NCAD beware: when the Winchester School of Art merged with a university it struggled to attract students, and now faces the threat of closure, writes Katharine Crouan
They say that running an art school is like herding cats. It is not. It's much more difficult, as Colm Ó Briain must be finding out as he tries to steer NCAD through merger negotiations with UCD. As feeling builds up inside NCAD against the merger, it's puzzling that the future of the national institution for the education of artists and designers has occasioned so little public debate.
NCAD is the senior art college in Ireland and its massive contribution to the cultural life and economy of the nation through the quality of its graduates demands that there should be widespread concern for its future, not just in the NCAD board and Ministry of Education, but in the professional arts and creative industries, who have so much to lose if the wrong decision is taken.
I am not close enough to comment on the detail of the proposal but I was at the centre of the merger of a very well-known art school - Winchester - with the University of Southampton. Having seen at first hand the devastation that can be caused when a merger goes wrong, I wonder if the proposed NCAD-UCD marriage may not be an out-of-date solution to a present-day problem.
In the 1990s, Winchester School of Art was very successful, financially solvent and popular with students. The school had pioneered links with Europe, established the first Erasmus programmes in Art and Design, set up joint BA and MA degrees with art colleges in Europe and established a postgraduate centre in Barcelona.
In 1996 it was awarded one of the highest research rankings in the UK. But, with only 700 students, and on a cramped site, the board of governors feared for Winchester's long-term future. The board thought that a small art school, however good, would never be given degree-awarding powers. The school was under-capitalised and if it could not invest in its future development, especially in new buildings and industry-standard digital equipment, the board argued, it would stand still and then regress.
There was an academic rationale for merger in the perceived need for fine art and design to engage with other disciplines. Lastly, the director was convinced that merger with a distinguished university was the answer to both financial and academic limitations. Similar factors, I suspect, may be true for NCAD.
Negotiations opened with the University of Southampton, one of the UK's top 10 research universities, with world-class faculties of science and engineering. Staff at all levels of each organisation were involved in the debate, and the merger was agreed after a democratic vote, and after assurances had been given for the continuation of Winchester's identity as a specialist art school. Only the art school students dissented - and as it turned out, their view was prescient. In 2006, eight years after the merger, Winchester is slowly coming out of the other side of a nightmare, struggling to survive. It is not an experience I would wish on NCAD.
What went wrong? Most problems can be attributed to one source: the loss of financial independence, though that was only a symptom of the chasm between art school and university cultures. There is a world of difference between receiving government funding, however inadequate, direct from source, and receiving it after the university has top-sliced the block grant to meet its overheads.
State-of-the-art libraries and laboratories needed by world-class science and engineering faculties must be paid for, and Southampton's method of allocating overheads was typical of a big, multi-faculty university. A charge was levied for every student and staff member and - here's the rub for art and design - each square metre of space. This made sense for the rest of the university, where multiple occupancy of lecture theatres and seminar rooms reduced the cost to each department, but it was a disaster for space-hungry creative subjects.
The art school was unaware that in a science-intensive university in the 21st century, arts and humanities subjects often have to cross-subsidise eye-wateringly expensive science facilities. Unable to access the rich research funds of engineering or medicine, the "cheaper" arts subjects are frequently condemned to a second-class citizenship, caught between the rock of teaching increasing numbers of students and the hard place of research outputs.
Financial meltdown continued through the rigidly hierarchical university salary structure. It was never understood by the university that art schools have to compete with industry salaries for high-quality technical staff. As Southampton's head of personnel told me, "You have to understand that university salaries are structured like a country house party, where the lecturers are the guests, professors are guests of honour and the administration is the servant class."
By contrast, the flexible interaction between artists, technicians, clerical and administrative staff - reflected in their salaries in a well-run art school - mirrors working conditions in the arts and the design industries. After two years in the University of Southampton, many art school staff left, disappointed and demotivated, while others were made "voluntarily redundant" and the visiting professional artists and designers, who are the life blood of any art college, became a rare luxury. Winchester's Barcelona and other European connections were closed down as expensive distractions.
Art students could no longer study a second European language ("We are not Berlitz"), though the truth was that the university had little taste for European initiatives as its overseas priorities lay in the the major science universities of the US and lucrative full-cost undergraduates from southeast Asia.
The cultures of the art school and university, always distinct, now became openly hostile to one another. The university became increasingly frustrated by its unco-operative art school, while the art school staff, wearied by the soporific speed of decision-making and the mind-numbing bureaucracy, lost the entrepreneurialism and energy for which Winchester had been famous.
The culture clash also extended to managerial ethos. The leaders of art schools are executive directors, who exert strong management in order to allow maximum creative freedom for students and staff. By contrast, in a traditional university department, the head is elected for a limited period and has much responsibility but little authority, other than that conveyed by his or her research standing. The result is that the university belief in management by "collegiality" often ossifies an organisation, protects the status quo and impedes innovation because of the slowness of its deliberations. Faculty board and senate - the theatres for "collegiality" - do not, in my experience, bring out the best in art and design staff. The board of NCAD may reflect on how difficult it will be for their staff and students to thrive if UCD is anything like Southampton.
As for the dream of interdisciplinarity, although Winchester encountered first-rate university archeologists, engineers and medics who were keen to explore the inter-relationships between their discipline and art and design, there were invariably financial deterrents and too many other pressing demands on everyone's time.
Besides, before interdisciplinary research can be attempted, there has to be a credible discipline. Ironically, within the University of Southampton, Winchester's strengths in fine art and textiles research were seriously weakened through underfunding and haemorrhaging of its best staff. If NCAD wants to increase its research standing, it should look seriously at the reality of the opportunities offered by its merger partner.
With the benefit of hindsight I'd say that the art school entered into the relationship with extraordinary naivety. Winchester fully expected that it would be able to develop its work, just doing it better, protected and nurtured in the the better-resourced larger organisation. The reality was that merger, in this instance, as in any other, simply meant "takeover", and the most skilful change managers could not hide this reality.
Seven years after the merger, Winchester School of Art survives in name but is now a university department that has difficulty in attracting students. At the time of writing it is faced with the threat of closure.
Is an art school-university collision inevitable? Absolutely not. The great 19th-century institutions of Goldsmiths College and the Slade are successful enough examples. A generation ago, in the 1970s, the majority of UK art colleges merged with their local polytechnics, impelled by a shared vocational ethos. Those 1970s polytechnics have blossomed into confident modern universities now, and the huge faculties of art and design at Brighton, Manchester and Bristol, for example, are first-rate examples of how universities may serve art and design very well indeed. However their success has grown out of more than 30 years of investment during a much more favourable time for the public funding of higher education than most governments can contemplate in 2006.
Is merger with a university the only solution for NCAD? Ask me to name the most creative art colleges internationally, and it is the independent, free-standing art schools such as the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Cranbrook Academy, Rhode Island School of Design in the US, the Museum School in Boston and the wonderful University for the Arts in London (a confederated structure of the best London art schools), that spring to mind. What do all of these have in common? Talented staff and motivated students in abundance? Certainly. But also another factor. All of them are located with a major national art museum, the most recent dynamic example being the relocation of Chelsea College of Art and Design adjacent to Tate Britain.
In Ireland, isn't it time to think of a creative co-location with Imma? Co-location rather than merger might allow Imma and NCAD to accomplish more through collaboration than either organisation could achieve separately, while allowing each to retain its individual mission: Imma to show the best international and Irish art, and NCAD to educate the most creative artists and designers. Think of the possibilities for art students, able to engage with the highest quality work at first hand. Imagine how much more extensive and grounded in the community Imma's education and outreach programmes could be if undertaken in partnership with NCAD. Consider how the excellent visual arts archive at NCAD could be the basis of a one-stop shop for primary sources on modern Irish Art. The possibilities are there, and none would require merger, just a careful strategic alliance between two interested parties.
My connection with NCAD over the years as external examiner, and as director-designate, has left me with a long-standing affection for the college which gives me the nerve to offer the following advice to its new board. Be confident. You will need nerves of steel. Don't decide to merge with anyone before you have exhausted the possibility of a sustainable, independent future. Get degree-awarding powers - fast. That is not only possible but many art colleges have gone down that route before.
Above all, create strategic alliances with other like-minded organisations, within and beyond higher education, rather than merging with anyone, because freedom and independence, once sacrificed, can't be retrieved. And if, in the final analysis, you must merge, be clear that there is sufficient chemistry between NCAD and your chosen partner to sustain a long, happy marriage. And make sure that you sign a pre-nuptial agreement so that you can demerge if it all goes wrong.
• Katharine Crouan is a writer and consultant on higher education and the arts, and holds a visiting professorship at Glasgow School of Art. She was previously Dean of the faculty of arts at Southampton University and Head of Winchester School of Art.
