BA (Hons) - Photography (with integrated foundation year)

Year one

In your foundation year, you will develop the core skills needed to progress onto our BA (Hons) Photography course. During this time, you will work with students from across art, design and media disciplines, exploring your place in the wider creative community.

• Introducing Creative Research Practice
  Begin to build the knowledge, skills and ways of working to become a creative practitioner.
• Seeing, Thinking, Making Meaning
  Learn more about the history and theory of the creative arts and work with others to discuss why context is so important.
• Ideas, Images and Objects
  Begin to apply your skills and develop your own individual creative projects.
• Innovation Lab
  Work with others to test out ideas through making and breaking to explore innovative ways of working.
• Creative Industries Toolkit
  Learn more about the industries you will work in and acquire the professional skills and attributes you will need to succeed.
• Creative Playbook
  Have the opportunity to negotiate your own brief with support from your tutors and apply all the knowledge and skills you have gathered throughout the year.

Year two

In your second year, you will focus on The Photographic Environment which deals with the cornerstone craft of photographic image capture, both analogue and digital, in application to and investigation of, your photographic interests.

Research and contextual skills will be established at this level as we introduce the work of significant photographers and explore how influences and themes can be tracked through history, thereby setting the stage for the development of your own work.

• Photographic Image Capture
  An introduction to technical skills in digital & analogue photographic contexts.
• Cultural Contexts
  An introduction to the cultural, historical and social contexts in which creative work from a range of disciplines will be considered
• Picturing Place: Culture & Identity
  Explore the idea of place; different environments, cultures and identities informed by locale.
• Collaborative Practice
  Develop your ability to collaborate in professional scenarios through problem-solving and project-based learning.

Year three

In your third year, you will explore the Relevant Photograph. This attends to socially engaged practice. Working with the local community and culture with input from industry professionals you will learn to apply your craft to a greater purpose. You will also develop your contextual explorations into photographic theory, critical thinking, and analysis.

We have developed an enrichment module in year two where you can experience and practice traditional techniques and cutting-edge technologies.

Creating the space for experiment and play is enormously valuable in promoting creativity, problem-solving skills, risk-taking, and imagination. The module is intended to expand your practice skills midway through your degree enabling you to explore your own potential and readying you for a more focused journey through your final year and employment beyond that.

• Networks & Narratives: Photography in the Community
  Explore contemporary themes in photography.
• Immersive Image-Making
  Enrich your personal photographic practice by experimenting with both traditional and cutting-edge technologies.
• The Photographic Interface: Industry Experience
  An opportunity to explore your practice through a range of briefs set by industry professionals.
• Theorising Photography
  Develop the skills to think critically and generate original ideas informed by examples of influential scholarship.

Year four

Your final year will revolve around an Independent Showcase where you will take full charge of your own practice and bring it into the public domain.

Research, practice and professional skills come together in the final year of study to refine and showcase your personal vision and expression of photographic practice. At this point, you will be an independent, intelligent and competent practitioner with a personal portfolio representing the breadth of your skill and the depth of your engagement.

• Blueprint of Practice
  Refine your autonomous photographic practice through the synthesis of research and creativity.
• Independent Research Paper
  Develop specialised and focused knowledge and understanding of a subject of your own choice.
• Resolution of Practice
  Carry out a self-designed, in-depth, and investigative personal project.