The dance goes on forever? Art schools, class and UK higher education

For most of the 20th century, the UK ‘art school’ was widely seen as an accessible alternative to University. In Art into Pop (1987), Simon Frith and Howard Horne revealed how this state-funded art and design training, linked to manufacturing industries and backed by relatively low or informal entry requirements, offered the prospect of social and economic uplift for hitherto marginalised working-class youth. More recently, however, while enrolments have expanded, art schools have become absorbed into conventional universities and the class profile, at least at the more prestigious colleges, has changed significantly. Simultaneously, art schools, together with other forms of higher education (HE) have been yoked to a broader public policy agenda of the ‘creative economy’ - one that often marginalises working-class people. This paper takes the changing nature of the art school as its starting point for discussion of class, higher education and the creative economy workforce.