Lower-cost routes into Arts education

Cass Architecture's students ran a series of events as part of a community engagement programme, including a Human Chess Club.

The Royal Drawing School (formerly the Prince's Drawing School) runs more than 250 full-time and part-time courses each year for adults and children, across a variety of facilities in London -- four dedicated studios (Shoreditch, Oxford Street, South Kensington and Trinity Buoy Wharf) and at the National Gallery, British Museum and Royal Academy. There are open-to-all public courses, many of which are designed to advance the skills and interest of budding artists of school age. The bulk of the professional programme is for would-be art students (with an excellent, drawing-based, fine art foundation course) and practicing artists (the MA postgraduate programme in drawing, or the fully funded international artists' residencies). Public courses are subsidised (though not necessarily cheap -- a week-long summer 'drawing marathon' this year would put an 18-year-old out of pocket by £350). There is, however, a generous range of scholarships, bursaries and concessions for the foundation course and the MA.

Open College of the Arts was founded as a charity in 1987 by Michael Young to widen participation in arts education. It offers a range of creative courses by distance learning, 'without prior qualification or restrictions', including degree courses in photography, painting, creative writing, textiles, creative arts and visual communications, and an MA in fine art. These are accredited by the University for the Creative Arts (a cluster of formerly disparate art colleges in the Home Counties). Operating out of a former colliery in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, some 70,000 students have enrolled since launch. Tutors are practicing photographers, artists, designers, writers and composers, who work from their homes or studios.

Turps Banana is a specialist magazine for painters founded in 2005 by artists Marcus Harvey and Peter Ashton Jones. In 2012 the pair launched the Turps Art school, offering an unaccredited Masters programme, providing a year's worth of mentoring, peer-led learning, talks and visitors for its cohort of emerging and 'midcareer' painters. Sessions are held in an open studio environment at the Turps premises by the building site that was the Aylesbury Estate, in Elephant & Castle. It also offers a correspondence course, with a year-long programme of online mentoring.

Islington Mill Academy, Salford was founded by designer Bill Campbell in 2000, with co-founders musician Mark Carlin and artist Maurice Carlin. Based in a former Victorian mill it runs innovative, open-source, inter-disciplinary arts programmes and artist residencies alongside studio spaces and an artist B&B. Its aim is to promote risk-taking and it offers resident artists complete freedom from the increasingly market-led cultural landscape.

DIY Art School, Manchester, was set up in 2012 by Manchester Metropolitan University graduates who wanted to further their practice but couldn't afford an MA. It describes itself as 'a usergenerated postgraduate education project/social experiment/art club'. DIY members meet weekly for crits and workshops and share skills and networks. There is also a programme of monthly road trips designed to expand knowledge and contacts.

School of the Damned, East London was set up in 2013 as an alternative, unaccredited postgraduate programme run by its students -- 'a reaction to institutionalised financial exclusivity within art education'. It meets once a month.

Grizedale Arts, Coniston, is based at Lawson Park Farm in the Lake District. Calling itself a 'curatorial project in a continuous state of development' it operates as a productive working farm, with a multifaceted programme of events, projects, residencies and community activity, aimed at 'implementing a more valuable function for art through a unique, cross-disciplinary education programme'. Typically, it works alongside the local community to find ways to articulate a value for art, promoting the potential for art and artists to effect real and practical change as innovators and thinkers, rather than creators of baubles for the super-rich.

Fairfield International is a postgraduate art academy in Saxmundham in Suffolk, launched this year by artist Ryan Gander. In a former Victorian school it offers free studio space and accommodation for 12 students a year. Poorer students are prioritised and given money to cover living costs; free tuition is provided by renowned artists.

The Art Gallery Outreach -- the Serpentine, Tate and Barbican galleries have all experimented with the school model in their education programmes. Turkish artist Ahmet Ogut during his residency at Tate Modern in 2012 set up the Silent University, an alternative school for refugees and asylum seekers. It now runs several courses around Europe.

Academy of Art University in San Francisco -- the largest private art and design school in the USA -- has a good track record for fashion, in particular. The current 18,000 undergraduate and graduate cohort is about to expand to 100,000, with the increase coming from online students working on the university's digital courses -- they only have to participate in the physical space for one semester.