Every year The Laban Guild holds a Summer School which explores the work of modern dance pioneer Rudolf Laban in a contemporary context. The work of Laban, who took refuge in the UK from Germany in 1938, gained great popularity in dance and physical education and still plays a key role in actor training.
In the first half of the 20th century Hampstead was home to some of the era’s most pioneering artists. We will walk in the footsteps of the Slade School artists. In Downshire Hill we learn of the artistic Carline family and will also discuss the role that Roland Penrose, Margaret Gardiner and Fred and Diana Uhlman played in the art world in the years leading up to, and during, the Second World War. We walk to Belsize Park to learn of the Modernists including Henry Moore, Piet Mondrian and Barbara Hepworth whom Herbert Read described as living as a “nest of gentle artists” and conclude with the refugee designers who stayed at the Isokon flats.
Richard ‘Dick’ Ellis, former head of New Scotland Yard’s Art Squad, will unravel the intricacies in finding and recovering stolen art. He will reveal how his leads include an international network of both law enforcement officials and criminals. Dick has solved several high profile cases including the theft of Edvard Munch’s The Scream from Norway’s National Gallery, and Audubon’s Birds of America lifted from the State Library in St. Petersburg.
