Moving Dartington College of Arts out of Totnes ...

Battle to save celebrated cradle of cutting edge art

Campaigners say moving college will rip heart out of 'hippy dippy' Totnes

Steven Morris
Thursday December 28, 2006
The Guardian

Totnes may have picture postcard looks and a reputation as the UK's hippy-dippy capital but the announcement that the Devon town is to lose its beloved art college has provoked open, furious revolt.
A huge campaign to stop Dartington College of Arts, one of the world's most celebrated breeding grounds for cutting edge artists, being forced from its bucolic home on the Dartington Estate will gather force this week with a series of meetings and protests.

Claiming the move will rip the heart out of Totnes, the artists, hippies, therapists, druids and ordinary townsfolk are boycotting the shops and businesses owned by the trust which runs the estate. Letters have been written to organisations from the Charity Commission to the National Audit Office calling on them to investigate the move while artists are being urged to stay away from the trust's programme of events.
The protesters suspect the trust wants the messy, sandal-wearing students out so the estate can be turned into a money-spinning centre for "elitist" culture and corporate conferences.

Simon Murray, director of theatre at the college and a governor, said: "I think the trustees like the idea of art as heritage but don't understand that making it is an edgy, messy process. If Picasso had been working here I imagine they'd have wanted him out."

Richard Gonski, the conductor of the Torbay Symphony Orchestra and a leading light in the campaign, said: "It's all about this spread sheet culture we have now. It has already happened in education and health, which are run by accountants. Now it is happening in art.

"The college and town have an amazing relationship. The college is what makes Totnes what it is and vice versa. Without the college Totnes will no longer be the vibrant, energetic place it is. It will go back to what it was 50 or 60 years ago, a sleepy rural town. And the idea of the college not being on the estate is absurd."

The estate and the college have proud histories. Bought in 1925 by Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst, the estate was the base for the couple's experiments in arts and crafts, building and agriculture. The college opened in 1961 and continues to win plaudits as a crucible for cutting-edge music, dance and theatre created in cream tea country.

Dartington has hosted many of the greats - from Stravinsky to Britten, Bernard Shaw to Gilbert and George. Michael Chekhov, the actor and director, sought refuge from the Nazis here while Bernard Leach was lured from St Ives to teach pottery. Ravi Shankar, so the story goes, was so inspired by Dartington while on a dance tour with his family troupe that he devoted himself to the sitar.

The trust says it can no longer afford to support the college. Millions, it argues, are needed to refurbish student accommodation and it is worried the college's long-term funding is not assured.

It rejects the notion it wants the college out so it can bring in more "elitist" art, although the trustees are already committed to creating an "international centre for the creation of new work" and are talking to powerful American institutions such as CalArts, a Californian college.

The college says moving is "unthinkable" but is resigned to the move and is in talks with institutions in Devon and Cornwall as it tries to find a new home. In Totnes, once voted one of the funkiest places in the world, the mood is anything but funky.

The town council estimates the college's 700 students and 200 staff bring as much as £6m a year directly into Totnes. "It's awful," said Friar West, who arrived in Totnes on a canoe 35 years ago and never left. "It's the students who make this place what it is, a vibrant, alternative place. If they go a big part of Totnes goes with them."