Celebrating 200 years of Liverpool School of Art and Design
200-year milestone
This year’s Liverpool School of Art and Design’s Degree Show has opened at the John Lennon School of Art and Design, showcasing our 2025 final year students’ work.
The degree show titled ‘This is what we do’ marks an incredible milestone in LJMU’s history as the art school marks its own bicentenary, celebrating 200 years of the Liverpool School of Art and Design.
With origins tracing back to 1825, the school of art is the oldest in England outside of London.
Prizes awarded to exceptional students
As part of the celebrations Pro-Vice-Chancellor, External Engagement and Partnerships, Dr Aileen Jones and Liverpool School of Art and Design Director, Rachel McLean, opened the degree show.
Dr Aileen Jones addressed students at the opening:
“This school has been your testing ground, you have been pushed to think and create to the very highest standards and to develop as artists ready to launch your professional careers. I am sure that the work we are here to celebrate will provoke your audiences in positive and thoughtful ways."
Rachel McLean also celebrated eight students in particular with the school director’s prize giving for their exceptional work, intellectual rigour and outstanding achievements:
- Architecture: Lola Scholey-Conduit
- Interior Architecture: James Williams
- MA Architecture: See Bui Shirley Sin
- Fine Art: Cole Morris
- BA Hons Graphic Design and Illustration: Olivia Vaughan
- BA Hons History of Art and Museum Studies: Dagmara Firlej
- Fashion Design: Millie Wakefield
- Fashion Communication: Charlotte Pratt
We need to be challenged and moved by art and the fact that we are celebrating 200 years of the School of Art is testament to the importance of that continued heritage in celebrating the talent and passion of our students.
Pro-Vice-Chancellor, External Engagement and Partnerships, Dr Aileen Jones
Liverpool School of Art and Design degree show opening hours
‘This is what we do’ the 2025 degree show is open Friday 23 May to Friday 6 June in the John Lennon Art and Design Building. Find out more.
200 years of the Liverpool School of Art and Design
Liverpool School of Art and Design’s portfolio of subjects taught 200 years ago is very different to today’s art and design curriculum. Naval drawing and modelling featured prominently in the nineteenth century but disappeared as shipbuilding on Merseyside declined. Metalwork and jewellery featured up to the mid-twentieth century, as did bookbinding, embroidery, cabinet making, display and window dressing, but increasingly, with the reorganisation of education, many of the professional or ‘trades’ subjects moved into more specialised colleges or declined completely.
Fine art has remained a constant strength, while contemporary disciplines such as fashion, textiles and graphic design emerged and flourished during the twentieth century, with architecture returning to the school in 2000.
From its enlightened attitudes towards women in education - they were admitted as students from 1832, and the first female tutor was appointed in 1858 - to its innovative foundation courses in the 1960s which helped expand access to education, the School of Art and Design has often been at the forefront of art education.
Now housed in the John Lennon Art and Design Building – Lennon was a student at the school in the 1950s - the school continues to innovate in areas such as 3D printing and the intersection between art and science. Extensive links with practising artists and designers help today’s students, the artists, architects, illustrators and designers of the future, secure invaluable industry insights, connections that would no doubt be celebrated by the school’s nineteenth century founders. And our community of creatives deliver cutting-edge programmes, produce high-impact research and work alongside some of the world’s most iconic cultural leaders.
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