populist television series, including The Face of Tutankhamen and Nightmare: Birth of Horror.
Please note that the Reception that follows Sir Christopher's lecture will be for registered delegates of the Art and Design Education for the 21st Century Conference only.
