Established | 1898 |
---|---|
Location | London, United Kingdom |
Campus | Camberwell |
Affiliations | University of the Arts London |
Website | www.arts.ac.uk/camberwell |
Camberwell College of Arts (formerly known as Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts) is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, and is regarded as one of the UK's foremost art and design institutions. It is located in Camberwell in South London, England, with two sites, located in Peckham Road and Wilson Road. It offers further and higher education programmes, including postgraduate and PhD awards. The College has retained single degree options within Fine Art, offering specialist Bachelor of Arts courses in painting, sculpture, photography and drawing. The College also runs graduate and postgraduate courses in art conservation and fine art as well as design courses such as Graphic Design, Illustration and 3D Design.
The College's history is finely intertwined with that of the South London Gallery, with which the College shares its site. Manager of the South London Working Men's College in 1868, William Rossiter, purchased the freehold of Portland House on which the College now stands in 1889. The resulting Gallery opened in 1891, followed by the Technical Institute, the school's first guise in 1898. The philanthropist, John Passmore Edwards, gave a substantial sum of money for the erection of the building in memory of Lord Leighton. The school and gallery were the fruition of an artistic movement in Camberwell, supported by Edward Burne-Jones, Lord Leighton, Walter Crane and G F Watts. The school aimed to give the 'best artistic and technical education to all classes in the district'. Originally, the school offered classes in specific trades, such as architecture, cabinet design, embroidery, wood carving, wood block and stencil cutting. By 1920, a Fine Art Department had been created.