ABSTRACT
Between 1961 and 1967, Roy Ascott developed what was the most radical pedagogical model in the history of British art education. Groundcourse ran first at Ealing College of Art from 1961 to 1964, and then at Ipswich Civic College from 1965 to 1967, where Ascott held the posts of head of Foundation Studies and head of Fine Art respectively. This situation arose from a phase of contradictory conditions in British art education, which were simultaneously liberating and prohibitive. In the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, art education underwent a series of changes that vacillated between the formal and the radical. During Ascott’s tenure at Ipswich School of Art, a number of the artists involved contributed to Control Magazine, a journal that was founded by the artist Stephen Willats. Willats was an alumnus of Groundcourse Ealing. He started Control Magazine after ‘lunchtime discussion’ at Ipswich College of Art, where Ascott had invited him to teach after his studies at Ealing.
