Fine Art with a Foundation Year - BA (Hons)

Acting as a bridge between your prior study and your development on the course, Making Studio asks you to respond to a series of short projects designed to encourage a thoughtful and experimental approach to art making. Each project is designed to help broaden your understanding of art, its modes of production and how it critically operates within the world. You will engage with a wide range of research, materials, methods and processes as well as being introduced to important contemporary and historical ideas and contexts. The studio plays a pivotal role in your development, working as a flexible, fluid and evolving site for art making, sharing and thinking: A space to make work, build communities and allow creative working relationships to form. The module is delivered through lectures, practical workshops, seminars and tutorials. An analytical and reflective account of all projects will be documented in individual process books.

At each level of the course you will think about making a living. At the heart of this will be the development of a personal portfolio of knowledge and skills that you will start at the first year of the course at Level Four and continue throughout. In this module you will begin to think about the way that other practitioners make a living, develop careers and sustain their practices through the application of their skills. You will consider the wider context for your practice through individual research and develop new skills that will underpin your development on the course and beyond. You will be inducted into a number of workshops developing important practical skills in woodwork, metal, printmaking or textiles processes for example. Alongside this you will develop technical skills that will support you in building your own website which will act as an online portfolio documenting your own unique set of skills and the development of your specific practice.

In Making Meaning you will build your own individual project brief. You will be guided through this process with the introduction of three key elements or building blocks, which consist of; a central interest or theme, an identified method and community. Having done so, you will undertake; research, material experimentation and critically reflect on and resolve outcomes. The research and reflection will underpin the writing of an essay that contextualises your work in relation to contemporary and historical art practices. An analytical and reflective account of this project journey will be documented.

Making Public explores the relationship between art and audience. You will investigate contemporary modes of dissemination, strategies of engagement and forms of communication. You will have the opportunity to; exhibit, broadcast, publish and perform, making your individual practice public. Working with your community of peers, you will organise public facing exhibitions, interventions, publications and/or live events to test your ideas. You will develop and produce external facing platforms and outputs that engage audiences and interrogate the notion of public production. Throughout this activity, you will develop essential professional skills. You will research the various roles that artists assume in making work public; the artist as curator, artist as exhibition coordinator, artist as marketing strategist, artist as technician and artist as producer. Through activating your practice and engaging audiences, you will gain an understanding of a range of professional contexts that exist in the expanding field of contemporary fine art.

You will learn strategies to activate physical and virtual spaces, working within the University and the city. Working together on and off site, you will make your work visible in an ethical, inclusive and sustainable way.

This module expands your understanding of the relationship of theory and practice. Through this module you will be introduced to a number of key themes, each dealing with a different research topic and practical consideration aligned with studios and workshops as you engage with these as sites and communities of making. In response to these key themes you will explore what it means to take different theoretical ideas through various material, technical and conceptual processes in the development of a research-informed body of work.

This module encourages you to consider ways of sustaining meaningful relationships between art practice and society in understanding the value and potentials of making a living by working with communities. Through building networks with diverse communities to create relationships with the city and the people that live here you will explore what values can be fostered by working with others in understanding the expanded role of the artist culturally. You will consider the meaning of your work and its potential impact both within the field of contemporary art and in its wider economic and social context in developing an outcome, project or initiative that has a shared goal for mutual gain.

This module introduces you to practice based research and the notion of practice as a research activity which supports you in developing your individual practice. You will identify key ideas that frame your work and consider how these ideas inform the materials you work with, contexts you work within and the decisions you make in the studio and workshops. You will develop your own research informed output which you will work with peers to then publish to make public.

This module provides an opportunity for you to respond to and then apply your knowledge and skills to an external context. The module focuses on real-world, live learning through working with communities, organisations and/or audiences outside of the institution. This module supports you in gaining valuable links, networks, experiences and skills to prepare you for a career in the broad, ever-changing, creative industries.

This module enables you to develop professional attributes and subject skills through direct experience in the work place. Supported by academic staff you will research and build important communication skills through the process of arranging a placement in a context relevant to your individual potential career trajectory that you have begun to identify.

The purpose of the module is to enable you to undertake a sustained, in-depth and theoretically informed research project exploring an area that is of personal interest to you. It is important that we can support you appropriately, so you will be guided towards choosing a research topic which is relevant to your discipline and in which your lecturers have expertise. The outcome may take the form of a written dissertation or a practice-based portfolio.

This module will give you the tools you need to make your work public in ways that are responsive to the ideas, methods and materials that underpin your practice. You will exhibit, perform and show your work throughout the academic year and talk about your work in public with confidence and in a way that is generous to diverse audiences. You will use your personal portfolio of knowledge and skills to make a three-year plan that demonstrates your career ambitions. This should be ambitious but achievable and will evidence the research you have conducted, the knowledge you have gained and the technical proficiency you possess.

This module is about consolidating and resolving your own practice and realising it in a public facing way as you build on your prior imaginative, practical and theoretical investigations. You will continue to develop and extend ideas through experimentation, research and regular critical reflection. You will take part in a public facing exhibition, considering site and audience through the realisation of a resolved, professional and coherent output. You will also develop a process book which documents and communicates your practice in thinking about the dissemination potentials of your work and the communities it engages with; showcasing expertise, skills and concepts through a diverse range of Fine Art disciplines.