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Creative Arts Blog Posts - Page 6 of 28 - The Open College of the Arts

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Victory in Europe Day – 8 May 1945 – 75th Anniversary 2020 thumb

Victory in Europe Day – 8 May 1945 – 75th Anniversary 2020

This Friday Bank Holiday, 8 May 2020, marks the 75th Anniversary of Victory in Europe Day (VE Day), the end of fighting in Europe in 1945. Fighting in the Far East against Japan would continue for a further three months, costing the lives of many more servicemen and women, and civilian deaths in the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki before the final surrender on August 15 1945.

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Unmasking the everyday: part one thumb

Unmasking the everyday: part one

Queues outside supermarkets have become strange symbols of this, epitomising how one of life’s most everyday activities has come to feel risky and dangerous. The usually unnoticed has become unsettlingly conspicuous. 

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Edge-zine issue 9: Inside thumb

Edge-zine issue 9: Inside

From Vicky Mackenzie’s ‘Tutors thoughts’ through Steve Cusson’s work ‘Prison Cinema’ and onto Therese Livonne and her self portrait the 9th edition of Edge-zine is packed with thought provoking work and articles from across the Open College of the Arts range of disciplines.

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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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Stay creative thumb

Stay creative

Choosing and continuing to be creative is a really important act of self-care.  Whether you write, draw, sew, sculpt, paint, photograph or play an instrument, you can improve your mental wellbeing.  Over the coming weeks OCA will post open, creative content that everyone can get involved in.

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Slow observation – Time and slowing down to notice in Creative Arts thumb

Slow observation – Time and slowing down to notice in Creative Arts

Despite technology being positioned as an enabler to modern life, it can often seem as if time and demands on our time have increased and sped up broadly in line with each technological innovation. Studies including the 2019 International research published in World Psychiatry suggests that the Internet and smart technology is changing our brains […]

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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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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: Scraps of Memory by Catherine Munro thumb

Student work: Scraps of Memory by Catherine Munro

The Creative Arts program encourages interdisciplinary approaches. It’s great to see how students can navigate multiple units to build a coherent creative practice. It can be hard to juggle different parts of a practice based course and one of the key challenges, I think, can be finding how to develop an individual direction. It can be very useful to step back and reflect on what are the ideas and methods that really drive and inspire you. This body of work entitled Scraps of Memory, by HE5 Creative Arts student Catherine Munro feels useful to share with wider OCA.

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Food for thought thumb

Food for thought

Food has always played a role in art. From the Renaissance artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s witty portraits composed of fruits and vegetables and the beautiful still life paintings of the Dutch Golden Age, through to Wayne Thiebaud’s iconic painted pies and cakes in the pop art era, artists have used food to express their pleasures and preoccupations.  

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