The Decorated School: 26/02/2012

Tuesday, 28 February 2012

Greenside Primary Gordon Cullen mural 1952

Greenside Primary School (see Friday, 28 October 2011) today celebrated the Diamond Anniversary of the very day of its official opening by Dame Sybil Thorndike. A new film was shown to the assembled school of art historian Alan Powers describing and explaining the Gordon Cullen mural with a clarity accessible to children and adults alike. Throughout the year groups children have been studying the school architecture and its mural. The Cullen painting provides a distinguished and very special feature of school identity for pupils, teachers, parents and local community. Its content also presents vivid images reflecting life at the time of the school’s post-war rebuilding. Thus it serves as both a totem and as a unique teaching resource intimately connected with the school’s own history.

An elegant 60^th birthday display effectively reinforces these functions of the school mural.

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