Friday 20 November 2015

My life as a revolting student, Part the First


I got a place as a Foundation student at Guildford School of Art in 1968, when I just hit 16 years of age.

We took the building over in a 'Sit-In', and I was the third to last student to actually leave the premises under cover of darkness, three months later. We all got ill.

The bit in the middle will follow in a few instalments.

We made history, whether or not you like the idea.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it. I will talk about it over the next few weeks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guildford_School_of_Art

It was the BEST education any young person could have had, but not much to do with Art.

Watch this space.

22 comments:

  1. Click the link. I knew all of them, and I have just contacted John Walmsley. Tom Whiteway was from the famous cider-makers of the family of those days. Many others syou will recognise as well.

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  2. When you went there did you feel deluded?

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    1. i only ask as this is the claim made several times about students in the Wikipedia account you asked us to look at.

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    2. Oh, is it? I haven't read it in full. I still don't know what they were deluded about. To me, it was truly enlightening, having gone straight from school. The only thing I became deluded with was the government.

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  3. My contribution to art was a signed brick with a pencil drawn rabbit for the new Guilford Cathedral. In all honesty, I don't remember a sit in and I've not heard of any of those mentioned in the link (exc. Short & Straw). These were the days of the grants to students or their parents..

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    1. Guildford Cathedral features heavily in 'The Exorcist'. I help build the nearby Guildford University - supplementing my grant.

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  4. It is a strangely written Wiki entry. Written by one of those taking part? Heady days to be a student in 1968, same year as Hornsey was it? Art students are a tamer lot these days, the staff argue about the failings of art education between themselves in the art journals and that's as far as it goes.

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    1. Yes, it seems to be a jumble of lists and facts, collated by loads of people. Hornsea were the first, Guildford were the second. Then we got overshadowed by the much more militant LSE. Believe it or not, we didn't start off militant, just curious.

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  5. It did not take long for the climate of change in student politics. When I started at Nottingham in 1977 the big Student Union campaign was to keep off the grass because of the recent hot summers. Vietnam and civil liberty issues were suddenly very remote.

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    1. Now think of that: in that year I visited my sister who studied for a term at Nottingham University - and yes: it was a very hot year, I vividly remember that - and a plague of thousands of ladybirds on the shore when I landed in England.

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    2. When I was in Canterbury in 1971, I was invited to a little sit-in at the university there, because someone knew I was from Guildford.

      I walked into the building and took one look around and suspected the worst. I chatted to a few people who were lolling around playing table-football or chatting about nothing, and they admitted that they didn't even have any meetings or discussions on the agenda. They were just playing naughty children. I left.

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  6. son was a great protester (still is) - the miners' strike, CND, various student issues. I sometimes wonder how he got enough work done at Uni to get through. Me? I belong to that earlier generation who did as they were told on the whole and asked no questions - it had been hard enoiugh to get there without rocking the boat.

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    1. It was on the wind in the late 60s. You were just the wrong generation. I had lots of older people coming up to me and telling me they had fought a war for me, and some of them had fought the first one.

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  7. That's what makes it so time-consuming (but interesting) in reading blogs and comment on them: some people write almost every day (I enjoy that! no complaint - nobody forces me to read :-), some write very long posts (you do that not often), and then that Wiki-entrance is long... so I just picked out a bit.
    But of course: can seldom resist your contributions.

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    1. Yours are quite long too, Britta!

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    2. I'll keep that in mind: "Make it brief!" (but more on the comment-side).

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    3. If I wanted to limit myself to a haiku, I would go to Twitter.

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    4. Hahaha - think of all that subtlety you could evoke with a haiku!

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  8. I don't remember this Revolt. I was foundation in 1962-64 and we were pretty militant about the government, wars etc. but nothing local. The odd Arts ball and rag day were the only ways in which we impacted locally. I think we thought ourselves superior to everyone. My sister remembers me as becoming arrogant and difficult and answering most of her statements with "So what, it's only superficial" and moping around smoking French cigarettes and listening to LPs of Richard Burton reading poetry. God I must have been insufferable.
    Just looked at the Wikki link - under Issues and Notes it asks "Why is fine art important to any Art school"?!
    Gill

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    1. I think I was insufferable as well. In fact, I know I was.

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