The Independent Group: Working-class culture and collage

The history and work of the Independent Group, this important collective of creative practitioners which met from 1952 to 1955, has recently attracted unprecedented levels of attention. However, within the fields of architectural, art and design history, the issue of social class is largely absent in recent work and oversimplified in twentieth-century accounts. This is despite the recent increase in class analysis being applied to the British creative and university sectors. Using Potvin and Marchand’s methodology of agency and the work on social class by Bev Skeggs as well as my own background, the article brings more specificity to the question of the working-class avant-garde and the Independent Group, using new research into the backgrounds of its members. Public funding enabled many who would not traditionally have benefitted from tertiary education to undertake full-time study, and this class dynamic made a difference to the post-war cultural landscape in the United Kingdom. The power of working-class agency within and against pre-existing elite structures is a key theme of the article. Working-class culture is a vital, yet hitherto marginalized, component of the Independent Group project. The article asks why references to social class are notably absent from accounts of post-war British art and design.