Neil Walton

Staff details

Position Lecturer
Department Educational Studies
Email n.walton (@gold.ac.uk)
Neil Walton

Neil Walton is Secondary PGCE Programme Leader and Subject Leader for PGCE Art and Design.

After training at the Royal Academy Schools he received his MA in History of Art from Birkbeck, University of London, and then a Postgraduate Diploma in Counselling and Psychotherapy from the University of Roehampton.

He worked for over a decade in London secondary schools and taught art history at various art schools and colleges. His interests are in the history and philosophy of art education and philosophical aesthetics.

Current work includes developing a historicist pedagogy of art and design, integrating art history into the secondary curriculum, and examining how Robert Brandom's inferentialism can inform art education. He is a Trustee of the Association for Art History, and formerly co-editor of the International Journal of Art and Design Education and Visiting Professor at the Royal Academy Schools.

Academic qualifications

  • Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art, Royal Academy Schools 1992
  • MA History of Art, Birkbeck College, University of London 1997
  • Postgraduate Diploma in Counselling and Psychotherapy, University of Roehampton 2013

Research interests

Neil's interests are in the history and philosophy of art education and philosophical aesthetics. Current work includes developing a historicist pedagogy of art and design, integrating art history into the secondary curriculum, and examining how Robert Brandom's inferentialism can inform art education.

Neil has argued for the centrality of knowledge and reasoning within the art and design curriculum. Specifically, he draws on Brandom's inferentialism, a theory that has not previously been applied to art education. This approach understands art as discursive and rational, as concept using and reason sensitive, as essentially a disjunctive set of historical-social practices. Art education is then best thought of as a rational-critical introduction to knowing those practices, as making explicit their proprieties, entailments and contradictions and the choices that are thereby made possible. This view emphasises learning in art and design as developing increasing levels of responsibility and commitment by integrating concepts in practice and theory.

Neil has also published articles on the journal Block, on the art theorist Anton Ehrenzweig and on the National Arts Education Archive. He has worked on various projects with the artist Cathie Pilkington, such as the exhibitions ‘The Ancestors’ at the Royal Academy of Arts and 'Estin Thalassa' and ‘The Covering’ at Karsten Schubert.

Publications and research outputs

Book Section

Walton, Neil. 2020. There are no formal elements. Why we need a historicist pedagogy of Art and Design. In: Nicholas Addison and Lesley Burgess, eds. Debates in Art and Design Education. London: Routledge, pp. 72-81. ISBN 9780367193218

Article

Walton, Neil. 2023. Making art explicit: knowledge, reason and art history in the art and design curriculum. International Journal of Art and Design Education, 42(4), pp. 574-583. ISSN 1476-8062

Walton, Neil. 2019. Anton Ehrenzweig, the artist teacher and a psychoanalytic approach to school art education. International Journal of Art and Design Education, 38(4), pp. 832-839. ISSN 1476-8062

Walton, Neil. 2018. The Journal Block and Its Art School Context. Arts, 7(4),

Adams, Jeff; Bailey, Rowan and Walton, Neil. 2017. The National Arts Education Archive: Ideas and Imaginings. International Journal of Art and Design Education, 36(2), pp. 176-187.

Further profile content