Practical Utopia

Dartington Hall was a social experiment of kaleidoscopic vitality set up in Devon in 1925 by a fabulously wealthy American heiress Dorothy Elmhirst (ne Whitney) and her Yorkshire-born husband Leonard. It quickly achieved international fame with its progressive school craft production and wide-ranging artistic endeavours. Dartington was a residential community of students teachers farmers artists and craftsmen committed to revivifying life in the countryside. It was also a socio-cultural laboratory where many of the most brilliant interwar minds came to test out their ideas about art society spirituality and rural regeneration. To this day Dartington Hall remains a symbol of countercultural experimentation and a centre for arts ecology and social justice. Practical Utopia presents a compelling portrait of a group of people trying to live out their ideals set within an international framework and demonstrates Dartington''s tangled affinities with other unity-seeking projects across Britain and in India and America.