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Find out what it’s like to study at Dartington, and explore our programmes
flexible learning models
We offer pathways to learning to suit all needs – including part time routes, ‘build-your-own’ modules, and blended learning
postgraduate programmes
Reimagining Performance Practice
Reimagining Performance Practice is an integrative, transdisciplinary programme for performers, and anyone working in the field of performance, who are determined to reimagine performance and performative public engagement for the coming decades.
Poetics of Imagination
Explore story and culture, examining how we have conjured stories from the earliest times to the present day. The course is centred around oral telling and opens to a broader spectrum of arts, examining the work of ancient to contemporary storytellers, writers and artists.
Cultural Production
What does it really mean to create, curate and manage cultural organisations and arts projects? This programme is designed to help you build and enhance your production, managerial, administrative, fundraising and creative curatorial skills, to survive in the contemporary arts sector.
Arts and Ecology
This is the most decisive decade in human history and unlike previous highly significant periods in history, we are fully aware of how pivotal these few years are to our species and the planet as human habitat. Arts and Ecology is a low residency master’s degree that asks how the whole of our humanity can be brought to this urgent conversation.
Arts and Place
Open to practitioners and curators working in any art form including performance, writing, soundart, moving image, photography, digital art and fine art, this course puts particular emphasis on collaborative practice in response to an expanded understanding of place, via a unique residency-based programme.
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why join us?
our venue
Dartington has a range of dance, theatre, music and art studios and a wealth of outdoor learning spaces including woods, farmland, the river Dart, the medieval deer park, food growing and landscaped gardens.
our faculty
Dartington Arts School has a rich interdisciplinary learning community of staff and students working with a passion to be change-agents for a sustainable future.
our programmes
Our low residency, innovative programmes offer you a learning experience rich in intellectual and creative exploration, with a flexibility that suits the complexities of modern life.
latest news & blogs
Lecturer contributes soundscape to Chelsea Flower Show top prize garden
The Rewilding Britain Landscape garden which has just won top prize at the Chelsea Flower Show includes field recordings of beavers and the natural environment made by our Arts & Ecology lecturer Mike Edwards.
Postcards from Venice
One of our Arts and Place students embarks on a new project inviting members of the public at the Venice Biennale to send postcards back to Dartington.
New appointments for Arts & Place MA
It’s an exciting time on campus as the new cohort for our Arts & Place MA have just started and we have two new incredible artists who have joined the teaching staff. Dr Mohini Chandra is the new Associate Lecturer and Adam Chodzko is a visiting lecturer who will...
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Mike Westbrook | Sunday 26th June | The Great Hall
We are thrilled and privileged to be welcoming legendary jazz pianist and composer Mike Westbrook to the Great Hall for a solo performance.
A bandleader since the 1960s, Westbrook has toured worldwide and recorded more than 50 albums! His compositions range from works for jazz and classical ensembles to stage musicals, opera, dance, television and experimental theatre. Major works include Citadel/Room 315 featuring John Surman, The Cortège a European song-cycle, and On Duke’s Birthday dedicated to the memory of Duke Ellington. His Big Band Rossini was featured at the BBC Proms, and his work for theatre includes Tyger, Adrian Mitchell’s musical about William Blake, staged by the National Theatre. We hope you can join us for this very special evening.
“Westbrook’s playing is intimate, restrained, reflective, and deceptively simple, moulding disparate sources into a beautiful and beguiling whole” – BBC Music Magazine
The concert will be preceded by a conversation with artist and musician, Marcus Vergette.
7.30pm Sunday 26th June
VENUE: Great Hall, Dartington Trust, South Devon
PRICING: £18. Members discounts apply
Summer School concert spotlight: Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, with Gavin Bryars and friends. 9:30pm Wednesday 27 July in The Great Hall at Dartington.
Based on a haunting recording of a Spiritual sung by a homeless man in London, Gavin Bryars’ composition, Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, is a profoundly moving meditation on the vulnerability of life. Since its first groundbreaking performance in 1972, it has become internationally recognised as an iconic work in 20th-century British music.
In this unique late-night performance, specially created for Dartington, composer-in-residence Gavin Bryars leads a group of Summer School musicians, who accompany the quavering voice on the recording with the sumptuous timbres of early instruments.
Book your tickets for this very special performance by one of the most influential British composers working today: dartington.org/event/jesus-blood-never-failed-me-yet/
[Photo credit: Aubrey Simpson]
#dartingtonmusic
Love to sing, and want to grow your vocal confidence? There are lots of opportunities to sing this summer at the Dartington Music Summer School, but today we'd like to put the spotlight on one particular workshop that's a great opportunity for anyone who can't commit to a week-long course...
Develop your vocal technique, learn new skills, sing together and make new friends who share your love of singing in Come and Sing, a fantastic one-hour workshop with expert choral conductor and singer, Sam Evans!
Join us from 5:30 - 6:30pm on Sunday 24th July, tickets are £8 each (or £5 for students). Please call our Summer School Team on: 01803 847080 to book, or find out more via our website: dartington.org/event/come-and-sing/
#dartingtonmusic
June's here already, and the Dartington Music Summer School & Festival is fast approaching!
Here's a little taster of the courses that are running in the fourth and final week of the Summer School, 13 - 20 August - there's still time to book if you'd like to join us. (And, we'll share more about our concerts over the coming weeks, too.)
- Opportunities for singers include Big Choir with William Vann, celebrating Vaughan Williams' 150th anniversary with a special a cappella repertoire, Gospel Choir with @blackvoicesuk, and Hollywood Songbook with Sarah Gabriel (a particular treat for film lovers!)
- Wind Chamber Music with @magnardensemble, plus Big Band and other opportunities for brass players to train with Steve Dummer and others
- Hone your composition skills with Christopher Fox, expand your musical horizons with a course on free improvisation with Jason Yarde and Mark Sanders of @cafeotodalston, and grow your confidence in jazz improvisation with @peteredwardsmusic, Jihad Darwish, Becca Toft and Ellie Smith.
There's a lot more on the programme than we've shared here, so head over to our website to find out more and book your tickets: dartington.org/summerschool
We can't wait to make music with you! #dartingtonmusic
With gratitude for the generosity of our sponsor for Week Four of the Dartington Music Summer School & Festival, RVW Trust.