To find out more details about the transfer to The Open University see A New Chapter for OCA.
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Not a phrase I have heard before, but nevertheless an interesting video by photographer Paul Graham. I was particularly taken by his definition of good art – “it’s about many things, it’s not just about one idea or one concept – it’s open, it’s about many different things and it’s often about more than the […]
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Blog of the week this month is Rob’s Learning Blog. It is one of the first illustration learning logs I have seen – the course was only introduced this year, but has has exceeded expectations in terms of enrolments. I was struck not just by the quality of the drawing but also by the effort […]
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The American South provokes powerful emotions. A troubled history, rural isolation and poverty and more recently dramatic economic and population growth, the region has inspired a diverse literary tradition from Mark Twain to Harry Crews. This important exhibition at the De La Warr Pavillion surveys an equally diverse body of photographic work and runs from […]
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In August we invited volunteers to lead the development of an OCA Student Association. We had a small number of volunteers and Jim Smith was chosen as the student with the most relevant experience to work with us. Yesterday Jim attended his first meeting of the OCA Teaching and Learning Committee and spent time with […]
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It was fabulous to meet some of our students as they graduated last week at Bucks New University in High Wycombe. A pity we didn’t prepare rather more carefully. Sandra and Margaret were very gracious but it was a shame that Sandra’s father and Margaret didn’t get a meal. It’s a long story, but suffice […]
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The Open College of the Arts works with the Prisoners’ Education Trust to enable students in prison to access our courses. It is an important part of our charitable purpose and student fees are met by a combination of OCA bursaries and grants from the Trust. As this work is largely invisible to other students […]
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Blog of the week this month is southliving written by China based OCA photography student Dewald Botha. And written is the operative word, one of the defining features of Dewald’s learning blog is the way that he sets out so clearly his thinking about his work – both in advance of shooting and then subsequently. […]
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While we were down interviewing Michael Freeman about the photography degree pathway we thought it would be interesting to ask him about what it needs to be a successful professional photographer. As all us can see the market is changing rapidly, but he doesn’t think this is necessarily grounds for pessimism. This is a subject […]
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There’s been a lot of activity recently in the OCA photography students’ flickr group under the heading ‘Male Domination of Photography‘ Questions being asked about why so many big name photographers are male, the make up of OCA students and tutors. Of course the representation of women has long been a subject of interest, the […]
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Since we have had the BA(Hons) Photography validated earlier this year, significantly larger numbers of students have been asking us how the courses fit together. We think this stuff is all in the Photography Handbook, but then we would, wouldn’t we? The other week we took the opportunity to ask Michael freeman to set out […]
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