University's Brampton Road campus celebrates 60th anniversary

The building was opened by the president of the Royal Academy of Arts, Sir Charles Wheeler KCVO, CBE at a ceremony on Wednesday, October 9, 1963, and since then the building has been the home of art education in the city.

The initial building had a courtyard at the centre which was later built over (Image: Supplied)Art education has a history in Carlisle that dates back some 200 years when, in 1822, a Society for the Encouragement of Fine Art was formed in Carlisle before the school of art opened in 1854.

In 1950, the Carlisle School of Art moved to the Homeacres building on the 11-acre site at Brampton Road. It cost £8,000 to buy the building and a further £2,000 for its conversion which is about £450,000 in today’s money.

The new campus was led by Alan Tenant Moon who was principal for more than 20 years before retiring in 1979 (Image: Supplied)The school continued to grow and in 1959, The Cumberland News announced that the city had approved plans for the expansion of the College of Art.

Work to build a new teaching building at the Brampton Road campus was to cost £104,000 which is just shy of £3 million.

The building is still the home of the University of Cumbria’s Institute of Arts and students studying fine art, video game design and film are all based at the campus.

The Brampton Road campus' central design studio (Image: Supplied)To celebrate the anniversary, Karen Jones, development manager for the Institute of Education, Arts and Society at the University of Cumbria, delivered a talk on the history of the building.

“It’s a really vibrant community,” said Karen.

“There’s the old saying that it takes a village to educate a child, and at the Brampton Road campus it isn’t just the academics, its everyone there as they have a vested interest in the place.

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“In the past there’s been names changes, changes in the diversity of what has been taught at the campus, but the goals have remained the same and we’ve created a community and a place of belonging at Brampton Road.”

There are changes afoot for the Institute of Art, which is due to move into the new University campus at the citadels which is due to open before 2030 with the future for the Brampton Road campus as yet undecided.