Tim Bolton MA RCA, FRSA

Tim is an Arts education leader and artist, passionate about the power of creative learning at all ages and levels. He is currently Head of the School of Arts at West Dean, Tim was previously the Vice Principal at Arts University Plymouth, leading on the development of the curriculum portfolio and the design and delivery of over £15 million of new studios and workshops. He has been the Head of Programmes at Dartington, where he worked on relaunching Dartington School of Arts and supporting the academic development of Schumacher College. He studied at the Royal College of Art, practising in architectural ceramics and glass, and before that ran a business restoring traditional timber-framed buildings.

Tim’s research interests are split between the design, development and implementation of creative pedagogy and the spaces needed for creative practice to flourish and the sustainability of endangered craft skills, nationally and internationally. Including Ceramics, Glass, Wood, Metals and Textiles, in South and Sout East Asia. Tim has run projects with the British Council supporting entrepreneurial activity related to enhancing the economic and political empowerment of women, in Myanmar, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. Tim was on the board of Arts Council England’s South West Council and co-founded Making Futures in 2009, a biannual international conference on crafts and sustainability which ran nationally and internationally until 2022 with spinout conferences taking place in China, Korea and the Philippines.