Thinking Through the Creative Hub in Peripheral Places: A Long-View of the Dartington Hall Experiment in Rural Reconstruction Through Creativity

Abstract

Introduction This chapter considers the creative infrastructure and social relationships that can be witnessed in peripheral locations, through the lens of a creative hub. The chapter will aim to historicise the apparent recent rise of hubs by locating the argument around the creative infrastructure of Dartington Hall, located on a rural estate in Devon, UK, founded in 1926, and still in existence. Dartington Hall enables an exploration of the ways in which a creative rural hub can become a focal point for the broader rural creative community, which in turn reaches out through sets of national and international connections. As a nexus it is also a place which generates a network spinning out into the surrounding regional countryside, creating new spatial social formations that serve the regional creative infrastructure. [...]