BA (Hons) Contemporary Art and Design

• UCAS Tariff Points: 240 - 280
• GCE A Levels: 240 UCAS tariff points, to include one GCE A level grade C or above
• Irish Certificate: 240 UCAS tariff points, to include 3 x ILC higher at B1
• Scottish Highers: 240 UCAS tariff points, to include 3 x higher at B
• International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma: Minimum of 24 points (pass) (260)
• BTEC Level 3 Extended Diploma: MMM (240)
• BTEC Level 3 Diploma: DD (240)
• C & G Level 3 Extended Diploma: Merit (240)
• C & G Level 3 Diploma: Distinction (240)

English language requirements
If you do not have English as a first language, you will normally be required to demonstrate an IELTS overall score (or equivalent) of:

• 5.5 with a minimum of 5.0 in all elements for a Further Education course
• 5.5 with a minimum of 5.0 in all elements for a Foundation degree, Higher Certificate or Higher Diploma
• 6.0 with a minimum of 5.5 in all elements for a degree
• 6.5 with a minimum of 5.5 in all elements for a postgraduate degree

If you have lower scores, you may be accepted onto a Pre-sessional English Language course, which can lead to entry to the appropriate programme of study.

STAGE ONE

• Skills and Techniques Development 1 - The aim of the three Skills and Techniques Development modules is to support students in systematically acquiring the required art and design skills and the ability to audit and evaluate the skills they possess in line with the development of their creative work. In this first skills and techniques development module students will be introduced to skills and techniques and the means to identify a need and find the means and resources to develop what they need to fulfil their creative aims. The module will do this by the simple expedient of a plan to practice a skill regularly and to keep a log of this. Students will learn how to utilise staff expertise and how-to sites on the web, and how to convene self help, skill sharing and support groups with other students. They will also be able to identify areas of general student interest and concern and negotiate with staff to deliver skills support or book workshops or short courses. Some skill development might be freestanding but much will also arise out of the demands of ongoing studio work.
• Professional and Creative Focus 1 - This module will introduce a number of essential underpinning practices, techniques and skills for the future professional lives of artist and designers. These will broadly divide into creative tools and practices and tools for the dissemination and publicising of work/career development. The module will begin to prepare them for a careful, structured, approach to creating work and a well informed systematic and competent approach to making sure it is seen and appreciated.
• Art and Design Contexts 1A (Topics in Visual Culture) - This module is a general introduction to contexts in Art and Design. It aims to harness the enthusiasms and interest of all the course teaching staff to provide a practical argument for the study of history and theory and to firmly ground further more focussed study in a sense of the excitement and utility of ideas in underpinning creative activity. The module will demonstrate by example what is involved in drawing inspiration from leading artists, designers and movements. Through their presentations the staff will model the study habits of researching one’s passion and understanding the wider context of those by whom they are inspired to enrich their own practice.
• Art and Design Contexts 1B (Art History) - In this module students will be introduced to the structure and developments in the history of world art and will become familiar with different approaches, readings and interpretations of art history presented through five themes: - Religion/ Myth/ Magic Economic and Social Revolution Property and Commerce Applied and Decorative art Now Using case studies - particular articles, events or controversies, students will be introduced to some wider ways of thinking theoretically, reflecting upon and writing about art and design.
• Studio Practice 1A - This module serves as an introduction to generic art and design principles and contexts, providing an insight into the field of study and the contextual issues that influence art and design thinking and practice. Subsequent studio modules in stages 1 and 2 will build on this foundation experience by introducing subject specific contexts and specialist skills and knowledge relevant to Degree Title. Through a series of studio-based design projects and practical workshops students are encouraged to initiate a process of exploratory and reflective learning, adopting an experimental and investigative approach when originating, processing and testing ideas. Project content will focus on: Art and Design – principles and theories; The creative process - approaches and methodologies in originating and developing ideas; The identification and interpretation of themes and contexts; The representation and communication of ideas.
• Studio Practice 1B - The main aim of this module is to introduce practice of a more discipline specific and complex nature and to place particular emphasis on the consideration of the contexts in which we work. All project-based work will be underpinned by consideration of environments, context, human interaction and requirements, and a developing understanding of the technologies (construction and/or media) relevant to the degree subject specialism. Through studio-based project work students are introduced to the importance of peer-learning and exchange of ideas.

STAGE TWO

• Skills and Techniques Development 2 - This module will continue the process of skills development begun in the first year. The focus remains on the systematic development of complex skills and techniques and self-critical examination of progress against self-determined aims. On the basis of their level four experience students will be more confident and independent in locating and using appropriate resources to develop skills. Equally, this independence will be more necessary as student begin to move towards a sense of themselves as individual artist/designers with distinct personal areas of interest and competence requiring particular skill sets. Thus the greater emphasis on student autonomy and student convened self-help, skill sharing, and identifying resources to support skill development. To support confidence in self-criticality students will engage in evaluation of self, peers’, and tutors’ creative work.
• Professional and Creative Focus 2 - Professional and Creative Focus 2 will consolidate and develop work done in the first module. Whilst the drawing, photography and sketchbook activity will follow a similar external rhythm to previously, students will both deepen their engagement with these practices and use them in a more focussed and considered way as both foundation and scaffolding for their other creative activity. In this module students will also begin to turn outwards towards the professional world and will embark on research, reflection and some initial practical preparation for that world – building a personal web presence and starting to publicise and promote their work. Finally they will have the very concrete task of working collaboratively with each other and with Level 6 students towards planning and mounting an end of year public exhibition of their work.
• Art and Design Contexts 2A (Philosophy and Theory) - A series of staff guided and supported student led presentations will introduce students to contemporary ways of theorising visual practice and culture. Students will then outline, distinguish between and apply three such frameworks to concrete instances of artworks, movements, events or controversies.
• Art and Design Contexts 2B (Thinking and Writing about Art and Design) - This module will introduce students to various ways of writing about art and design: journalistic, literary, academic (and other). At the end of it students will be able to recognize a number of key styles and registers and understand and begin to deploy appropriate aims and approaches for various genres in their own writing. Additionally the unit will refine the writing skills introduced at level 4.
• Studio Practice 2A - This module is a double module, providing students with the opportunity to build on the skills and knowledge gained in stage one. Through studio-based project work students will further deepen their subject understanding and technical knowledge and artistic judgment. Project themes/briefs will focus on three main areas: Contextual and critical understanding; Aesthetic and design development – related to contemporary art and design theory; The application of knowledge of technological issues when designing and producing artworks, or designed objects or systems.
• Studio Practice 2B - Through studio-based project work students will develop a high level of competence in researching, planning and processing an idea from inception through to realisation. Students will be expected to develop an understanding of the role and responsibilities of the artist/designer in an environmental, social and cultural context. This module will build and extend the knowledge and skills gained in previous modules, enabling students to achieve the necessary level of independence in the following areas: Advanced contextual and critical understanding of their chosen subject. Conceptual and design development in the production of ideas and outcomes. Advanced knowledge and understanding of technological issues related to the production of systems, artworks, designs or spaces.

STAGE THREE

• ​Art and Design Contexts 3 - This module is the culmination of all the contextual modules. The role of theoretical frameworks and approaches to work will be studied and the student will need to make choices about their own approach. The student will negotiate with their tutor the focus for a theoretically rich study that will support their art/design practice. They will research that topic, supporting their investigation with an appropriate framework and methodology, in order to construct a fully argued extended essay.
• Skills and Techniques Development 3 - Once again the cycle of reflection evaluation planning and execution will not differ on the surface from what has happened in previous years. However the student (artist, designer) led nature of the work they will be doing at this point will place much greater demands on their ability to pinpoint areas of deficit and to mobilise the resources necessary to overcome these. The module will run alongside the final preparations for the graduating exhibition in semester B and hence will model the structured, self-directed, pattern of reflection and work which will be required to function in a professional or higher level study context and thus act as a template for life after the course.
• Professional and Creative Focus 3 - This module takes Professional and Creative Focus 2 as its starting point and builds on and elaborates that work through further practice and an expectation of greater subtlty and effectiveness. The module contains the second culminating public exhibition of the course and with the students having assembled a folio of work of a professional standard and having submitted at the least one piece of work to juried or selective outcomes.
• Studio Practice 3 - This is an opportunity for students to practice the cycle of reflection and making work that will be central to the run up to their final exhibition. The fact that it is not that very final cycle allows them to consolidate all they have learned so far and to take artistic risks they might wish to eschew in the pressured environment of the final show. Although as always there is an emphasis on increasing student self-direction the module is still to an extent scaffolded by staff. For all students this module will set the tone and start to pin down the content of their final show drawing on and informed by theoretical investigations; for most students the work they make here will be of a standard that makes it potentially capable of inclusion in that show; for a small minority it will be a sharp lesson in the focus and commitment necessary in their final months of the course and an opportunity to reset their compasses. The theoretical dimension of this work will be provided by the substantial piece of written work students will be working on and completing in Art and Design Contexts 3.
• Studio Practice Final Project - This module represents the culmination of all the creative activity carried out on the course. It attempts to replicate real world conditions and put to the test the artistic independence, judgement and ability to assess the resources and effort required to carry out tasks at a professional level – the “artistic conscience”- which the student has been developing over the three years of the course. During this module the student will conceive, plan, organise and execute a single substantial piece (or group of linked pieces) of creative work suitable for their final public exhibition. The standard on which process and outcome are judged will be that of the professional world of art and design. Each student will also provide comprehensive documentation in any appropriate form (including but not limited to: sketchbook, illustrated essay, video documentation, website, blog ) of all research, both theoretical and practical, of all practical experimentation including failures or abandoned approaches, and of the student’s continuing reflection upon this process. The student will still consult with teaching staff who will offer advice and guidance but by this point largely as fellow artists.