Practical Utopia: The Many Lives of Dartington Hall

Mile End Institute Podcast

In this episode of the Mile End Institute Podcast, Dr Lyndsey Jenkins talks to Dr Anna Neima about her new book, Practical Utopia: The Many Lives of Dartington Hall which was published by Cambridge University Press in April. In this fascinating conversation, Lyndsey and Anna discuss how the 1200-acre estate at Dartington Hall near Totnes in Devon was transformed into a 'social experiment of kaleidoscopic vitality' in the 1920s and 1930s by the American heiress, Dorothy Elmhirst (née Whitney) and her husband, Leonard.

They consider how a network of utopian communities across the United Kingdom shaped education, the arts, and agriculture in first half of the twentieth century and what policymakers today can learn from the 'cooperative and democratic' way of living, enriched by lifelong learning and 'a sense of creative and spiritual fulfillment', which was pioneered at Dartington Hall before the Second World War.