Call for contributions, ideas, proposals and dialogue with the editors

Guest editors:

Dr Ben Francombe, Chichester University (b.francombe@chi.ac.uk)
Prof Alice O’Grady, University of Leeds (a.ogrady@leeds.ac.uk)
Prof Jonathan Pitches, University of Leeds (j.pitches@leeds.ac.uk)
Training Grounds Editors: Proshot Kalami (pkc.work@gmail.com) and Zoë Glen (zoeelizabethglen@gmail.com)

Training Places: Bretton Hall (Issue 18.2)

Context

Bretton Hall College was founded in 1949 by Sir Alec Clegg, Chief Education Officer of the West Riding of Yorkshire County Council. It first began as a training college for teachers of music, art and drama with courses awarded by the University of Leeds. In the late 1970s the college began to offer degrees in the disciplines of art, music, education, social studies and drama and specialisation in theatre acting, directing, design, technology, writing, dance, management and dramaturgy was introduced in the 1990s. Over the years, Bretton Hall developed a reputation for its creative approaches to arts education. By the end of the century Bretton Hall was a college of education, arts and humanities with over 2000 students. In 2001 the School of Performance and Cultural Industries was founded on the Bretton Campus s as part of its merger with the University of Leeds and six years later, in 2007, the School relocated to the University of Leeds campus to a purpose built theatre – stage@leeds – specialist facilities and a studio named after Sir Alec Clegg himself.

This Special Issue call for papers comes as a widely acknowledged financial and political crisis is gripping the Higher Education sector in the UK, one felt particularly acutely in the creative arts. By the time it is published (in the middle of 2027), it is difficult to predict what the arts education landscape will look like but there are a number of worrying signs: a reduced pool of applicants to creative subjects, after their downgrading of status in both GCSE and A-level; changes to conditions for international students making difficult choices; specialist institutions rethinking the viability of experimental practice-intensive degree programmes including those for theatre, dance and performance.  What can be done to arrest these developments and is there learning to be had from training models of the past?