This Flesh Is Mine. Brian Woolland

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      Elsie Fogerty founded The Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art at the Royal Albert Hall in 1906. Fogerty was a specialist in speech training and held a firm belief in the social importance of education. She was committed to advancing the study of theatre as an academic discipline.

      In 1957 the School moved from the Albert Hall, having acquired the lease of the Embassy Theatre at Swiss Cottage and its associated buildings. By 1961 three distinct departments had been established within Central. The Stage department was running its three-year course for actors, with alumni as distinguished as Lord Laurence Olivier and Dame Peggy Ashcroft already a part of its history, and a two-year course for stage managers.

      The School continued to expand. In 1972 Central became grant-aided by the Inner London Education Authority. In 1989 it was incorporated as a higher education college in its own right and funded directly by government. Central had been offering degrees since 1986, firstly validated by the Council of National Academic Awards and from 1992 by the Open University.

      In 2004 the Privy Council granted the Central the power to award its own taught degrees. In 2005 students from the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art transferred to Central after a 100-year history of significant contributions to stage and screen. In the same year, the School was designated as the Higher Education Funding Council for England’s Centre for Excellence in Training for Theatre. With effect from September 2005 Central became a College of the University of London, finally realising the ambitions articulated a hundred years earlier by its founder Elsie Fogerty.

      Central’s mission therefore is to place students at the centre of its work. Central develops practitioners and researchers who shape the future of theatre and performance across the UK and beyond.

      Central is committed to maintaining our distinctive ethos as a higher education conservatoire at the crossing-point of higher education, industry and community. This consists of a fluid combination of scholarship and research, industry-related vocational training and research-informed teaching recognition that enhancement of learning is a project for staff and students alike, and that it takes many forms and relationships; active encouragement of diversity as a basis not only for an enriched learning experience but also for an enhanced working environment; opening doors to our disciplines for new thinkers, makers and practitioners in dispersed and diverse communities and seeking to lead participation in varied but interrelated communities of interest and study.