Ealing Art College (or Ealing Technical College & School of Art) was a further education institution on St Mary's Road, Ealing,

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. The site today is the Ealing campus of

University of West London The University of West London (UWL) is a public research university in the United Kingdom with campuses in Ealing, Brentford, and in Reading, Berkshire. The university has roots in 1860, when the Lady Byron School was founded, later Ealing C ...

History

In the early 1960s the School of Art was composed of Fashion, Graphics, Industrial Design, Photography and Fine Art Departments, and the college was attended by notable musicians Freddie Mercury,

Ronnie Wood Ronald David Wood (born 1 June 1947) is an English rock musician, best known as an official member of the Rolling Stones since 1975, as well as a member of Faces and the Jeff Beck Group. Wood began his career in 1964, playing guitar with a ...

and

Pete Townshend Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend (; born 19 May 1945) is an English musician. He is co-founder, leader, guitarist, second lead vocalist and principal songwriter of the Who, one of the most influential rock bands of the 1960s and 1970s. Townsh ...

. The College offered External London University courses in the 1960s. The BA degree and BSc Economics with specialisation in various components like Geography, Economics and Law, attracted many British and foreign students, and also lecturers from various London University Colleges. There was also a School of Liberal Arts that offered secretarial and undergraduate language courses in French, Spanish, German and Russian and included a semester at L'ecole d'interpretes, University of Geneva. It was considered revolutionary at the time. The two-year Groundcourse was held in the annexe to the Art School. The "Groundcourse" was a radical and influential experiment in art education, led by

Roy Ascott Roy Ascott FRSA (born 26 October 1934) is a British artist, who works with cybernetics and telematics on an art he calls technoetic by focusing on the impact of digital and telecommunications networks on consciousness. Since the 1960s, Ascott ...

with a team of artists including R B Kitaj and

Anthony Benjamin Anthony Benjamin (29 March 1931 – 17 February 2002) FRSA, RE was an English painter, sculptor and printmaker. Referred to as a 'polymathic artist' by critic Rosemary Simmons when writing about his work for the ''Borderline Images By Anthony ...

. For a few years in the 1970s, the college had a separate campus at Woodlands Avenue, Acton, where the Schools of Librarianship and Management were based.

Notable alumni

Artists

* Vic Duppa-Whyte – Paper engineer, pop-up books creator * Michael English – English psychedelic artist-musician with

Hapshash and the Coloured Coat Hapshash and the Coloured Coat was an influential British graphic design and avant-garde musical partnership in the late 1960s, consisting of Michael English and Nigel Waymouth. It produced popular psychedelic posters, and two albums of underg ...

* Gideon Gechtman – Israeli artist and sculptor * Alan Lee – English illustrator (won an Oscar for his work on the ''Lord of the Rings'' movie) * Arthur Ted Powell – advertising art director and artist * Barbara Tate – artist and author * Stephen Willats - artist * Fiona Adams - Photographer. Took the 'Jumping Beatles' picture John Lennon chose for the cover of their 1963 EP ''Twist and Shout''

Musicians

– lead guitarist of

The Who The Who are an English rock band formed in London in 1964. Their classic lineup consisted of lead singer Roger Daltrey, guitarist and singer Pete Townshend, bass guitarist and singer John Entwistle, and drummer Keith Moon. They are considered ...

"How one man wove a kind of magic in Ealing"
''The Independent''. Retrieved 2 July 2011 * Freddie Mercury – lead singer of

Queen Queen or QUEEN may refer to: Monarchy * Queen regnant, a female monarch of a Kingdom ** List of queens regnant * Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king * Queen dowager, the widow of a king * Queen mother, a queen dowager who is the mother ...

Tim Staffell Timothy John Staffell (born 24 February 1948) is an English rock musician, visual artist, model maker and designer. He was a member of Smile, a band which included guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor. Upon Staffell's departure, Smile w ...

– lead singer and bassist of

Smile A smile is a facial expression formed primarily by flexing the muscles at the sides of the mouth. Some smiles include a contraction of the muscles at the corner of the eyes, an action known as a Duchenne smile. Among humans, a smile expresses ...

, precursor band to

Roger Ruskin Spear Roger Ruskin Spear (born 29 June 1943 in Hammersmith, London) is an English sculptor, multimedia artist and multi-instrumentalist (saxophones, clarinet, piano, guitars, percussion) who was a member of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Career After Sp ...

– saxophonist, robots and theremin leg in

The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (also known as The Bonzo Dog Band or The Bonzos) was created by a group of British art-school students in the 1960s. Combining elements of music hall, trad jazz and psychedelia with surreal humour and avant-garde ar ...

– guitarist of

Faces The face is the front of an animal's head that features the eyes, nose and mouth, and through which animals express many of their emotions. The face is crucial for human identity, and damage such as scarring or developmental deformities may affe ...

and

The Rolling Stones The Rolling Stones are an English Rock music, rock band formed in London in 1962. Active for six decades, they are one of the most popular and enduring bands of the album era, rock era. In the early 1960s, the Rolling Stones pioneered the g ...

Officials

Sergei Ivanov Sergei Borisovich Ivanov ( rus, Сергей Борисович Иванов, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej bɐˈrʲisəvʲɪtɕ ɪvɐˈnof; born 31 January 1953) is a Russian senior official and politician who has served as the Special Representative of ...

– Russian senior official and statesman; studied English language here from 1974.

Writers and journalists

* Michael Molloy – ex-editor of the ''Daily Mirror'' and ''Sunday Mirror'' *

Robert Rankin Robert Fleming Rankin (born 27 July 1949) is a prolific British author of comedic fantasy novels. Born in Parsons Green, London, he started writing in the late 1970s, and first entered the bestsellers lists with ''Snuff Fiction'' in 1999, by ...

– best-selling author, illustrator and sculptor * Michael Lawrence – author of many books for children and young adults *

John Van der Kiste John Van der Kiste (born 15 September 1954 in Wendover, Buckinghamshire) is a British author, son of Wing Commander Guy Van der Kiste (1912–99). He was educated at Blundell's School in Tiverton, where he briefly formed a rock band Cobweb with fe ...

– author (his novel ''Always There'' is based partly on his student days at Ealing)

References

Education in the London Borough of Ealing Art schools in London {{art-org-stub