Art- and Land-Oriented Educational Programmes in Britain, 1925 to the Present

This article proposes an exploration of British educational initiatives since 1925 that have brought together art- and land-oriented practices, particularly ones that are social, regenerative, and reparative. By juxtaposing historical and contemporary case studies, this article highlights uncharted connections between artistically infused ecopedagogies of past and present. Beyond surveying defunct and currently active educational programmes and comparing and analysing their mode of operation, pedagogies, and contributions to systems change, the article highlights a pattern of emergence, brief flourishing, and closure in art and ecology educational and research programmes in Britain since the 1990s. While Dartington Hall and the Village Colleges, the historical case studies, draw on secondary research, the contemporary ones—Goldsmiths’ MA Art & Ecology, Black Mountains College’s BA (Hons) Sustainable Futures: Arts, Ecology, and Systems Change, The Gathering, and The Gramounce—are composed from interviews conducted with their founder and other key protagonists as well as from empirical research. This article captures the continuities and discontinuities between historical experiments and contemporary initiatives, arguing for the ongoing relevance—and the institutional fragility—of an educational mode that refuses the separation of art and land.