Date: Sat, 09 Nov 1996 12:50:01 -0500 From: John Young <jya-AT-pipeline.com> Subject: Aesthetic Ideology 2 Financial Times, November 9, 1996, p. XIX. Designs on the RCA Antony Thorncroft talks to the new Rector of the college, Christopher Frayling RCA knows that the closest possible links with business are the key to its future. "It is a question of how to get into bed with industry, not whether." It is rare these days for an insider to get the job of heading one of the nation's great cultural institutions. But the Royal College of Art, the UK's paramount centre for art and design, this summer looked to its own, and appointed its Pro-Rector Professor Christopher Frayling, to take over as Rector from Anthony Jones, who returned to the US after a brief spot at the helm. Jones had the task of calming the RCA's nerve after the battering it received from his revolutionary predecessor, Sir Jocelyn Stevens. Now it looks as if there will be a return to nonstop action from Frayling, a cultural guru whose life stretches seamlessly between the worlds of television, publishing and academia. The 80-odd RCA staff are being forced to confront the future. "We are a pragmatic place, not good at planning," says Frayling. "I've set up committees which within the next year must decide on things to do -- or not do." If these committees plump for action the RCA will soon become a very different organisation. Perhaps Frayling's most dramatic idea is to move the RCA's fine art students, about 150 of the total intake of 800, out of the Kensington HQ and into their own premises, ideally on Bankside alongside the new Tate Gallery of Modern Art. The sculpture students were decanted to Battersea in the 1980s and seem to thrive in exile. Frayling believes, with airy confidence, that the L10m cost of the project will be met by a grateful sponsor, anxious to lend its name to an institution which has spawned many of the great British artists of the 20th century, from Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore to Gavin Turk via David Hockney. Frayling knows the drawback the move will deprive the designers in the RCA from immediate contact with artists -- but the students may well prefer the big open spaces of some disused factory site down by the river. Frayling also has a committee working on another possible change -- whether the photography students might not be happier switching out of the fine art department and into a communications, graphics, even advertising led, environment. The design role of the RCA is close to Frayling's heart. "Seventy per cent of what we do here is design". It is one of the inconsistencies of history that a college set up in the 19th century to reinforce the UK's dominance in the industrial revolution with the most advanced design skills should be called the Royal College of Art. For some years now serious consideration has been given to changing the name to the Royal College of Design, and Frayling seems keen to continue to push the RCA in this direction. Another of his committees is examining the creation of a new media laboratory: "We are not good at new technology here". But the RCA knows that the closest possible links with business are the key to its future. "It is a question of how to get into bed with industry, not whether." For, despite its eminence, government funding of the RCA has been remorselessly cut. The hunt is on to build up business support, both in design commissions, and in scholarships to help fund students. Frayling admits that the quality of applicant to the RCA has fallen in recent years because many British students cannot find funding. They also arrive "broader, but less deep, so the first term is now remedial". As a result the proportion of overseas students accepted by the RCA has risen to 30 per cent. Frayling denies that the quality of the intake has been diluted but he is pushing hard for 100 business-financed scholarships by the millennium to ensure that the RCA maintains standards. Frayling is moving fast because there is danger on the horizon the Dearing inquiry into higher education. Money- saving college mergers are all the rage, and the 40 art colleges that once peppered the land have now been rationalised down to just eight that remain autonomous. He is determined that the RCA -- "too small, too expensive, too specialised" -- should not suffer a shotgun marriage. Its best defence is its ability to show value for money and to service industry. It is the RCA that is pioneering Design Age, helping Marks & Spencer come up with fashions to tempt the rising numbers of older people, and Safeway on how to streamline supermarkets to suit the the ageing shopper. It is the RCA which is the world's leading training ground for car designers, with half the current student intake financed by Japanese and Korean car manufacturers. Chris Svensson, the designer of Ka, the latest model from Ford, went through the car design course, and Frayling is keen to raise the profile of designers of consumer products who trained at the RCA to at least the level of the fashion designers (Ossie Clark, Xandra Rhodes, Bill Gibb) who were students there. Frayling also wants to push the RCA towards more "blue skies" research. "We handle artistic developments and industrial developments but not social developments. " The social implication of design is a more nebulous concept but as companies accept their responsibilities towards the environment it is good timing for the RCA to get involved in such issues. "I want an RCA with attitude, with a stronger emphasis on the social implications of what we are doing." But while Frayling's committees wrestle with such thoughts he is offering at least one sop to traditional artists. It was the RCA in the 1980s which re-introduced, at the request of students, drawing classes to an art college. It is now considering offering a full-time course in drawing, a good example of the shock of the old. [End] --- from list avant-garde-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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