Fine Art* MA

In this studio-based module, you investigate a variety of approaches to interrogate your practice and artistic methods as a development to postgraduate study. Design your own trajectory and develop agency through a co-created curriculum and reflective approaches. You are encouraged to be research active and experiment with a range of forms and approaches within contemporary art and consider methods across disciplines.



Work towards developing styles and approaches articulated at postgraduate level, aligning your aims with your practice. Consider appropriate theory and current themes in contemporary art practice and how it might inform your work. Your development is supported through a community of artists, and you gain regular opportunities to share your work for peer review through group critique, feedback from tutors, and discussion with visiting artists and curators. Through experimentation, you develop your own strategies and an individual plan relevant to your practice.

Explore and interrogate key concepts and critical thinking in the 21st century. Debate arising and developing themes within culture and the creative arts in theory and practice.

This module is normally completed over one semester (at the start of the second year). You choose one of the following options to enhances your academic learning and employability.



A traditional internship with an external business or in a department within the University. This would normally be for two to three days a week but could also be the equivalent of a full-time role up to 5 days a week.



A work-related project where you are based in the University, but the project is linked to an employer.



A research project undertaken in the University alongside practising researchers.



This opportunity builds on your existing knowledge, skills and experience and supports your future career interests and aspirations. You develop solutions to real-world business problems and enhance personal and professional knowledge, skills and behaviours through a process of reflection, critical thinking and action.

Conduct an in-depth investigation into how artists create their work. You question what alternatives exist to create work in a post-internet age that might engage more fully with social justice, art/life practices, digital, spatial and virtual design, and experimentation. Explore how the notion of traditional and contemporary practice can be challenged, and how your evolving practice might be informed or lead the way. You might re-appropriate practices not traditionally viewed within fine art to interrogate the boundaries between and across disciplines.

This module provides you with the tools required to embark on research. You gain an understanding of the visual and creative problem-solving research methods involved in the process of creative thinking. This includes investigations into practical applications, strategic planning and theoretical speculations. Lectures deliver key knowledge of research approaches and methods. You learn through seminars, case studies discussions, and applying research methods, in interactive sessions.

What does the future of art look like? How will your practice evolve going forward? Imagine what the future might look like, and practice developing the artistic, career and life skills you’ll need as you think about your own future directions. Explore creative futures, including digital tools, new processes and different ways of thinking. Consider what will motivate artists and creators going forward. Guide the way we experience the world and create that future.

This module supports strategic career vision related to the media and events industries. Through a series of workshops or online activities, you produce a range of professional assets designed to support your career aspirations through work-based learning and analysis of practice.



Online students are supported in this process through online collaborative events within the virtual learning environment.

You produce a final exhibition or project, involving the creation of an original and significant body of work with clear curatorial intent. The project should be located within your own practice-led research methodology. You evidence future-ready approaches through the production of an exhibition/event.



As a reflective practitioner, you are expected to evaluate this presentation in the form of an exhibition or public-facing body of work. You produce a written reflection that demonstrates your ideas, artistic aspirations and the curatorial framework for the show or project. This practice also demonstrates the processes and decisions you have made throughout the course and how it will inform your plans and directions as an artist.