thriving not coasting

21/10/2003 Reported in the Guardian

Small creative centres a long way from London can make their presence felt, reports Alice Tarleton.

Dartington College of Arts is one of the country’s smallest higher education institutions, with 450 students. Set on an estate on the outskirts of Totnes, in South Devon, students at the specialist performance arts college occupy a secluded and tranquil campus.

But this is no rural backwater: the college is a thriving creative arts centre for the whole community. Students on music or theatre courses set up their own projects, such as working as an artist or writer-in-residence at a school, or helping to create a performance. Out of curriculum hours, student music groups and theatre companies proliferate.

Once this might have seemed a bit rarefied but now there is no arguing that the arts play a big role in the southwest economy as a whole. There are 7,500 artists and craftspeople in the southwest, more than in any other region outside London. The region’s creative industries sector employs 90,000 people, according to a report published in 2000 by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

About a third of Britain’s creative industries are based in London, but the sector, which is growing twice as fast as the economy as a whole, involves a high proportion of freelance and part-time workers, and the small business start-up is high. All that spells opportunity for the region. Artists have gravitated to the southwest for generations and the internet has now freed more people than ever to make a living in the creative arts outside the metropolis.

Earlier this year, the college opened a centre for creative enterprise and participation, with a multiple remit of widening participation, improving students’ employability prospects and enhancing research opportunities for staff. Its predecessor, the world of work unit, had two staff members in 2000; the new centre employs 11.

“We prepare our students for the world of work through enabling them to connect with artists and arts organisations during their course, and then keep in touch with them as graduates so they can feed back into the curriculum to keep it contemporary and relevant. It also helps to show current students what a life working in the arts is really like”, says Mary Schwarz, Director of the centre.

In addition to offering advice on funding sources and grants to staff and students, the centre is putting together a skills database to help match students with opportunities. “We often get people ringing us up and saying, for example, we need a jazz pianist to join us, or requesting that students perform at conferences or functions, so we can get them some gigging work. This way they can both get the experience and earn some money,” says Schwarz.

Connection with the community has been an integral part of the Dartington philosophy since even before the college was established in 1961. Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst, who bought the estate in 1925, believed in the importance of the arts in everyday life and established Dartington as a centre for an experiment in rural regeneration. It attracted a bohemian crowd and Rudolph Laban, Benjamin Britten and Ravi Shankar were among those associated with the college in its early days.

In addition to the college, the site now houses a conference centre and the Dartington international summer school. Dartington Plus, a new partnership between the college, Dartington Hall Trust and the local community college, received more than £1m from Arts Council England to become one of only three internationally significant centres of excellence for music performance, production, education and professional development in the country.

Help is on hand to encourage Dartington graduates to stay in the area. The college allows Blind Ditch, a graduate theatre company, to use its facilities, and in return, the graduates hold open rehearsals and involve current students in workshops, or give advice on the practical aspects of running a company.