The Decorated School: Henry Morris

Tuesday, 10 July 2012

Henry Morris

Henry Morris (1889-1961) Secretary for Education in Cambridgeshire and founder of Village Colleges, was a passionate advocate of ‘decorated schools’. He inspired others such as Stewart Mason, educational administrator in Leicestershire, and architect Stirrat Johnson-Marshall whose work is recorded elsewhere on this website.

The first village college opened at Sawston in 1930. Village colleges aimed to provide not only juvenile and adult education, but also the social and cultural activities Morris saw as necessary for a healthy and progressive rural community. He believed passionately in the educational importance of an aesthetic environment, epitomized in the distinguished design which he secured from Walter Gropius for Impington Village College, opened in 1939.

Over the last two years Sawston Village College celebrated its 80^th anniversary and the 50^th anniversary of Morris’s death, with a film made by students about the life of Henry Morris. Continued cultivation of the arts at SVC as well as its caring maintenance of the original environment indicates the continuing influence and relevance of his ideals.

Henry Morris – the Life and Legacy http://www.sawstonvc.org/films/

Chapter 4 The Silent Teacher (21 to 30 minutes) explains how Morris was a great lover of the arts, believing that people learned from their environment. The school should be a ‘silent teacher’, for adults as much as for adolescents. Physical space, if beautiful and authentic, would contribute to successful learning. Schools should grace the rural landscape. He believed in the potential of art for social change. Art should be accessible to everyone, architecture contributing socially and aesthetically to the quality of one’s life.

Sawston Village College, Fountain Court

Italian Maiolica in cloister of Fountain Court

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The Decorated School Research network

We are researching the relationships between architects, artists and educators through the art which became part of the fabric of school buildings and their immediate environments in the 20th century. We are interested in understanding more about how the art came to be commissioned, how the subject matter was decided, what was its function, its life story and what ideas about education or childhood, if any, were intended to be conveyed.

The research is funded by the Arts and Humanites Research Council and is led by Dr Catherine Burke, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge and Dr Jeremy Howard, Art History, University of St Andrews. There will be 4 seminars, open to the public, at sites of significant interest over the next 2 years as well as a final international conference and book. We will use this site to announce events, collect material and report on findings. Do contact us to let us know of any school based murals, ceramics, textiles, sculptures by recognised artists - possibly in collaboration with school pupils - that you know exist. Many of these may be in danger as school buildings are becoming replaced often with scant regard to the treasures that they contain.

Project Partners
Peter Blundell-Jones, School of Architecture,University of Sheffield
Peter Cunningham, Homerton College, University of Cambridge
Ian Grosvenor, School of Education,University of Birmingham Roy Kozlovsky, School of Architecture, Northeastern University, USA
Kirk Niergarth, Art Historian, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
Professeur Annie Renonciat, visual education historian, Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique and Université Paris, France.
Andrew Saint, architectural historian, English Heritage Deborah Wakely, architect, ARK, UK Diane Watters, Buildings Investigator, Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland
Jon Wood,Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
Andrew Demetrius Visual Resources Curator School of Art History University of St Andrews