To find out more details about the transfer to The Open University see A New Chapter for OCA.
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Jennifer Boldt, a postgraduate student of the Open College of the Arts (OCA) from Chicago, Illinois, has been shortlisted in the 3rd International Emerging Artist Award. The award, based in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, was established in 2012 and aims to promote and increase the visibility of both international and Emirati emerging artists […]
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Sandy Spirling studied creative writing with OCA for seven years whilst working for an animal charity, graduating in 2013 with a first class honours degree. Her aim was not just to write, but to write well, and to understand how others tackle the inevitable problems of the writing life. An unexpected element of the course […]
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Writers are defined by the genre in which they write and publish. Novelists – Martin Amis and George Eliot. Poets – Sylvia Plath and Rupert Brooke. Biographers – Claire Tomalin and Lytton Strachey. Labels constrain. It’s important for writers to find out through practice the genres in which they write well. Equally important is the […]
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‘A Brief Eternity’ is OCA student Paul Beaumont’s first novel. Shortlisted for this year’s Dundee International Book Prize, it was published in November by independent publisher Dangerous Little Books. Paul started studying with OCA in 2006 and began the novel on the level 3 Advanced Writing course. Here’s what he has learnt about writing, publishing and promoting a novel. […]
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‘Great dialogue, like great music, soars off the page’, says Laura Schellhardt in ‘Screenwriting for Dummies’. Since 1927, every writer has needed to be able to write good dialogue. Not that it didn’t matter before then. It’s just that afterwards it mattered more as talkies came to the cinema screen with ‘The Jazz Singer’. By […]
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A character using public office to get something done was the initial idea for OCA creative writing student Keith Hutson’s latest play ‘The Champion’ in which a councillor makes the most of his position by setting up a boxing club for disadvantaged kids. Earlier this year, ‘The Champion’ made it to the last 150 from […]
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OCA’s MA, Fine Art, has been has been shortlisted for a Prospects Postgraduate Award. We are competing against three other institutions for the title of Best Teaching Team (Arts and Humanities): Camberwell College of Art (MA Visual Arts Team); Royal Holloway, University of London (MA Cultural Geography (Research) Team); and Lancaster University (Creative Writing Team). […]
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In ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’, the 2012 BBC Radio 4 series and accompanying book by former British Museum director Dr Neil MacGregor, we hear objects speak on a grand scale. As listeners and readers, we are invited to get to know objects from ancient civilisations and more contemporary cultures – pots, […]
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This is a post from the weareoca.com archive. Information contained within it may now be out of date. This week, Bank Street Arts in Sheffield announces the jury and student winners of the 4th Sheffield International Artist’s Book Prize, which OCA is supporting. There were 455 entries, a ten-fold increase on the number received for the […]
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This is a post from the weareoca.com archive. Information contained within it may now be out of date OCA tutor Liz Cashdan’s most recent collection of poems ‘Things of Substance: New and Selected Poems’ was published in April by Five Leaves Publications, and launched at the Sheffield Poetry Festival and the Sticky Bun Club in […]
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