The Decorated School

This research network will record and begin to analyse what we have termed 'the decorated school'. For our purposes, 'the decorated school' means those aspects of the school building and surrounds that were worked on by artists and sculptors to integrated art works intended to project ideas about education in relation to notions of local or national identities. Mural decoration has been characteristic in school design in the past and is often a feature in the present design of new schools and today is frequently used as a vehicle for pupil or community participation. But in the past there was a deep appreciation of how the best design and art might act as a kind of educator and in England regional education officers such as Henry Morris in Cambridgeshire, Stuart Mason in Leicestershire and John Newsom in Hertfordshire ensured that new school buildings would contain works of beauty and excellent design. The post-war period was a time when the renewal of school buildings led to artists working collaboratively with architects and educators to decorate school interiors and grounds. The artifacts installed ranged from ceramic tiles to large scale murals and sculptures. These items were carefully considered to project a particular image of childhood, adolescence or education to a specific local audience.
The research network will meet at sites where there are existing examples that have survived to date. Additionally, the research will document what has existed, and what remains, making this data publicly available through a website and publication. This is urgent work as many school buildings that were built in the past are threatened with demolition as the renewal of the building stock progresses.

By the end of the project, there will be an enhanced understanding that the decoration of the school environment has a long and remarkable history, that it has been neglected as a subject, that it has hitherto poorly researched consequences for child development, that it is pertinent to today, that it is of inter-disciplinary concern to art historians, educationalists, sociologists, architects, curators, planners and policy makers. In addition, there will be generated a method of working and a multi-disciplinary theorisation of the subject that can be applied elsewhere in the world.
Historians of art, architecture and education will combine their knowledge and disciplinary expertise and in drawing together existing understanding will generate the production of new knowledge that will stimulate new research questions regarding the place of art and the role of artists in the school of the 21st century. This fundamental question will be addressed through the perspective of those aspects that appear to have been vital in the past i.e. national identity and status; notion of education; view of the child or concept of childhood; school 'as a canvas for the arts 'and the school building as a teacher. The involvement of practicing architects currently designing schools who, through established collaboration with the PI have consolidated an interest in drawing knowledge from the past in designing for the future, will add significant value and associated impact to the activities envisaged and the products to be generated. The activities will draw in a wider audience of researchers and practitioners while keeping a clear focus on multiple ways of viewing, recording and analysing examples of 'the decorated school'. The activities and their outcomes will stimulate new research agendas for historians of education, designers of new school buildings, heritage and cultural industries professionals, art historians and architectural historians as well as those involved in networks of multi-disciplinary groups considering how the communications and information technology revolution is transforming learning and the visual culture of schools as spaces for learning.