West Dean College launches a new creative hub in Bloomsbury
Art and antique lovers will be interested to learn that as well as drinking in the delights from LAPADA’s exhibitors at the Berkeley Square Fair, they will now be able to take an active part in the arts themselves thanks to West Dean College.
The former home of that great patron of the arts Edward James, West Dean nestles in the lea of the Downs below Goodwood and within sight of Chichester Cathedral’s towering spire.
There it welcomes the artistic and creative with its courses in arts, design, crafts and conservation. From short courses to diplomas and degrees, you will find bookbinders, potters, horologists, makers of musical instruments, weavers and fine artists, among many others.
Now West Dean has arrived in London – appropriately in Bloomsbury – and will provide full and part-time degree courses from September this year, based in Dilke House at 1 Malet Street. In all West Dean College London will offer more than 100 short courses during the summer, with one-day and two-day creative courses already on offer until July 2.
Kirsten Ramsay, the Ceramics Conservator for BBC’s The Repair Shop, and a West Dean Ceramics Conservation Alumna herself, launched the new conservation hub at the end of April, saying: “I am thrilled to be opening West Dean London which offers the opportunity to learn new skills and make right in the heart of London. I am also beyond excited to be taking the tapestry course – something I have never done before!
“Since studying conservation there in the late 1980s, West Dean has been instrumental to my career, both as student and tutor. It’s a place I keep returning to, to share my experience but also to widen my skills and knowledge of other materials.”
Courses will also include painting, life drawing, photography, textiles, printmaking and writing, alongside highly specialised courses, from ceramic conservation and Japanese woodblock printmaking, to passementarie weaving to writing crime fiction.
The courses will take place in the light-filled studios of West Dean’s newly renovated London HQ near the British Museum.
Kirsten Ramsay, the Ceramics Conservator for BBC’s The Repair Shop, and a West Dean Ceramics Conservation Alumna herself, at the launch of the new conservation hub in London.
