The schools of arts and crafts as pioneers of a democratic and emancipatory education

This article is the result of a research on history of arts education focused on the democratic work of arts and crafts schools and their interrelationships with general education. The origins of the Barcelona Schools of Arts and Crafts, from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, mainly the Free School of Design, as well as their influences from contemporary European artistic movements, such as the Arts and Crafts, Modernism and Noucentism. Based on a descriptive-interpretive methodology, we underline that the mission of these institutions went far beyond artistic and job training, since they were the first to provide a holistic democratic education, together with public schools, playing a relevant role in literacy and access to culture for all citizens. With this, they anticipated the democratic proposals that John Dewey, Paolo Freire and William Morris, among others, would define some years later, that standed out the need to provide a holistic and proper qualification to the working class. The results presented here derive from written documentation and photographs from different local and national archives, interviews to directors, alumni of these institutions, and specialized literature.