Dartington Plus is one of three national centres of excellence in music and the arts which are core funded by Arts Council England, alongside The Sage Gateshead and Aldeburgh.
Dartington Plus is centred on a unique and exciting partnership between The Dartington Hall Trust, University College Falmouth incorporating Dartington College of Arts and King Edward VI Community College (KEVICC). It delivers a wide and eclectic portfolio with a strong and very natural emphasis on music and arts education in all its many forms, benefiting from the skills and experience of each of the partners.
Through this ‘creative cluster’ - a charitable trust with a strong history of arts and cultural activity, a higher education institution specialising in the arts and a community college with performing arts status - Dartington is developing local, regional, national and international partnerships with a range of arts, educational and community organisations, building on existing activities and Dartington’s rich cultural history and vision.
University College Falmouth incorporating Dartington College of Arts
In April 2008 Dartington College of Arts merged with University College Falmouth to create a new institution focusing on the expansion of Falmouth’s expertise in Art, Design and Media and Dartington’s expertise in Choreography, Music, Theatre, Art and Writing.
Historically, the College of Arts has offered one of the most extraordinary environments in the world for contemporary arts practices. The performance courses, which will continue on the Dartington Hall Estate until 2010, are entirely focused on the contemporary arts and continue at the leading edge of arts education. The College’s long-standing international reputation for innovation in the arts continues to draw in artists from across the world. Building on a rich history of arts experimentation initiated at Dartington in the 1930s, the College is a dynamic community of artists and researchers, staff and some 600 students committed to making a unique cultural contribution through their own arts practice. As well as undergraduate courses in the disciplines mentioned above, the College offers taught MA courses in Arts and Ecology, Arts Management, Choreography, Contemporary Arts Practice and Dissemination (which has been developed and is run between five partner European institutions), Contemporary Music, Curating, Devised Theatre, Performance Writing, Visual Performance (time based practices) and a new course is in development for 2009, Engaged Practices.
The merger of the two institutions is a step on the way to creating a new specialist Arts University in Cornwall in 2012, creating a Higher Education institution unique to the South West.
Click here to visit the Dartington College of Arts website.
King Edward VI Community College
Popularly known as KEVICC, King Edward VI Community College is situated in the historic town of Totnes. KEVICC’s attractive, spacious campus provides a wonderful, safe setting in which to learn.
KEVICC enjoys the strong identity of a college that celebrated its 450th anniversary in 2003 and all at KEVICC are custodians of a proud tradition of endeavour and achievement. On a daily basis KEVICC is home to nearly 1800 students; of these more than 400 are in the sixth form at Kennicott, making it one of the largest and most successful sixth forms in Devon.
In 2003 KEVICC was awarded Specialist Arts College status with an emphasis on the performing arts. This new stream of investment has enabled the College to embark on a number of exciting projects that have enabled us to enhance the programme of KEVICC’s onsite arts centre and gallery, the Ariel Centre. High quality professional theatre, dance and music groups now visit the centre on a regular basis, providing workshops for students and performances for the whole community.
Arts status funding has also provided investment in the staffing and technical infrastructure necessary to expand the centre's activity and facilitate partnerships with other local Arts providers.
To find out more about KEVICC click here to visit their website
The Dartington Hall Trust
Since the beginning of the "Dartington experiment" in 1924, and its subsequent formation as a registered charity in 1931, Dartington Hall has been the locus of an extraordinary range of activities and initiatives.
These have encompassed education, the arts, crafts, social entrepreneurship and social welfare, the environment, agriculture, small business creation and incubation and much more besides. The Dartington Hall Trust has never had a single focus, and has always supported an ecology of activities, bound by a place Dartington Hall and its thousand-acre Estate in South Devon and a broad ethos.
The Trust continues to support and enable a range of charitable activities including maintaining the Dartington Estate for public benefit. There are a number of activities to which the Trust currently gives priority. These are the arts, ecology, land and heritage, and social research. Each of these is underpinned by the enduring values that help create the ethos of Dartington: a focus on learning through participation, experimentation and exploration and a commitment to quality and craftsmanship.
To find out more about The Dartington Hall Trust click here to visit their website
Dartington Plus is a partnership between The Dartington Hall Trust, King Edward VI Community College and University College Falmouth – incorporating Dartington College of Arts. Funded by Arts Council England