Memories of Dartington 1965/1966 by Honor Giles

I was at Dartington c1965/6. I was 17. I didn't know what to do with my life, except that it would probably be creative. My folks knew a wonderful lady called Winsome Bartlett who was based at D'ton, and they thought it might be the right place for me to decide what I wanted to do. Trouble was ... which art form? I had studied theatre design at A level so I applied for a place in the drama dept. Having been told by Peter Cox (the then principal) that he was sure they would accommodate me, I was then sent details of the audition process - I had never set foot on a stage to perform! Having mangled the first few lines of my audition speech, it was gently suggested that I should go and talk to Ivor Weeks about joining the art dept,and I found my self there at Dartington the following Sept. For the most seminal year of my life. It was a time of slow change. I was there as a foundation student and therefore my folks had to pay, which was a big sacrifice for them as we were not especially well off. It was either the first or second year of admitting grant-aided students on government approved courses, usually in partnership with Exeter or Bristol Unis, but many of the students were still fee-payers, from very wealthy families. Several had come to Dartington because their folks had no idea of its free-thinking reputation and thought it would be a nice 'safe' environment not far removed from the boarding schools from which their darlings had come. It was wonderful and mad and I loved it.

Snapshots:

Sitting by Big Bertha at dawn
Chatting with Leonard in the garden
Seeing him and Dorothy walking by the tilt yard with Yahoudi Menhuin or Stravinsky
Using the rare books in their library
Going up in the attic to find the Javanese shadow puppets that Leonard was convinced were there somewhere. They had been collected by someone in the 1930s whose trip to Indonesia he had subsidised. We found them.
The jazz festival - Joe Harriott wandering up the drive playing his sax
Singing in the choir conducted by John Wellingham in the Great Hall
The concert conducted by Imogen Holst. I was asked by a tall man where should he stand. I asked what voice he was and he politely said he was a tenor - it turned out to be soloist Peter Pears!
Standing with my arms up to the pits in Indigo dye with Sue Boscence down at Shinners Bridge and having to rub lemon into my skin to take away the blue.
Life drawing in the Shippon studio.
Chatting to Marianne de Trey in her workshop whilst she worked
Taking part in the impro workshops run by the Royal Court actors who were there on a kind of working holiday. Being seduced by Roddy Maud-Roxby.
The kids from Foxholes who were wild and unkempt and crazy, but fab - we had some great parties!
Singing plainsong in Ashburton Church where there were more of us in the choir than the congregation
Buying half a pint of scrumpy at the Cott Inn and making it last all evening.
The booze and the weed and the laughter.

Enough, enough - I could go on and on! Many of the names mentioned will mean little to those there now. Suffice it to say that I still remember my year there with huge affection and love. It breaks my heart to think it is coming to an end, because the spirit of the place is rooted in the land and the buildings and the people who found themselves there, and I don't suppose Falmouth (brilliant though it is) will ever have the same effect.

I really, really want to know what is going to happen to the Hall and the estate. Is it going to be sold?

Good luck to you and your adventure.

Honor Giles

Walking with Sue Palmer

I had a great day walking

Last night I made some head notes and try to write them here in response to
the walk:

Just to walk is the good thing to do for body and mind
The rhythm of the heart, the pace of the feet
Afterward it always feels good, strong, like something's really happened -what is that something?
I liked the cows following us the other side of the hedge, the horses noses and all the breathing, the orange spikey caterpillar on the road that we stopped the car for, and then found out about another kind of pilgrimage for a bomb falling. The wealthy fences, the dreamy heat haze, the still dense air, the lunch stop under the tree, with the man opening the gate for his dog and then climbing over himself.
The sun always coming through the clouds for a late summer atmosphere, heavy over dorset, soft on the fields, soft, dense, radiance. Bonfire smoke, cautious people full of not funny banter, weathervanes, house signs, the inevitable countryside.
The 'dead reckoning' moment with Donna turning the stick like the monk on the moor. The atmosphere between us three at that point was very joined, relaxed, present.



Donna telling the stories of going back the other way, of hospitality and strangers, of sadness and being alone as a young woman, I liked hearing of the vulnerability of that walk, the endeavour. Tim, at the end of a talking stream saying: 'I hate Dartington' right as we're walking towards it.
When I got home to bed I thought of not being able to go into the bothy, or the studios or the library and that made me feel very sad I hadn't felt sad on the walk, but afterwards I felt very sad. It won't happen, the end of Dartington until it's happened I thought.





And today I thought about walking paths, and that moment of coming to the end of the field with the impossibly overgrown stile and meeting the people coming the other way, and we talked through calling rather than seeing each other and we went over the derelict round straw bales and helped each other cross the barbed wire with the hazel stick woven into the fence. As if the
walk had been moving towards that exchange the whole time, and then subsequently away from that moment of exchange. Brilliant. It was kind of an amazing moment where we helped each other cross at the hardest moment, going in opposite directions making the most of the heat and light. And afterwards I thought about the act of walking as re-making the land,
re-treading the paths that cross the land, that cross our cultural space.
The landowners leave them and they semi erase themselves through thistles, nettles and brambles (all 'barrier' plants yet essential and highly productive to other non human species, especially butterflies), and we're finding ways through and re-membering the walking rhythm of the landscape joining London Dartington. Shadowing the railway line that runs an hour from the city, we're slowing the pace, slowing thought, waking up.

I had a great day. It was dreamy.

Love sue xxx

Photos from the first third of the walk

Tim and Donna setting off




Tim in conversation with Alan Read




Gary Winters (from performance company Lone Twin) and Donna at Westminster




Donna and Tim at Westminster




Battersea Reach




Dan Gretton (Platform) and Tim at the River Wandle




Leaving London as the Thames passes under the M25 south of junction 13




Cutting back brambles around Uncle Tony's memorial oak at Runnymede




Navigating in Bracknell Forest




After lunch nap just beyond Sandhurst




Heather on Warren Heath




Having a hard time, East Oakley




North of Oakley Hall




Deane




Ashe




Approaching Overton




End of Day 5, Overton

Press release

PRESS RELEASE

Walking to Dartington

To mark the ending of Dartington College of Arts in Devon, two of its artist graduates are walking 222 miles in 21 days from London back to their old campus. Along the way they will be joined by others wishing to share and record their memories of the college, which has been fundamental in championing innovative arts practices for over 40 years.

Donna Shilling and Timothy Vize-Martin have worked in a variety of artistic fields, including performance, theatre, film, and installation – but their most recent project sees them exchanging stage and gallery for the dusty paths and green fields of the South of England. Over a three-week period, the pair are walking the 222 miles from London to Devon, cameras in hand, to celebrate the legacy of Dartington College.

And the two are following an interesting precedent. As Donna explains, she’s retracing her own footsteps. “In 2001, I was a final-year student at Dartington, and, in the wake of 9/11, I undertook a project in which I walked from the college back home to London. Along the way, I asked the people I encountered: What is important to you?”

Now, seven years later, as the college prepares to leave its home in Devon, Tim and Donna will be repeating that remarkable journey and asking: What is important about Dartington College of Arts?

In what has been a highly controversial decision, Dartington College of Arts is to close. In April this year it officially merged with Cornwall’s University College Falmouth, and will be effectively transplanted there in 2010. The small yet remarkably influential institution, which is set in the quiet surroundings of the Dartington estate, has been unique in encouraging generations of artists worldwide to challenge art forms and redefine the role of art in society.

But, as Tim is keen to stress, the project is not a demonstration. “This walk is not to protest the decision, which has already been made. It’s a way of physically acknowledging this ending; a gesture of farewell to a unique arts institution, a place that has been very significant in our lives and dear to our hearts.”

En route, he and Donna will be joined by others keen to celebrate and commemorate Dartington. Students and staff, both past and present, will walk and talk, sharing their perceptions, memories and associations with the two artists, who will collate the material for a documentary about the college, to be produced next year.

Among those participating are Alan Read, Gregg Whelan & Gary Winters (Lone Twin), Dan Gretton & James Mariott (Platform), Emilyn Claid, David Williams, Peter Kiddle, Sue Palmer, John Hall, Simon Persighetti, Misha Myers, Josie Sutcliffe, Simon Murray, Joe Richards, Alan Bolden, Tracey Warr, Jerome Fletcher, and members of Propeller and Deer Park (of which Donna was herself a founding member).

Tim and Donna have timed their arrival at Dartington to coincide with the opening of this year's MA Festival on the 25th September. (Tim is a graduating Arts and Ecology Student). And on the final afternoon of their walk to the college, they will be met by many other invited guests, who will walk the last stretch with them and together silently bid farewell to Dartington.