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BA (Hons) - 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.

Apply

Fine Art (with integrated foundation year) cover image

Course Overview

On this Fine Art degree with integrated foundation year, 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 practising 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 from our Fine Art course 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 and 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.
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Course Structure

What you will learn

Our close-knit and supportive community will inspire your creativity and shape your individual practice. In your foundation year, you will work across a range of disciplines and approaches to making, in a small and highly supportive studio environment.

You will develop an awareness of contemporary fine art practices and hone your ability to make, critique and discuss your work and that of others. Our close-knit and supportive community will inspire your creativity and shape your individual practice.

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.

Attend an Open Day at Cumbria

An Open Day is your opportunity to explore one of 5 campuses, meet your lecturers, and find out how the University of Cumbria could become your new home.

Take the next step towards achieving your dreams.
A student stands in front of a wall splattered with paint.