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Doug Burton, Author at The Open College of the Arts - Page 2 of 3
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Doug Burton


Student work: Ramona  Mason thumb

Student work: Ramona Mason

Creative Arts level 1 student, Ramona Mason, has employed text, place and a personal perspective of her life in London to significant effect in the completion of her work on Printmaking 1. I spoke to Ramona about her prints, at the start of her creative arts journey, and wanted to share these with you now.

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Student work: Helen Price thumb

Student work: Helen Price

I enjoyed the way that art history and context was interwoven throughout the course. As each unit was presented, different artists and works were introduced in a way that was relevant to the project at hand. I found this to be a refreshing approach, in contrast to a timeline-based introduction to the history of art.

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Creative Arts, Part 1: What do we mean by Interdisciplinary? thumb

Creative Arts, Part 1: What do we mean by Interdisciplinary?

Interdisciplinarity – is the study of two or more disciplines alongside a critical engagement with subjects in the wider world, that aims to communicate connections through thinking and practice. So, why might we need to engage with the wider world as part of interdisciplinary thinking? As we look beyond the confines of a Western orientated art history towards ideas and influences that emerge from a context of globalisation and cross-cultural engagement, creative artists respond to this in a variety of ways and some common strategies emerge. 

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Study event review: OCA South West – Global perspectives thumb

Study event review: OCA South West – Global perspectives

With such a large multidisciplinary group, I wanted to start the day with a lecture on ‘Global Perspectives in Contemporary Creative Arts’. I’m aware that teaching and learning around a historical context for the arts can have a Western bias that feels out of touch with the much broader globalised discourse that is happening today.

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What is your tutor up to? Chapter 26: Doug Burton thumb

What is your tutor up to? Chapter 26: Doug Burton

Being elected a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors is both professional validation and also a chance to expand my network of support.

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Cross-discipline drawing workshop thumb

Cross-discipline drawing workshop

I began the morning asking students what they thought drawing could be beyond the traditional skills they might have learnt. Some keywords emerged that acted as a guide for the exercises, including drawing as invention, play, process, action, memory, language, non-art, materials and generative.

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OCASA funded Student Workshops thumb

OCASA funded Student Workshops

There are many challenges for students to overcome through distance learning; engaging with other likeminded students to create your own peer network has to be one of the trickiest. I believe that if students can find the time, the use of OCASA funded workshops has to be a tangible benefit to a student’s learning across all programmes.

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Jim Unsworth thumb

Jim Unsworth

As some of you may know Jim Unsworth recently made the difficult decision to stop tutoring with the OCA in order to focus his time on his growing arts practice. I thought it might be a good idea to take it upon myself to write a blog post on Jim in order to celebrate his contribution to arts education and give you my perspective of his sculpture and drawings that span nearly 40 years.

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The purpose of drawing thumb

The purpose of drawing

My role as programme leader for the new Drawing Degree has brought me to Chester University to participate in the iJADE conference 2016. Delegates had come from all round the world to present papers on a wide range of approaches to drawing. My interest in attending was both to discover new perspectives in drawing as a tool for education and also to consider the way practitioners from a wide variety of fields are using drawing as a major part of their research.

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