To have continued, Corsham would have had to increase greatly the number of teacher-training students which Ellis thought was against the spirit of the place. The course ended.

Following the First Report of the National Advisory Council on Art Education (‘The Coldstream Report’) in 1960 the NDD qualification was replaced by the Diploma in Art and Design (the Dip A.D.). A preliminary ‘Foundation Course’ of one year preceded the Dip A.D. course of three years. The first Foundation Course at Corsham started in 1962 and the Diploma course in 1963. With the closure of the course for training art teachers and Ellis’s concern with producing people who could find jobs, students were encouraged to study on the Visual Communications course which included printmaking and film, the latter started by Jasper Jewett; later a colleague James Scott taught on the course and Roger Mayne taught photography.

There was a galaxy of graphic artists at Corsham including Hansjorg Mayer, Henry Cliffe, John Furnival, Jeremy Rees and the outstanding screen printer John Vince. There were several lecturers in art history in the 1960’s at the College, among them Peter Fitzgerald, Philip James, Clovis Whitfleld and Virginia Spate; another, Jasia Reichardt, arranged an exhibition of Concrete Poetry, Between Painting and Poetry at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London in 1965. At the private view Clifford Ellis met Hansjorg Mayer, a German typographer, printer and publisher. Mayer accepted an invitation from Ellis to teach at Corsham starting in early 1966 until 1971 and brought John Furnival and Tom Phillips in to teach as well. For a brief period Corshain became a focal point of Concrete Poetry (or as some prefer to call it ‘visual poetry’). Dom Sylvester Houedard visited from time to time and John Furnival arranged for some graphics students to work in collaboration with Ian Hamilton Finlay. Furnival and Jeremy Rees arranged Arlington Two, an Exhibition of Work executed at Bath Academy of Art in Collaboration with Outside Poets. The exhibition opened in July 1967 at Arlington Mill, Bibury, near Cirencester, and later toured to Dartington. The works in the show were mainly the results of student collaboration with Finlay and Houedard.

Another specialist ingredient in Corsham’s open-minded approach was the strong Constructivist element, with Adrian Heath, Malcolm Hughes, John Ernest and Michael Kidner among the teachers.

There were always interesting visitors coming to Corsham among them Claes Oldenburg, Morton Feldman (who put on a concert), Dieter Rot, Richard Hamilton, David Sylvester and Jim Dine, who stayed for six weeks and made a series of prints.