Dartington College of Arts was a specialist arts institution near Totnes

Totnes

Totnes is a market town and civil parish at the head of the estuary of the River Dart in Devon, England within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty...

, Devon

Devon

Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...

, South West England

South West England

South West England is one of the regions of England defined by the Government of the United Kingdom for statistical and other purposes. It is the largest such region in area, covering and comprising Bristol, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Dorset, Wiltshire, Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. ...

, it specialized in post-drama

Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

tic theatre

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

, music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

, choreography, Performance Writing

Performance Writing

Performance Writing was pioneered at Dartington College of Arts in Devon, UK as a radical new approach to writing. It is a multi-modal approach which explores through artistic practice how writing interacts with other art forms and practices — visual art, sound art, time-based media, installation,...

 and visual performance

Performance art

In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...

, focusing on a performative and multi-disciplinary approach to the arts. In addition to this, lecturing staff were all in some way active arts practitioners. The college held an international reputation for excellence, and aimed to promote a critical self-awareness in contemporary arts practice, and as such was firmly entrenched in post-modernism.

The college was founded in 1961 having evolved as part of the original Dartington Hall

Dartington Hall

The Dartington Hall Trust, near Totnes, Devon, United Kingdom is a charity specialising in the arts, social justice and sustainability.The Trust currently runs 16 charitable programmes, including The Dartington International Summer School and Schumacher Environmental College...

 experiment in rural

Rural

Rural areas or the country or countryside are areas that are not urbanized, though when large areas are described, country towns and smaller cities will be included. They have a low population density, and typically much of the land is devoted to agriculture...

 regeneration.