Russell Mills, himself a graduate and former lecturer at the Royal College of Art, will explore an extraordinary period in the history of both Ambleside and the Royal College of Art, when two disparate communities – one, essentially conservative, the other, a motley crew of aspiring artists, exotic creatures – came together in a remarkable story of assimilation in a small rural town during wartime. Mills will consider the social conditions against which the lives of the students and staff, and their occasionally bewildered hosts, became interwoven in a pattern of unlikely friendships that bloomed against the common backdrop of the hardships and upheaval of war life.

Mills will also focus on some of the remarkable talents who were nurtured during the RCA’s “Ambleside Years”, and who subsequently went on to become important artists, designers, cultural shape-shifters, and highly influential tutors in our art schools. Without them our current cultural landscape would be very different, and without its years of enforced exile it is likely that the Royal College of Art would not have survived to become the most influential art school in the world.

Details:

Doors open at 5.30pm.

Talk will start around 6pm.

Doors close at 8pm.

This event is linked to our Gilbert Spencer exhibition.

In association with

Liss Llewellyn Gallery.

Supported by

James and Annabel Salter