Arts University Plymouth

Arts University Plymouth was founded in 1856 as the first specialist school of art and design in the city.

Since that time, we’ve retained our independence, our identity and our ability to respond swiftly to emerging trends and artistic movements. We’ve occupied a number of sites in the city, under a number of different names, but the beliefs that hold us together haven’t changed.

Social justice through community impact and social mobility, and creative learning through pedagogical innovation, are at the heart of everything that we do.

We believe that high-quality education for life is the creative catalyst for personal, professional and cultural transformation.

We offer the richest, most diverse ecosystem of materials, technologies, processes, practices, and exchange of ideas at any art school in the UK. And that synergy gives us a certain kind of energy.

Our city-centre undergraduate campus, Tavistock Place, is a thriving creative hub of collaboration and innovation, thinking and making. A close-knit community where artists, designers and makers combine, and a place to explore and experiment with processes and materials, both contemporary and traditional. Here, we continue to invest heavily in new studios and workshops that redefine the relationship between media, fine art, digital technology and handcrafted traditions.

Tavistock Place is also home to our on-site international exhibition venue MIRROR and Plymouth Arts Cinema.

Established in 1856, at Arts University Plymouth we are proud of our building's historic origins. The original Plymouth School of Art was opened on 21 January 1856. Over a period of time the School has had various locations, none of them more than a hundred yards or so from the present position (Cobourg Street, the erstwhile Park Street and Ebrington Street), until finally, in 1892, the Jubilee Memorial Science, Art and Technical School was opened in Tavistock Road.

This building was to become a victim of post-war redevelopment some 70 or so years later (many Plymouthians, even those who weren't students there, cherish fond memories of the grand Victorian structure). However, it had long since ceased to house the Plymouth College of Arts and Crafts, which by then had relocated to the former Palace Court School premises.

This was a temporary measure though, and in 1969, following the creation of Plymouth Polytechnic and the hiving off of the Architecture Department, approval was given to construct a new College of Art and Design on what had been Park Street, where the original Plymouth Drawing School had started more than 100 years earlier.

Designed by the then City Architect H J W Stirling, the new five-storey building was officially opened on 29 March 1974 at a cost of approximately £300,000. Less than thirty years later the building was extended and refurbished, and the cost this time, a reflection of the rate of inflation, was over £5,000,000. With an avowed aim to be the first port of call locally for anyone interested in Art and Design, the College was well set for the future.