A ‘solid foundation’? Art schools and art education

Despite the success of municipal art galleries in some quarters, the prevailing Liberal economic ideology of much of industrial Lancashire remained suspicious of state intervention in the arts. Many feared it would become economically costly and threaten local civic independence. However Royal Commissions that exposed the lack of artistic skills among industrial textile workers meant that attitudes gradually changed. Liberal Manchester became one of the first state-supported art schools. This chapter explores how local communities fought to shape art education and the successes and failure of local art education. Although aimed at the industrial worker, the art school remained a sphere in which bourgeois values and middle class students predominated, much to the chagrin of local critics.