The Reading Lists · Art & Design
Studying art & design in London
London is the world capital of art education, and the numbers are almost absurd: the University of the Arts London alone enrols more art students than the entire student body of Oxford, spread across six colleges — from Central Saint Martins at King's Cross to the Chelsea and Wimbledon schools.
The Royal College of Art, a short walk from the Albert Hall, has been ranked the world's number one art-and-design university for most of the last decade — a postgraduate-only house where the Turner Prize shortlist is practically an alumni reunion.
Goldsmiths in New Cross taught the Young British Artists; the Architectural Association in Bedford Square has argued architecture into new shapes since 1847. Whatever the discipline, the city's galleries — nearly all free — are the second faculty.
The houses that teach it — 24 of 36
Est. 1733 · Charter & Court
City St George's, University of London
City St George's · Clerkenwell & Tooting
An unusual 2024 marriage: a Clerkenwell civic college known for journalism and business, united with a medical school whose lineage runs to 1733 and the teaching wards of St George's Hospital.
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Est. 1823 · Charter & Court
Birkbeck, University of London
Birkbeck · Bloomsbury
The evening university. Founded in 1823 to teach working Londoners after their working day, Birkbeck still holds its classes between six and nine — and its students still arrive from the day's work.
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Est. 1826 · Charter & Court
University College London
UCL · Bloomsbury
Founded on principles of secular, inclusive education — the first university established in London, and the first in England to admit students regardless of religion. Its Bloomsbury quadrangle conceals the Petrie Museum and the Grant Museum, both free.
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Est. 1829 · Charter & Court
King's College London
KCL · Strand
Chartered as the established church's answer to godless Gower Street. The Strand campus faces Somerset House across the world's most learned street; its medical schools descend from Guy's and St Thomas' hospitals.
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Est. 1849 · Charter & Court
Royal Holloway, University of London
RHUL · Egham, Surrey
Founded on twin pillars: Bedford College (1849), among the first higher education institutions for women in Britain, and Thomas Holloway's Royal Holloway (1879). The Founder's Building is a vast Victorian echo of Chambord set in Surrey parkland.
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Est. 1887 · Charter & Court
Queen Mary University of London
QMUL · Mile End
Began as the People's Palace, a philanthropic venture in the East End. The only Russell Group university on a self-contained campus in central London's east — its grounds stretch between the Mile End Road and the Regent's Canal.
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Est. 1891 · Charter & Court
Goldsmiths, University of London
Goldsmiths · New Cross
An art-school temperament grafted onto a former naval school in New Cross. The department that reshaped twentieth-century criticism sits beside the studio that launched the YBAs — and Blur formed in its halls of residence.
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Est. 1916 · Charter & Court
SOAS University of London
SOAS · Bloomsbury
The School of Oriental and African Studies — founded to train the empire's administrators, now the West's leading centre for Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Its library holds over 1.5 million items in more than 400 languages.
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Est. 1838 · Civic & Campus
University of Westminster
Westminster · Regent Street & Harrow
Grown from the Royal Polytechnic Institution of 1838 — arguably Britain's first polytechnic — whose Regent Street hall staged the UK's first public film screening, by the Lumière brothers, in February 1896.
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Est. 1841 · Civic & Campus
University of Roehampton
Roehampton · Roehampton
Four Victorian colleges — Whitelands (1841, among the first institutions of higher education for women), Froebel, Digby Stuart and Southlands — federated on a parkland campus beside Richmond Park.
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Est. 1848 · Civic & Campus
London Metropolitan University
London Met · Holloway & Aldgate
Formed in 2002 from two civic universities — North London and London Guildhall — with deepest roots in the City of London College's evening classes of 1848. One of the most diverse student bodies in the country.
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Est. 1850 · Civic & Campus
St Mary's University, Twickenham
St Mary's · Twickenham
The oldest Catholic university in the UK, founded as a teacher-training college in 1850 — now on a leafy campus beside Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill, and a quietly serious school of sport science.
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Est. 1860 · Civic & Campus
University of West London
UWL · Ealing & Brentford
Ealing's teaching colleges, the London College of Music (1887) and a nursing lineage from Queen Charlotte's Hospital, federated as Thames Valley and renamed West London in 2010 — with Ealing Studios just down the road.
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Est. 1878 · Civic & Campus
Middlesex University
Middlesex · Hendon
Grown from Victorian teacher-training and art colleges in the northern suburbs — St Katharine's (1878) and Hornsey art school among them. Its Trent Park campus kept a country house and, in the war, a secret listening post for captured German generals.
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Est. 1890 · Civic & Campus
University of Greenwich
Greenwich · Greenwich & Medway
Among England's first polytechnics at Woolwich in 1890 — now a university whose principal campus is Wren's Old Royal Naval College at Greenwich, lecturing in a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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Est. 1892 · Civic & Campus
London South Bank University
LSBU · Southwark
The Borough Polytechnic opened at the Elephant & Castle in 1892 on a site that had trained teachers since the 1810s. Its National Bakery School, founded 1894, was the first in Britain — and is still running.
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Est. 1898 · Civic & Campus
University of East London
UEL · Docklands & Stratford
From the West Ham Technical Institute of 1898 to a waterfront campus on the Royal Albert Dock and a Stratford site beside the Olympic park — the university of the city's eastern edge, and of its rebuilds.
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Est. 1899 · Civic & Campus
Kingston University
Kingston · Kingston upon Thames
A technical institute and art school on the Thames since 1899, in the ancient coronation town of the Saxon kings — the Coronation Stone still sits by the guildhall, between the university and the river.
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Est. 1966 · Civic & Campus
Brunel University London
Brunel · Uxbridge
A 1960s plate-glass university on the Uxbridge plateau, named for the engineer whose bridges, tunnels and ships built the nineteenth century. Engineering-first in temperament, single-campus by design.
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Est. 1984 · Civic & Campus
Regent's University London
Regent's · Regent's Park
A private, non-profit university inside Regent's Park — on the campus built for Bedford College, the women's college whose Egham successor fills another page of this guide. American in style, London in situation.
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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. 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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Faculty listings reflect the guide's editorial reading of where each discipline is principally taught — many houses teach more than appears here. Always consult the official course pages before applying.
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