I do not know what moved me to check my old college's website this morning. I was instantly wide awake. The college is currently negotiating with University College Falmouth about a merge under the roof of the Combined Universities in Cornwall (CUC).

This would be the death of Dartington College of Arts.

During my own student years I had to witness the Dartington Hall Trust's endeavours to take away many facilities and privileges from the college in order to extend their own plans of bringing "big money" to Dartington, establishing a conference center, the Schumacher College and so on.

Now they have succeeded: the college is planning to leave the estate. There is just not enough space for 680 students any more. And lesser student numbers would simply not be economically feasible....

And nobody seems to care about what is going down the drain here: a thriving community in a rural environment, and a tradition that has not gathered dust over the decades but always remained on the cutting edge of the contemporary arts.

I am very, very sad.
And extremely angry.

And I won't leave it at that...