Fine Art with a Foundation Year - BA (Hons)

To reinforce your understanding of the creative industry in context you will be introduced to a number of opportunities across the city and will engage with event partners, such as Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery [BMAG], Ikon, Hippodrome, Eastside Galleries, Type-Talks and further afield. 

You will experiment with the design and layout of gathered information, supported by relevant seminars and workshops. Experimenting with layout and physical compilations of information you will produce a zine and/or other production. This will evidence carefully considered documentation techniques alongside an understanding of the word ‘context’.

You will be continually encouraged to question the relationship between Visual Arts and Communication and will begin to establish the direction of your work in context.

Artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world.

Their art is a dynamic combination of materials, methods, concepts, and subjects that challenge traditional boundaries and defy easy definition.

This module will look at experimental approaches to drawing to identify radical new solutions from the perspective of the contemporary world we live in.

During this module you will meet lecturers, researchers and partners from across BCU, the city and further afield to open your understanding of practiced based creative work.

Through lectures and workshops, you will be introduced to the versatility of subject areas in terms of ideas, development, research, materials, techniques and contexts.

Figuring out how the universe works might be a bit more than we need to do each day but paying attention to the future of the world we live in, is worth exploring.

Creative realisation is not just about the practice of producing creative responses, it is about identifying the factors that generate creative thinking and facilitating the process.
For this module you will draw on your own creative strategies to facilitate the development of a project that is appropriate for progression onto your chosen BA (Hons) course.

To identify the focus for your project you must research ‘Future Horizons’ from the rapidly changing world around you - anything that reflects new innovations, e.g. seismic changes, space travel, war, social conflict, internationalisation, environment, technology, architecture, bio-art etc. – whether great or small.

Undergraduate Staff from both Schools will offer guidance on developing a constructive portfolio that affirms your potential for a rewarding creative future.

This 14-week module acts as an effective bridge between your prior study and the start of the course recognising the span of the social, cultural and ‘life’ experiences within your cohort. We employ small group tutorials, group critiques, collaborative group activity and contextual lectures, each of which supports this transition, learning and development. In combination with online library resources, you will introduce you to digital research methods including Moodle and Lynda.com.

Themes and Concepts in Art supports and advances the historical and theoretical knowledge that informs your studio practice. It promotes intellectual curiosity and critical reflection to develop your confidence in speaking and writing about art. Using a broad range of different contexts and practice frameworks, this module is designed to help support you towards achieving a self-directed practice through the identification of “themes and concepts” in your own work. Carefully structured sessions will focus on and across approaches to: painting sculpture, drawing, video, film, installation, performance, sound, digital media, photography and print. With the appropriate support, you will also be required to present descriptive accounts and write and submit a 2,000-word essay for assessment.

The overarching aim is to introduce the skills and understanding necessary to initiate and organise a self-directed fine art practice in relation to contemporary art and historical precedents.

This 13-week core module will enable you to engage, and expand on, the knowledge and skills established in the first two studio-practice modules (supported by your art theory module) to define an individual fine art practice and develop a body of practical work.

To help facilitate the above, and provide an initial starting point, there are three over-arching frameworks to identify with. These may include: 1) Art and Other Worlds 2) Art the Subject 3) Art and Intervention.

The ability to work collaboratively in a team is a vital employability skill within the Creative Industries. This module is an opportunity to learn and critically reflect on the skills of collaboration by enabling you to create a group project with students from complementary disciplines.

This studio practice module enables you to build upon the technical, practical, analytical and research skills introduced in Level 4. As a further development and progression of L4 Establishing Practice module, it aims to provide the opportunity to reflect upon your prior approaches to art practice (related to both historical precedents and contemporary art practice), and to further explore how methods and materials are related to meaning and context.

This module focuses on the way in which people have written and thought about art in the 20th and 21st centuries. From a series of 10 weekly lectures, seminars, film screenings and study visits a series of key themes will emerge, articulated around different ways of being an artist. This idea is reflected in the titles of each lecture, ranging from ‘Artist as Revolutionary’, which looks at the relationship between art and politics, to ‘Artist as Digital Native’, which looks at the rise of digital culture within art. In this way the module encourages you to bridge theory and practice, enhancing the historical and theoretical knowledge that informs your studio work.

This module enables you to build upon the technical and practical exploration and experimentation from the previous module and apply further rigorous analysis to speculative practical and contextual enquiry and research.

The module is an opportunity to learn and critically reflect on the skills of collaboration by enabling you to create an interdisciplinary project with students from complementary disciplines, or with academic staff. Collaboration is a vital employability skill within the Creative Industries and this module allows you to develop these skills, making use of University facilities and with the support of academic staff. Within this module framework, several kinds of collaborative opportunities are available. For example, with the approval of your supervisor, you can determine a project based on your own interests; your supervisor may set you a predetermined project to enable you to work with other students in a way that is appropriate to your subject area; or there may be opportunities for you to collaborate with staff on research projects. In all cases, you must apply your subject skills to an interdisciplinary project which will be agreed in advance with your supervisor.

This module provides an opportunity for you to apply your knowledge and skills to an external, professional brief. The brief will be set by an external client/ agency, in consultation with your supervisor, and it could be a ‘real life’ problem to be solved, or a simulation. It is an opportunity for you to engage in a professional manner with an aspect of your subject area, which contributes to the development of employability skills within the supportive infrastructure of the University. Where appropriate, the project may involve interdisciplinary collaboration with students from other courses. In this way, it reflects the collaborative, flexible nature of employment within the Creative Industries.

The purpose of this module is to enable you to develop professional attributes and subject skills through experience in the work place, and to critically reflect upon your learning in that context. You will normally be expected to arrange your own placement, with support from academic staff and ADM Careers+.

The Practice and Professional Presentation module builds on the student’s prior imaginative, practical and theoretical investigations. This sustained and extended period of individual self-directed study time requires careful planning and organisation. The module is a necessarily extended period of time allowing for deeper level of learning and for the synthesis of accrued theoretical, creative, technical and practical knowledge and skills. This is consolidated in a fully resolved and coherent body of artwork presented at a professional level.

This module enables students to develop, synthesise, consolidate and fully resolve their practice to a professional standard, in the form of a verbal and visual presentation. This module clearly relates to the Practice and Professional Presentation and the Major Project modules, encompassing the content from these to then be realised in a 10-15min ‘pitch’ and an online website portfolio. These transferable skills are highly appropriate to course sequels.

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.