Fine Art (with integrated foundation year)

Pursue your passion and develop your ideas into an exciting and fulfilling creative practice. Working in bespoke studios and workshops, studying our Fine Art course will help you to acquire and hone your art-making skills.

Join our Bachelor of Fine Art degree through an integrated foundation year to explore your passion and learn more about university life.

Course overview

You’ll develop knowledge and skills across the Fine Art disciplines of drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, ceramics, photography, filmmaking and digital media. You’ll have easy access to fabrication facilities in metal, wood and ceramic, as well as our print studio, darkroom and audio/visual labs. Tutors, who are all practicing artists, will support and inspire your studio practice with a historical, theoretical and critical understanding of Fine Art.

You’ll learn entrepreneurial skills and be encouraged to exhibit locally and nationally throughout your studies. You will visit galleries of note, may create and run your own space in Carlisle as well as curate and organise numerous public exhibitions of your work – gaining essential professional experience.

You’ll graduate with the skills and confidence to make a significant contribution to the artistic and cultural landscape.

On this course you will...

• Study inter-disciplinary skills, learning ALL the techniques you need to become a brilliant artist. Including sculpture drawing, painting & printmaking, photography, filmmaking, and even performance.

• Be assigned a generous studio space on campus with access to specialist resources and equipment.

• Take part in Student Exhibitions from day one. Year 0 exhibition, First Year Drawing Exhibition, Three Minute Film Festival, Seconds Out & a Final Year Degree Show.

• Explore external exhibitions and artistic spaces. Our students run exhibitions across the city, arrange events and run workshops, contributing to the creative and cultural life of Carlisle.

YEAR ONE
In your first year you will focus on the development of your skills across all Fine Art disciplines with practical work playing an important role in informing art theory, as well as critical and historic perspectives.

• Making Images
• Making Objects
• Visual Enquiry
• Environment
• Portfolio and Progression
• Collaborative Brief

YEAR TWO
In your first year you will focus on the development of your skills across all Fine Art disciplines with practical work playing an important role in informing art theory, as well as critical and historic perspectives.

• Materials and Methods
  An introduction to the tools and skills needed to make art work(s).
• Cultural Contexts
  Introduction to the cultural, historical, and social contexts in which creative work from a range of disciplines will be discussed, examined, and analysed.
• Application
  Develop a personal Fine Art practice in response to the module brief(s), by means of studio practice & contextual research.
• Collaborative Practice
  Work with other students to explore and practise the skills involved in creative collaboration.

YEAR THREE
In your second year, you will develop your skills and address professional fine art practice and current issues. Plus, you will curate and organise a public exhibition of your work, gaining essential professional experience.

• Enquiry 1
  Learn to direct your own work and develop an awareness of your activity in practical, intellectual, and critical terms as part of the overall process of art-making.
• Intersections
  Explore Postmodern and Contemporary issues in Fine Art.
• Enquiry 2
  Develop independent working strategies underpinned by reflective, critical, and theoretical practice.
• The Professional Self
  Develop the necessary practical skills to present yourself and your work professionally and positively.

YEAR FOUR
Your final year centres around a curated degree show, where you put your artistic and professional practice skills to the test.

• Practice 1
  Hone your strategies of research in making and thinking.
• Independent Research Paper
• Practice 2
  Carry out a self-designed, in-depth, and investigative personal project. The culmination of this module will be the public Degree Show for all final year students.

Assessment in Fine Art does not necessarily signal an end-point for a project. The assessment process, including self-assessment feedback, feedback tutorials, crits, and referral projects, are an opportunity for you to reflect, consider, and learn from your experience in order to continually develop your skills, awareness & practice.

Whilst assessment also functions to, eventually, provide an overall measurement of achievement in the form of the degree classification itself, it is, perhaps more importantly, part of the overall dynamic and continuum of the educational experience as a whole.

As a Fine Art student, you have the opportunity to learn during the assessment process, as you are invited to take part in the process itself. The presentation of a critical, self-assessment statement, and your presence at the assessment event, are important aspects of Fine Art’s learning and teaching dynamic. The expectation is that you will be in a position to compare your own self-assessment, with that provided by staff in feedback, as a means to reflect upon and to consider the development of your critical awareness with respect to your developing practice.

The experience should be viewed as an opportunity to ‘test reality’, in identifying common criteria used by us all on which to base our critical judgments of our work.

Summative and Formative Assessment
Assessment in Fine Art does not necessarily signal an end-point for a project. The assessment process, including self-assessment feedback, feedback tutorials, crits, and referral projects, are an opportunity for you to reflect, consider, and learn from your experience in order to continually develop your skills, awareness & practice.

Whilst assessment also functions to, eventually, provide an overall measurement of achievement in the form of the degree classification itself, it is, perhaps more importantly, part of the overall dynamic and continuum of the educational experience as a whole.

As a Fine Art student, you have the opportunity to learn during the assessment process, as you are invited to take part in the process itself. The presentation of a critical, self-assessment statement, and your presence at the assessment event, are important aspects of Fine Art’s learning and teaching dynamic. The expectation is t

Self-Assessment
Throughout the Fine Art course you will be invited to make self-assessment statements, typically at the conclusion of a module. This exercise provides tutors with the opportunity to monitor your awareness of the assessment criteria, and offers an insight into your own critical faculties. It is a valuable opportunity for you to explore your judgment relative to the criteria and assessment philosophy of the course.