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Doug Burton, Author at The Open College of the Arts
To find out more details about the transfer to The Open University see A New Chapter for OCA.
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Doug Burton


OCA News: Creative Arts – A review of our programme thumb

OCA News: Creative Arts – A review of our programme

The online department has produced more communities of practice and allowed us to meet and communicate more readily with students as a group of engaged, diverse creatives, which has been a great move forward.

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Creative Arts, Part 3: Why are skills so important to becoming a creative artist? thumb

Creative Arts, Part 3: Why are skills so important to becoming a creative artist?

This might seem like an obvious question to answer, and perhaps I wanted to open a discussion on what opportunities there are for developing skills on the creative arts pathway.

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Creative Arts 2021 Showcase ‘Crossing The Boundary’  thumb

Creative Arts 2021 Showcase ‘Crossing The Boundary’ 

For the 2020/21 academic year, I wanted to develop a showcase of student work from across the Creative Arts (CA) programme at any stage of their study. I aspired to offer a view of what CA students are achieving through their interdisciplinary practices and hope to share this more widely with the OCA community and beyond.

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Notes on the winter digital assessment for Creative Arts – A programme leader’s perspective thumb

Notes on the winter digital assessment for Creative Arts – A programme leader’s perspective

This second digital assessment event for creative arts followed up on all the successes achieved in running the summer assessment online whilst allowing room to progress. I was keen to gain further insight into the approaches CA students take to developing their work and understand more about their learning journeys.  The creative arts programme is […]

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Black History Month 2020: Creative Arts in conversation thumb

Black History Month 2020: Creative Arts in conversation

When encountered in an art institution like Tate and reimagined in this way, we have no choice but to engage with this darker side. Events of the past few years, such as Brexit and BLM have really started to change that – I think people are noticing public monuments and statuary a lot more. 

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Creative Arts, Part 2: How can interdisciplinary ways of working produce new ideas? thumb

Creative Arts, Part 2: How can interdisciplinary ways of working produce new ideas?

A student recently commented to me that trying different techniques out, although unrelated, had improved the quality of their work and they enjoyed the feeling of connection within a broader student body.

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Join us for OCA wide Earth Day 2020  thumb

Join us for OCA wide Earth Day 2020 

Earth Day has its 50th Anniversary this year, and we invite you to join us to mark this significant day. At these times of self-isolation, online interaction and social distancing, we take a moment to celebrate, share and explore the creative possibilities of the home-garden work space. 

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Student stories: Lynn Derriman. thumb

Student stories: Lynn Derriman.

Your choice of words, ‘active slow-creative journey’, really resonates. I feel that there is a direct link between the length of time I have been allowed to engage with this learning experience to its fullest extent at my own pace and how much of that acquired knowledge I’ve durably assimilated and integrated into my own creative practice.

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