John Beck is a writer and a professor in the School of Humanities at the University of Westminster. He has published extensively on aspects of British and American literature, art and visual culture.

Matthew Cornford is an artist and professor of Fine Art at the University of Brighton. Between 1991and 2014, he collaborated with David Cross, as Cornford & Cross, on a range of art projects in the UK, Europe and the USA.

Beck and Cornford have been working together on the history and legacies of British art schools since 2010. Their collaborative art and research project has produced a range of publications and printed matter, public art, lectures and talks. The core of the project is an ongoing series of regionally-focused exhibitions of original photographs and accompanying text. Their work on the art schools of the North West was exhibited at Liverpool Bluecoat (2018), Bury Art Gallery (2019) and Rochdale Touchstones (2022). The rich art school landscape of the Midlands was explored in different iterations at the New Art Gallery Walsall (2023), Bonington, Nottingham (2023), Martin Hall Gallery, Loughbourgh University (2024) and at Leicester Gallery, De Montfort University (2025). 'The Art Schools of Yorkshire' opens at Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds Arts University in 2026.

Barry Miles is the critically acclaimed author of numerous biographies and cultural histories of the Beat Generation, the Beatles, and the counterculture of the 1960s and 70s. Among his biographical studies are major books on Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Frank Zappa and Paul McCartney, among others. London Calling (2009) explores the vitality of the capital's art and countercultural scene from the end of the Second World War through to the end of the century, and In the Sixties (2002) covers Miles's own art school experiences in Stroud and Cheltenham.