Dartington Hall School
The Dartington Hall was a reform-educational school in Totnes in the county of Devon in the UK .
The school and boarding school was founded in 1926 by the couple Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst on the neglected medieval estate of Dartington Hall , which they had bought the year before. Leonard Elmhirst was a pastor's son and came from the gentry of Yorkshire , his wife was a wealthy American heiress. Her school not only followed anti-authoritarian, permissive and pleasure-oriented principles, but the students should learn for their lives through practical work in the rural environment. In school, girls and boys studied together, there were no corporal punishments or school uniforms, instead the students managed themselves.
Lessons were kept to a minimum, instead the children learned from foresters, farmers and craftsmen. As part of the Arts and Crafts Movement, the Elmhirsts founded a cider press, a sawmill, a pottery and a weaving mill. In addition to the practical work, the performing arts became the center of creative life in Dartington. The learning goal of Dartington was not only craft and art, but also ecological understanding and the art of living. In its founding years , the school was next to Summerhill the most revolutionary school of its time. In 1931 the number of students had risen to over 50. That year, William Curry was named headmaster.
The school was generously endowed with endowments, and personalities such as Bertrand Russell , Julian Huxley , Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth sent their children to Dartington. In addition to prominent teachers such as Mark Tobey , Bernard Leach , David Lack and Imogen Holst , numerous international artists and musicians such as Merce Cunningham , Paul Hindemith , Igor Stravinsky , Kurt Jooss and Walter Gropius came to Dartington, which developed into an international artistic center.
Curry remained the headmaster until 1957. However, after the Second World War, the school's reputation faded. With the expansion of the school system in England , the school lost its model character and its financial resources decreased due to inflation and austerity measures. The sexual permissiveness and liberalism towards drugs in Dartington Hall led to scandals, so that the school was finally closed in 1987.
literature
- Victor Bonham-Carter: Dartington Hall. The history of an experiment . Phoenix House, London 1958.
- Peter Cox: The arts of Dartington. 1940-1983 . Elmhirst Trust, Totnes 2005, ISBN 0-90238-622-0 .
- Larraine Nicholas: Dancing in Utopia. Dartington Hall and its dancers . Dance Books, Alton 2007, ISBN 978-1-8527-3121-2 .
- Michael Dunlop Young : The Elmhirsts of Dartington. The creation of an utopian community . Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1982, ISBN 0-7100-9051-X .
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 27 ′ N , 3 ° 42 ′ W