Looking backwards to look forwards

The Victorian Futures conference, which took place at the Chelsea College of Arts in May, used the past to look critically at the future of a national debate on art and public culture. This national debate began in the 1830s, was developed in the 1850s with the Great Exhibition and Albertopolis, and is now being echoed once again with plans for the Olympicopolis development in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, where University of the Arts London, University College London, V&A and Sadler’s Wells will be establishing new centres for the arts, education and research.

The conference was held a week after the UK general election, at a moment when the continuity of a unified national debate on the arts was itself open to debate. Before the conference, one of our speakers, V&A Director Martin Roth, referred to the connection between the proposals for Olympicopolis and the cluster of cultural and academic institutions in South Kensington known as Albertopolis. He noted that while the complex highlights the strength of Victorian policies on cultural democracy and the “importance of state support for the arts,” he hoped that “this conference will give us the opportunity to read Victorian history not as a comfort, but as a challenge”.

One element of this work that is still relevant to us is the vision of a national cultural script determined by considerations of public education in the arts and public access to the arts

On day one we took a view forward from the 1830s towards the Victorian era and began with an opening keynote from Dr Charles Saumarez Smith, Secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Arts, who showed us how in the 1830s, a new phalanx of ‘philosophical radical’ and utilitarian MPs developed a project for what they termed “the education of the eyes of the people by our own government”. These radical MPs were dedicated to opening up a cultural landscape in Britain that they saw as largely closed to the public by privilege and monopoly, but which, they argued, could be made accessible through institutional reforms, knowledge and education. The work of these MPs led to the establishment of the first state-funded art school in England the School of Design in 1837.

We then shifted perspective. Instead of looking forward from the 1830s to the Great Exhibition of 1851, we looked back at the Great Exhibition ‘through a glass darkly’ from the post-war era, focusing particularly on the Festival of Britain and its ambivalent relationship with the Great Exhibition. This focus on the period 1851-1951 continued on day two, and we ended with a panel that took in the entire historical period from the Reform Act of 1832 to Olympicopolis, focusing on the past, present and future of cultural place-making.

It could be said that the project of the 1830s that we began with on day one of the conference, which attempted to build a centrist, liberal and democratic discourse on the arts on a national scale, may no longer be a viable option in our current situation, when local and global forces disrupt the operations of national democracy in a number of ways. However, one element of this work that is still relevant to us is the vision of a national cultural script determined by considerations of public education in the arts and public access to the arts. Deputy Chief Executive of Arts Council England, Althea Efunshile, asked us to take inspiration from the Victorian era. She said: “There’s a long way to go, but in the light of our belief that the arts should have a home in public places among other major institutions we welcome this. How great it would be to recreate that exciting hybridisation that Prince Albert and Henry Cole dreamed of – to create a place where young people could truly experience how the disciplines can be connected.”

Malcolm Quinn is Professor of Cultural and Political History, Associate Dean of Research and Director of Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon Graduate School at the University of the Arts London.
www.arts.ac.uk