The London School of Mosaic has been awarded funding from the Leverhulme Trust to provide 12 Leverhulme Scholarships over 4 years starting from 2021. The scholarship covers our full-time tuition fees. You can read more about the scheme here: www.leverhulme.ac.uk/arts-scholarships

How to apply?

Applications for 2024-25 are open now and close on Friday 16 August 2024

Criteria

The scholarship aims to widen access to the course for people otherwise unable to self-fund their fees (e.g. those on low income or receiving state benefits) and for those under-represented in the mosaic sector. Therefore priority will be given to the following groups: young people between 18 and 35 (and those without prior qualification at Level 4 and equivalent), applicants from the BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) community, students with a registered disability as well as Camden residents.

All applicants must have a strong interest in mosaic and experience either in mosaic or a related art form, which they will have demonstrated through their application for a place on our diploma.

Press release, July 2021

The London School of Mosaic has been chosen by the Leverhulme Trust to award 12 Leverhulme Arts Scholarships over the next 4 years to underrepresented students who wish to study on our one-year Diploma in Mosaic Studies. We are honoured to receive such high-level recognition and support from the Trust, which is an investment in a subject area and curriculum that is unprecedented in the UK. We launched our Diploma course in 2018/19 as the first higher education course in Mosaic Studies, recognising the need to fill a gap in knowledge and skills in traditional mosaic techniques and design approaches.

Britain’s heritage is strongly connected with mosaic, whether this is through the Romans who left their mark with beautiful decorative floors, some of which can be seen at visitor sites today, or the mosaics made in the Victorian and Edwardian era which include the floors of the V&A or the ceiling mosaics of St Paul’s Cathedral. Despite this link and several attempts to open a mosaic school in the UK, for example by Sir Henry Cole who was the founder of the V&A, there were no adequate training opportunities beyond short courses until we set up the Diploma. This meant much of the traditional skills and knowledge needed for work with marble or smalti, which is a specialist Italian mosaic glass, needed to be imported from Italy where such training is available, for example at the renowned Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli.

Many mosaic makers in the UK are often self-taught with some experience gained at short courses or through study visits in Italy, Russia, Turkey or further afield. This may also have contributed to a perception that mosaic is a predominantly hobbyist practice or that it is particularly suited for school projects. Mosaic has a versatility to work well in these social impact contexts, however If we look at the historical dimension, there is a much larger spectrum of practice that our teaching taps into with the aim to nurture mosaicists in the UK who can work in the heritage, surface design and public art contexts.

As opposed to many art school courses in the UK which are studio-led and have no structured curriculum, we connect our teaching across design, history and fabrication with 20 weeks of lectures and seminars followed by a term of studio practice. This provides a solid background knowledge and the necessary emphasis on technical skill for our graduates to become well equipped mosaicists.

Our school is currently overseeing a major artist studio development through which it ensures that our graduates will have studios in which they can work after completing the Diploma. We also involve our students and graduates in major commissions so that they can gain as much experience as possible and remain part of our community of mosaicists.

The support of the Leverhulme Trust ensures that we can accept students onto the Diploma who would otherwise not be able to fund the course and who are underrepresented in the mosaic sector, for example young people and people from the BAME community.