Thirty three years ago students and some dissident staff mounted a show at Art Net in Central London (27 June to 3 July 1974 to be exact):
“The Integrated Design Memorial Show.
Documentation about the work, philosophy & politics of the Ealing Integrated Design Course, 1970-74, and factors leading to its demise.”
Looking through some old papers today, I discovered my response to a request from the organisers for a personal statement, which I reproduce here:
“When I was asked to prepare a statement for this show I was asked to describe my progress through the course and what I had got out of it. Had I still been a student on the course I might have taken this approach. But I find at this time I am unable to do so. Had the course been continuing something of the kind might have been appropriate and, perhaps, interesting. But the course is not continuing.
A possible reaction to this would be to write something expressing my rage, sadness and frustration about the end of the course. But hopefully any one going around this show will feel the sense of waste the end of the course makes me feel.
What instead I would like to point to is two things which since I left the course have seemed increasingly important.
Firstly the sense of personal involvement in and commitment to the course by its students. The course has not been the product of any one individual or small group of individuals, but the collective product of a large number of staff and students working together, and as such is an example of the way that democracy can work in an educational setting and work efficiently.
Secondly, that the course was not only something important and valuable to the people directly involved with it, but has been an important educational experiment with implications not only for Art and Design education but for education as a whole.
The word experiment is used with some caution. Too often it means brave tries, gallant failures or peripheral and irrelevant events.
The Integrated Design course was not an experiment in that sense.
The course has been successful.
There is no reason to suppose that had it been allowed to continue it would not have continued to be a success.
No doubt in other places in the show examples of the different ways that it has succeeded and the different criteria that can be applied to its success will be shown.
Whether an experiment that succeeds is still an experiment depends upon your point of view.
In a particular sense I believe the course was still an experiment and would have continued to be an experiment, because it was attempting something new and because it was structured and organised in such a way so that it could continue to change and develop. It was a learning situation in which ideas could be tried out and tested, a severely practical situation, a situation that was subjected to searching criticism by those involved with and committed to it, criticism far more stringent and pointed than any of its critics have been able to muster.
And the result was a learning environment in which many of us experienced as the first genuinely educational experience we had encountered. An environment in which we were able to develop and redefine our identity as individuals and in which many of us changed profoundly.
And this is why many of us feel a sense of rage, sadness and frustration that the course is coming to a premature end.
Not simply because something valuable to us being destroyed, but because with it a concentration of practical experience of how to run, structure and organise a genuinely student centred course is being destroyed, practical experience which could be useful to others in many different situations.
All we can hope for now is that somewhere the lessons from the course will be learned, that this practical experience will not simply be wasted, and that new courses will be started so that others can can have the same opportunities that we did.”
P.S Sadly, the hopes i raised in the final paragraph have largely been dashed. Little remains of the Ealing experiment except for the memories of the people involved and a few scraps of often fading paper.
P.P.S To give something of the flavour of the course as seen by an outsider, I reproduce this review of my years graduation show by Richard Cork:
“All over London the art colleges have just begun, or are about to begin, their annual exhibitions. Some, like the Royal college, the Slade and the Royal Academy, will attract large audiences. But I would like to recommend particularly a visit to the Ealing College show at the TUC headquarters in Great Russell Street, because these students have recently been enjoying a special course that sets out demolish the departmental boundaries still constricting many other schools.
The impressive aspect of this course lies in its willingness to let each student pursue whatever path interests him(sic) most, regardless of whether or not it fits any preconceived ideas which teaching staffs usually have about “Legitimate” areas of study. Cross-fertilisation is a real possibility at Ealing: while one student makes clothes, another traces the history of car design; and they work alongside others who draw cartoons, use film and video, stitch together illustrated books or write treatises on the problems of art education in general.
In practice, each individual tends, perhaps inevitably, to single out an interest which does not really impinge on the activity of others. But the potential flexibility of an open situation is there, and everyone undoubtedly benefits from the realisation that he(sic) is not tied down to one narrow, exclusive discipline. I would like to see the Ealing experiment have a widespread influence, and be adopted by many of its more illustrious rival establishments.”
Evening Standard, Thursday, June 21, 1973
P.P.P.S Anyone who is interested in the origins of purposive drift can probably see it here.