Gavin’s next book Art to a Degree: A Translocal History of Artschool will explore how key progressive educational and artistic initiatives were developed in and across regional English art institutions between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s: with chapters on Bradford, Brighton, Leeds, Maidstone, Newcastle, and Portsmouth.
It will chart how regional institutions pioneered the introduction of media and performance practices into fine art curricula and plot how staff and students worked together, and other times at odds, to pursue creative and political agendas which challenged traditional outlooks on the plastic arts.
The book will show how exploratory practice in provincial colleges seeded broadly transformative cultural developments in local, national and international culture: in radical theatre, feminist photography, Black film and video, time-based curation, nightclub performance and pop music.
Work on this project will be supported by a Paul Mellon Senior Research Fellowship during 2027.