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Creative Arts Blog Posts - Page 9 of 28 - 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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Creative Arts


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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Lisbon’s vibrant and optimistic art scene. thumb

Lisbon’s vibrant and optimistic art scene.

If you are heading to Portugal this summer, take some time to look around Lisbon’s vibrant art scene. This is art in the more liberal sense. Music, ceramics, architecture, visual arts, food culture, moving image, textiles- all are on show and in current conversation.

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Study event review: Remake / Remodel thumb

Study event review: Remake / Remodel

It was great to see such liberated and stimulating interplay between students and the work they were making. Unfamiliar drawing methods were explored including drawing with lengths of cane, using coloured tapes to collage with and stitching with a domestic sewing machine to create a variety of textured marks and lines. As the session progressed spontaneous collaborations began to develop between students where one would work over another’s drawing or drawings were developed together to produce an innovative dialogue of marks.

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What is your tutor up to? Jim Cowan thumb

What is your tutor up to? Jim Cowan

All over Britain art students of all ages are setting up end of year shows. From primary school to adult education, from higher education to post graduate, artworks are filling up boards for family and friends to view and assessors to scrutinise. Open House studio exhibitions are a particularly popular way to show your work to the general public and this year I have signed up for the Richmond ARThouse Open Studio event.  

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OCA Music: Flute recordings thumb

OCA Music: Flute recordings

As part of a developing collaboration with UCA’s music department, I visited the new recording studios at the Farnham campus on 27 March. I recorded some flute music by UCA composers as part of a film music project, and, in return, was given the opportunity to use the studio facilities to record solo flute works by OCA composers. Four students responded to the call for pieces.

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A new leaf: writing and observation thumb

A new leaf: writing and observation

Write a paragraph describing the leaf in as much detail as you can. The only rule is you’re not allowed to use the words ‘green’, ‘red’, ‘yellow’ or ‘brown’.

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What I’ve learned from travelling around the world (in short stories) thumb

What I’ve learned from travelling around the world (in short stories)

There’s a whole, diverse world of amazing fiction out there, and exploring it is a lot cheaper than other ways of travelling around the world.

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New Programme Leader: Introducing Catherine Byrne thumb

New Programme Leader: Introducing Catherine Byrne

As the new programme leader for the OCA Interior Design course I’d like to give you a bit of background to my own education and career, and also a little insight in to what you can expect from the course – as a student of Interior Design at the OCA.

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Ekphrastic Poetry thumb

Ekphrastic Poetry

It’s easy to look at a painting, for example, Van Gogh’s yellow bed and chair,, and respond with words. You might write a short story or a narrative poem about someone, possibly Van Gogh himself, who lived here. You might write a poem reproducing what you see in the painting, or something slightly more philosophical about bedrooms and their owners. But what do you write when the painting you are looking at is abstract?

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