A Residency in the Morvan

In 1971 Patrick Heron wrote an article that was published in the Guardian newspaper, called ‘Murder of the Art Schools’. Heron was arguing that art schools should remain autonomous and resist being consumed into the then Polytechnic system. Heron was also an advocate for the autonomy of art from social issues, which was compatible with his abstract painting sensibility. Since the 1950s he remained in continuous conflict with the art historian John Berger, because Berger advocated art needs social relevance and a degree of realism in order for it to have significance and meaning to a wider public. Let’s just say Heron and Berger were not on great admiring terms. Heron’s view remained consistent throughout his life; that art schools should remain autonomous. And in this context, what is and what is not ‘autonomous’ remains a relevant question to the current situation of an art education provision in its broadest sense, and in addition, to how artists might be provided for and continuously supported throughout their careers.

One might ask, what does any of this have to do with a modest art residency in the Morvan? In this journal I want to provide some insight into how we have arrived at this idea of a residency. I have had a long-held idea of wanting to provide a modest non-institutionalised resource for artists, and to provide a studio facility within close proximity to a horticultural setting. We started searching in 2015, despite not quite knowing what the provision would look like, or where it would finally be located. The idea and thinking of establishing a residency evolved over many years, during my time as a university professor, and taking partial inspiration from a variety of sources; including the histories of Black Mountain College to the current developments at Schumacher College.

Did Heron perceive a slippery slope? In 1992, in the UK, Art and design schools moved from the polytechnic system into the university system; a system now facing numerous challenges which have been widely mediated. Seemingly, as a result of these continuous university challenges, for both art students and staff, (and not just in the UK), there has been a growing number of alternative non-university led (non-accredited) ‘art schools’ emerging, or different models of an art provision for the prospective student or learner. After all, the art world industry is ambivalent to whether an artist has an academic qualification or not. In the UK, the Turps programme, centred in London (with a satellite offer in Hastings) is perhaps the best known and most established. Similar propositions include: Islington Mill in Salford, DIY Art School in Manchester, Open School East in Margate, and in Europe the University of the Arts in Bremen, Germany and the University of Bergen in Norway offer free tuition for some of their arts courses. These new provisions offer a mixture of tuition, mentoring and support, to presenting different funding models, from fee paying to free education in exchange for community service.

Suggested reading on the Black Mountain College

Located in the rural Appalachia in the United States, Black Mountain College was established in 1933 and closed in 1957. The college had a holistic aim to ‘educate a student as a person and as a citizen’, the founders aimed to abolish the separations between student and tutor, and between faculty staff and a senior management body that would normally uphold hierarchical distinctions. The students were fee paying. Unsurprisingly the college had a minimal academic structure, it was non-accredited, maintaining a Bauhaus ethos and a preference for experimentation in art, design, performance and architecture as well as art education. It worked! The roll call of who attended the college and their successful careers as international artists is well known and published elsewhere. My interest in the legacies of Black Mountain College stems from the idea of a community of artists, experimenters trying to initiate peer interaction towards new ideas and practises, living together, they grew their own produce and shared domestic chores.

Suggested reading on an art school ethos to thinking of Charleston as an early 20th century artist live-work proposition

Today, an institute of note is Schumacher College in Dartington (UK), which provides an interesting mix of courses that deviate from a traditional art and design curriculum to blend art, craft skills, ecology, philosophy and social justice, where the ethos is about a creative community addressing the pressing environmental crisis together. Stepping aside from any debate about privileged positions, Charleston (the Bloomsbury house and garden) in the UK also serves as a historical reference and a place of note, where the house and garden becomes the studio and notionally an artefact and gallery. In the context of live-work, Venessa Bell also upheld an informal creative environment in a rural setting where artists and writers congregated to further their ideas.

All these examples provided much food for thought and different conceptual models that we could mould and shape towards our own situation and aspiration. After four years of search in the UK and in France, we decided to settle in the Morvan, Burgundy in 2019. On reflection our home and gardens became a bigger renovation project than we originally anticipated, and though we have done a huge amount of work since 2019 to make our home comfortable, it continues to be an ongoing development!

So, if pressed to identify our residency, the question remains what are we? We are not trying to be an art school, we are not a retro Black Mountain College or Charleston and we are not Schumacher College, and we wish to stress we are not a holiday destination either. Our thinking is framed by the idea of supporting artists pursuing a vocation, and ultimately, we wish to attract artists and writers that are seeking to further their ideas and practises. It is not our intention to mentor or coach our resident artists, though it is a facility we can provide on request, and it is a facility we will provide by an online mentoring programme. As for the residency, we recognise that artists sometimes require different surroundings to nourish and refresh their conceptual development and studio routine. We can be a place to experiment or help to maintain continuity within a different environment, and we can also be a place where one can relax. Time will tell on how the residency will evolve and develop, and what it will become known for. We hope our resident artists will be able to play a significant role in helping us to establish a creative environment, an identity perhaps, as much as we hope to enable our resident artists to further their work and careers.

Suggested Reading

From Garden to Studio: a preface