Fine Art - BA (Hons)

Enhancing your employability skills

With an increased focus on the importance of visible and viable career routes, the BA (Hons) Fine Art course at Birmingham City University explicitly deals with the importance of employability by embedding professional practice skills needed to allow graduates to ‘make a living’ in all modules. Digital competencies, project management, communication and problem-solving skills are a few of the key attributes the course develops.

The ambitious, student-centred approach to the curriculum, informed by professional practitioners and researchers, will enable you to become imaginative, confident and convincing in the taking and shaping of your future roles. Graduates will become creative leaders and practitioners of change.

Art is a highly individual practice and can often have a high degree of self-reflection but it is always a professional practice. Through a programme of lectures and seminars we enable you, the artists of the future, to understand your own economy and your contribution to the economy of our societies.

Live working is at the heart of the course. It enhances employability by offering you professional experiences and job opportunities which provide you with the competencies, strategies and confidence needed to shape your own futures and the future of the arts. By working with, for and alongside various organisations and stakeholders in the region, the course will demystify the hierarchical structures of the creative sector so you feel ‘at ease’ in these professional contexts.

Specifically you will:

• Develop a range of technical making, professional and personal skills, transferable to a range of careers within the creative industries; from artists, to directors, educators, curators, arts administrators and project managers.
• Develop your own practice and the ability to relate this to future employment options.
• Negotiate, plan exhibit and present work to a professional standard.
• Work independently and collaboratively.
• Be a self-motivated, organised, effective learner.
• Establish meaningful networks and connections in the city with individuals, organisations and communities.
• Understand how to promote yourself through a CV, statement, the use of social media, LinkedIn and individual professional websites.
• Be able to respond to the rapidly evolving creative industries, to not only be ready for immediate employment, but also for future evolutions within the industries through the long-term, future-fit skills you will acquire.

Placements

As a student on our BA Fine Art course you will be offered the choice of taking one of the ADM Faculty Modules. Each module, delivered within the School of Art (across its BA courses), will have a live focus whether that be working collaboratively across the City with students from across the faculty, working in industry on work experience placements or working with community groups on live project briefs.

The Faculty-wide modules allow for the crossover and building of networks between courses. Through these modules you will be integrated into the City of Birmingham, engaging with local contexts and negotiating external relationships whilst developing key employability skills. Recent live projects have seen students working with; Eastside Projects, Wheatley Fellow Harun Morrison, Flat Pack Film Festival, Summerfield Stables in Hall Green, Turves Green Primary School and Tate Liverpool.

You will also have the option to take a year-long professional work placement sandwich year to spend time directly working in industry through our BA (Hons) Fine Art with Professional Placement Year. This presents a fantastic opportunity to gain confidence, build experience and develop workplace skills before graduating through a work-based learning opportunity. If you choose this route you will be supported by the course team in researching your chosen area of work and given advice to secure a placement (or placements) that enable you to develop key employability skills in a direct, interesting and meaningful way. It provides the opportunity to spend a year completing structured work experience anywhere in the world, before returning to Birmingham School of Art for the final year of the BA Fine Art course to apply what has been learnt working in industry.

Links to industry

Birmingham School of Art has a wide array of links with partner organisations regionally, nationally and internationally. These partnerships provide opportunities for live working in a professional context and are an important part of the learning and teaching activities on the BA (Hons) Fine Art course. The course offers creative opportunities for you to gain direct experience of working with professionals within fine art and related fields on curatorial projects, cross disciplinary opportunities, specialist masterclasses, external live projects and research-based activities.

Regional partners include: Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Ikon Gallery, Eastside Projects, Midlands Art Centre, New Walsall Gallery, Vivid Projects, Recent Activity, Grand Union, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Hippodrome, the REP, The Library of Birmingham, Selfridges, Primary and Secondary Schools across the region.

National partners include: Arts Council England, Tate Britain, Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool.

International partners include: BCU has established links with institutions both in Europe and the USA, as well as in Hong Kong and India.

The creative and cultural industries play a significant role in unlocking innovation and growth in other sectors. The creative industries are defined by the UK government as “those industries which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property”. The creative economy accounts for 1 in 10 jobs across the UK and Birmingham City University is one of the largest providers of graduates in creative disciplines of any University outside London and the South East.