The Collections · 11 houses
The atelier and the stage.
The third house never promised degrees at all — it promised mastery. London's conservatoires and ateliers descend from the guild tradition: small rooms, long hours, and a master watching your hands.
They are astonishingly concentrated at the top of the league tables: the Royal College of Art has spent a decade as the world's number one art-and-design university; the Royal Academy of Music sits two minutes from Regent's Park, training violinists since 1822.
Eleven houses where the audition matters more than the entrance exam — and where the city itself, its theatres and galleries and orchestras, is the real campus.
The houses of the tradition
Est. 1822 · Atelier & Stage
Royal Academy of Music
RAM · Marylebone
Britain's oldest conservatoire, founded in 1822 beside Regent's Park — with a museum of instruments whose Strads are played by students, and Arthur Sullivan as its first scholarship boy.
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Est. 1837 · Atelier & Stage
Royal College of Art
RCA · South Kensington & Battersea
The world's most influential art and design school — postgraduate only, from its Government School of Design origins in 1837, and regularly ranked first globally for art and design.
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Est. 1847 · Atelier & Stage
Architectural Association School of Architecture
AA · Bedford Square
Founded in 1847 by a nineteen-year-old and run by its students ever since — the independent architecture school in Bedford Square that taught Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and Richard Rogers their trade.
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Est. 1854 · Atelier & Stage
University of the Arts London
UAL · Six colleges
Europe's largest university for art, design and fashion — six colleges, from Central Saint Martins at King's Cross to the London College of Fashion, with a Turner Prize record no institution matches.
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Est. 1861 · Atelier & Stage
London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art
LAMDA · Barons Court
Founded as a music academy in 1861 whose drama department quietly took over the family business. Now at Barons Court, west of the river — and the oldest drama school in Britain by most reckonings.
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Est. 1872 · Atelier & Stage
Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance
Trinity Laban · Greenwich & Deptford
Music at Wren's Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich; dance in Deptford, in Herzog & de Meuron's translucent colour-washed building by the Creek. Formed by merger in 2005; the only conservatoire of its pairing.
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Est. 1880 · Atelier & Stage
Guildhall School of Music & Drama
Guildhall · City of London
The City of London's own music and drama school, founded by the Corporation in 1880 and now seated between the Barbican's concrete estate and its arts centre — stagecraft in the middle of the maze.
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Est. 1882 · Atelier & Stage
Royal College of Music
RCM · South Kensington
Founded by royal charter beside the Royal Albert Hall — its students rehearse a few steps from where they will debut. Holst, Vaughan Williams and Britten are the alumni triumvirate.
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Est. 1904 · Atelier & Stage
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
RADA · Bloomsbury
Herbert Beerbohm Tree's drama school, founded in 1904 in Gower Street townhouses. The smallest institution in this guide by student count — and among the most name-checked on any cast list.
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Est. 1906 · Atelier & Stage
Royal Central School of Speech & Drama
Central · Swiss Cottage
Founded by Elsie Fogerty at the Royal Albert Hall in 1906 to train the voice, moved to Swiss Cottage in the fifties. The conservatoire for acting, stage management and the technical crafts — Judi Dench's school.
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Est. 1932 · Atelier & Stage
The Courtauld Institute of Art
Courtauld · Somerset House
The study of art history as a single-subject vocation, founded by the industrialist Samuel Courtauld around his collection of Impressionists — Manet's Bar at the Folies-Bergère among them — now at Somerset House.
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The other traditions