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Professor Vaughan Grylls

I am an artist and I have lived in Islington since 1975. Until a couple of years ago I was, for nine years, the Director and Chief Executive of the Kent Institute of Art & Design or KIAD for short. KIAD was made up of Canterbury, Maidstone and Rochester art colleges. But in 2005 I joined it up with Farnham and Epsom art colleges to make a new art university of 7000 students because I am passionate about advancing the status and specialness of what the Government calls ‘the creative industries’. And the Government suddenly allowed it! So when that was done I left pronto to get back to my own work full-time.

I first heard of Mogg’s new school and the good things she was doing not long after she started doing them. It sounded as though she was actually teaching kids from a very young age to think for themselves. I had not been taught that until I had got to college myself. It sounded like the best of a 1960s art college for kids but with much better organisation. I was very interested.

So all three of my children became Dallington kids. First off was my daughter Sarah (or Pinny as she likes to be called). Pinny never looked back after Dallington and went on to Francis Holland, Westminster and Oxford. Actually she did look back when she learnt of her degree result because the very first person she rang from Oxford was not me or her mother but…..Mogg! Once a Dallington child, always a Dallington child. Now she is a 29 year old documentary film-maker winning lots of awards. But she has never forgotten where her original approach to her work started. Hence that phone call.

My two younger children are Hattie (15) and George (13). Hattie is now at Francis Holland and George went to Westminster Under School from Dallington and will be going to Westminster Upper School next term. George is a happy goalie and wickie, so no worries there.

Hattie came to Mogg at 3, without any hair and after a difficult time. She had been diagnosed with Leukaemia at 2 and was treated successfully at Great Ormond Street and UCH for five difficult years. But Dallington was always there for us. So I have to confess that in agreeing to chair the governor’s meetings, it is my little way of saying ‘Thank You!’ You should know that.