BRADFORD COLLEGE OF ART

1832 - ?

The roots of the Bradford College of Art are to be found in Bradford Mechanics Institute. The first Institute was founded as early as 1825 but collapsed due to the unpopularity of their views amongst the middle classes. To advance the working classes, non-conformists and businessmen successfully revived the Institute in the 1830s and led by 26-year-old Baptist Joseph Farrar (1805-1878), along with James Acworth (1798-1865) and Rev. William Steadman (1764-1837), Quaker Henry Harris (1789-1872) and Congregationalists, Sir Titus Salt (1803-1876) and Robert Milligan (1786–1862), the Bradford Mechanics Institute was inaugurated on the 27 January 1832. Teachers were voluntary and funds depended on fees raised from lectures, exhibitions, excursions, and concerts. Successful, though struggling from the start, by 1863 it had its own School of Industrial Design and Art and by 1882 when some 250 students were enrolled a new building was needed and was completed and opened in 1883 by the then Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. Towards the end of 1880s, the Technical School was renamed Bradford Technical College, but was struggling for both for space and finance and the First World War reduced its finances, pupils and its staff even further. Today having undergone numerous name changes it is an independent body offering a range of learning facilities from fine art through to hairdressing and in 2015 a new state of the art Advanced Technology Centre was opened on a former car park site in the city. Its former alumni and teaching staff include Alvaro Ladrón de Guevara (1894-1951), Richard Ernst Eurich (1903-1992), Edna Ginesi (1902-2000), Andy Goldsworthy (1956-), John Frederic Greenwood, David Hockney (1937-), Frank Parkinson Newbould (1887-1951), Norman Anthony Stevens (1937-1988), Edward Alexander Wadsworth (1889-1949), and Suffolk artists include Jutta Bastian, Alice Kirkby Goyder, John Frederic Greenwood and Wil Harvey.
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Works by This Artist