British Art and Design Classes: A Lost History and A Window of Opportunity

By Katherine Appleford

In 2015, I was commissioned to run a research project focused on Saturday Art and Design Clubs . Even though it was a very quick project, lasting just a few weeks, for the last ten years I have never quite been able to shake it.

The project was linked to The Sorrell Foundation , a charitable trust set up by John and Frances Sorrell, which had recently established a scheme of free art classes for 14-16 year olds under the name of National Saturday Art and Design Clubs. For both Martin and Frances, who had both attended free art classes in 1960s, they felt that this portion of their education was pivotal to their own highly successful creative careers in advertising and design.

The research I was commissioned to undertake was to find attendees of the 'original' Saturday art and design classes that ran between 1950-1980 and within only a couple of weeks, I found and interviewed ten former Saturday Art and Design Club members.

What struck me most about those conversations was the warmth and enthusiasm with which the former club members recounted their memories, all happily speaking at length about the joy of the art classes they attended, talking me through how their art teacher had suggested they should visit their local art school for an extra art class on a Saturday.

For these participants, these art classes opened their eyes to the twin possibility of not only studying art but also of having a creative career. For one participant, this came through when she explained “I got to meet a real life artist”; for others it came through when they told me that their Saturday art class tutors had coached them through their application to art college.

But what also struck me most throughout this research project was the lack of academic work documenting the history of these clubs. Whilst I admit I am not an historian, I found it incredibly difficult to find references to these clubs in any archive or scholarly resource. While the interviews provided clues as to how and where these clubs operated and their overall mission, the scholarly and archival cupboard was bare.

A decade on, I happened to attend the funeral of one of my interviewees. She had been unwell for some time, but as many of my participants become septua-and-octo-genarians, it is inevitable that the opportunities to capture the histories of the Saturday Art and Design Classes will ebb away.

So, when my good friend the design researcher and design historian Dr J.C. Kristensen asked if there was a project we could work on together, the Saturday Art and Design club project seemed a perfect fit. Now, together, we are working on uncovering the lost history of this slice of British arts education, which offered those without artistic backgrounds or social connections a way into the creative industries.

Several months on, we have a website (foundations.art) and a mission: to locate the history of the Saturday Art and Design Classes, and to understand what was so special about this initiative. We are looking to learn not only about their origin and their structure but also how they enabled so many people not only to learn about art and design, but also to carve out successful lifelong creative careers. Finally, we are hoping to answer the most important question of all: are there lessons we can learn from these clubs to design inclusive art and design education today?