Ravensbourne College

Ravensbourne

Ravensbourne college building in North Greenwich
Type	Public
Established	1962
Director	Linda Drew
Academic staff	140
Students	2,190 (2015/16)
Undergraduates	2,110 (2015/16)
Postgraduates	80 (2015/16)
Location	North Greenwich, London, UK
Nickname	Rave
Website	www.ravensbourne.ac.uk

Coordinates: 51°30′6″N 0°0′20″E / 51.50167°N 0.00556°E / 51.50167; 0.00556

Ravensbourne (formerly the Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication) is a university sector college in the field of digital media and design, with a vocationally focused portfolio of courses, spanning fashion, television and broadcasting, interactive product design, architecture and environment design, graphic design, animation, moving image, music production for media and sound design.

Ravensbourne, which was formerly Bromley Technical College, was opened in 1959 by the amalgamation of the Bromley School of Art and the Department of Furniture Design of the Beckenham School of Art. It was originally located at Bromley Common and Chislehurst in outer London before moving to a new purpose-built campus in inner London on the Greenwich Peninsula in September 2010.

The Bromley School of Art opened in 1878 in Tweedy Road, Bromley. It became Bromley College of Art after the second world war. In 1959 it merged with the Department of Furniture Design of the Beckenham School of Art and in 1965 moved to purpose-built accommodation on Rookery Lane, Bromley Common. The site had originally housed the Rookery, an 18th-century house that had been burnt out while in military occupation in 1946. As the college expanded it was unable to develop the Rookery Lane site any further, as it was part of the Metropolitan Green Belt. Limitations to space had already resulted in Foundation courses being housed in temporary buildings in the grounds around the main building. This resulted in the college moving in 1975, to a new site set amongst 18 acres (73,000 m²) of private parkland on Walden Road, Chislehurst51°25′14″N 0°03′13″E / 51.4205°N 0.0537°E / 51.4205; 0.0537. The Rookery Lane site was redeveloped for the Bromley College of Further & Higher Education.