The ‘Real Art School’: The Cultural Roots of Authenticity in Art Schools in the UK and China

Abstract

This article investigates the identity of independent art schools, and art schools in multidisciplinary universities, in the UK and China, using the concept of collective identity from organizational management theory and drawing on semi-structured interviews with Chinese and British academics. It addresses the positive and negative aspects of art schools’ ‘image’. They are taken to be both the setting for creativity and innovation, and as being less effective than the other subject disciplines at contributing to economic growth. The article explores this not through an economic argument, but a cultural one. It shows that both independent art colleges and art schools in universities preserve ‘bohemianism’ in their organizational identity. It is not novel to note that in the West, this is based in Romanticism, however, it is possible to identify an equivalent, and more ancient, strand in Chinese culture that underlies the identity of ‘real art schools’ there.