'The Decorated School: Essays on the Visual Culture of Schooling' is a new multi-text publication discussing the relationships between architects, artists, educators and school users. It reclaims mural painting, sculpture and other forms of art in school buildings as an international phenomenon, as a pedagogic tool, and as a realm of significant yet liminal public art. Bridging disciplines and approaches the authors reveal that ?decorated' goes beyond surface to fabric, design and education. The inclusion of artworks within learning environments for didactic and aesthetic aims has a long history which challenges conventional notions of 'decorative'. Studies in this book focus on the modern era and public schooling. They trace developments from the early days of mass education at the end of the nineteenth century to the present, and in so doing they offer an unprecedented review of major art and education movements. Questions of ideology and aesthetics, child development and taste, come to the fore as the authors take us through an impressive range of emotive and colourful works. Subjects include: the 'Art at School' movement in France; sculpture in Japanese schools, the Chicago mural movement; the Edinburgh 'Schools Beautiful' programme; the art-curriculum relationships of post-war British primary schools; London County Council's educational commissions; Asger Jorn's Decorations for Arhus Statsgymnasium; abstraction and modern schooling in New York; Soviet and Post-Soviet school decoration in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan; and children's art projects in Belfast. This beautifully illustrated book is an outcome of a two-year international research network project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and led by Catherine Burke and Jeremy Howard. AUTHORS: Dr Catherine Burke is Senior Lecturer in History of Education at the University of Cambridge. She is an historian engaged with cultural and material histories of educational contexts and of childhood in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Peter Cunningham is an historian and educationist at Homerton College, University of Cambridge, teaching Educational Studies in the Faculty of Education as Senior Lecturer from 2001 to 2008, and is now a member of the Faculty's team for teacher professional development in Kazakhstan. He has published books and articles on the social and cultural history of education, with particular interests in school curricula and pedagogies, teachers and their professional identities, higher education and educational policy development. He has researched and written on educational innovators and progressives, and is a contributor to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Dr Jeremy Howard is a Senior Lecturer within the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews. He is particularly concerned with the representation, spaces and experiences of schooling, and grapples with the socio-political and pedagogic values that these may entail or involve. He has published numerous papers and books on the topic, as well as extensively on Central and East European art, architecture and design. 79 colour and b/w illustrations
