Kent Institute of Art & Design

The KIAD as it is often known is an art educational establishment based across three campuses in the county of Kent, in south-east England. It was formed by the amalgamation of three independent colleges namely Canterbury College of Art, Maidstone College of Art and Rochester College of Art the latter also being referred to as Medway College of Art. In turn in 2005 KIAD merged with the Surrey Institute of Art & Design, University College to form the University College for the Creative Arts with campuses at Canterbury, Epsom, Farnham, Maidstone and Rochester. In 2008, this gained full university status and became the University for the Creative Arts.

Maidstone College of Art was founded in 1867, and Rochester College of Art in 1886. The origin of Canterbury College of Art lies in the private art school founded by the well-known Kent-based Victorian animal painter Thomas Sidney Cooper in 1882 and known then as the Canterbury Sidney Cooper School of Art. After his demise in 1902, his art school continued until 1935 when it was taken over by the City of Canterbury Education Committee. The Education Committee took on all the assets and liabilities of the art school and until 1972 it remained housed in the building that had been Cooper's home and studio in the centre of the city. By 1962 the teaching staff read like a veritable Modern British Art directory. It included David Hockney, Ruskin Spear, Edwin La Dell, Elisabeth Frink, Herbert Dalwood, Alistair Grant, Patrick Procktor, Carlos Sancha, as well as visitors Robert Buhler, Leonard Rosoman, Leonard Stoppani (later Principal at Farnham), John Ward all of whom were active practitioners in Fine Art and were also joined by Henri Henrion and Paul Hogarth in the School of Graphic Design.

Canterbury College of Art was by this time operating under the aegis of the newly reorganised Kent County Council, along with the art schools at Maidstone and Rochester. Ravensbourne College of Art located in Chislehurst was also in an informal relationship to these three, by virtue of being technically in the county of Kent, but under the administrative control of Bromley Borough Council rather than Kent County Council. It was the three colleges under the direct control of Kent County Council that went on to form KIAD in 1987.

The founding director of the Kent Institute was Peter Williams, an artist in his own right and former principal of the Lincoln School of Art and Medway College of Art, who ran the Institute from 1987 to 1996. Williams was instrumental in gathering the three art colleges together but reframed from amalgamating them into one single campus because he recognised their individual cultural connections within their communities

A notable feature of the Canterbury College of Art at this time was the number of former Leeds College of Art tutors and students who started working there. This arose from Thomas Watt being made Head of Fine Art at Canterbury in 1968, Watt having previously been a teaching colleague of Harry Thubron at Leeds College of Art. Under Watt, the radical Leeds teaching methods developed by Thubron were imported into Canterbury through the employment of other artists from Leeds, such as Stass Paraskos, Tom Pemberton and Dennis Creffield. Another key member of staff was Eric Hurren, who led the Foundation Course in Art and Design from 1963 to 1988.

One of the ironies of the history of Canterbury College of Art is that the original home of the art school, in Thomas Sidney Cooper's house, again became a place for teaching art in 2004 when another educational institution in the city, Canterbury Christ Church University, used the building to house its fine art faculty. The Canterbury school referred to here should not be confused with Canterbury College School of Art.

This information is mainly attributed to Wiki.