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Student stories Blog Posts - Page 2 of 11 - 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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Student stories


Student stories: Tracy Walker thumb

Student stories: Tracy Walker

In this blogpost I’d like to introduce one of our most established interior design degree students – Tracy. Tracy has been studying with us for some time, and it has been great to see how far she has progressed on her learning journey with OCA over the last few years, and how much her design work has developed.

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Student stories: Luke Shephard thumb

Student stories: Luke Shephard

Photography What is The Food Bank Photo Project? Times are tough and what started out as an assignment for my photography degree has grown into a project that I have continued to pursue. Taking pictures of the locations of food banks around the UK. These are not pretty pictures, but they are important pictures of […]

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Transmitting the message thumb

Transmitting the message

Sometimes Keeping up Momentum events develop a momentum of their own. This post describes our experience of working together, with a hope that this will inspire others to do the same. The four of us (from the Drawing, Creative Arts, Painting and Photography pathways) met in January at Keeping up Momentum  – Pushing the Envelope  as Team Transmit and enjoyed the experience enough to decide to continue after the workshop. 

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Student stories – Jane Murdock thumb

Student stories – Jane Murdock

The grant, by enabling the partaking of this exhibition, has produced some long-term affects including personally increasing my confidence in exhibiting and engaging with an audience directly but also an understanding knowing that the subject matter is one that is of societal and cultural interest and needs to be continued.

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A PDF-to-print zine as engagement for Creative Arts: Gesa Helms’ A/Folder: an instructive glossary thumb

A PDF-to-print zine as engagement for Creative Arts: Gesa Helms’ A/Folder: an instructive glossary

This blog explores a distributed and self-printed form of engagement in my recently completed Creative Arts practice. A/Folder: an instructive glossary is a downloadable PDF-to-print zine. Each zine offers a prompt, a set of instructions, a method to explore. I want to unpack a little what this form allows for in terms of engagement as key modality of Sustain your Practice, and, should you be interested, invite you along.

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Collaboration: Cherished Child or Frankenstein’s Monster? thumb

Collaboration: Cherished Child or Frankenstein’s Monster?

We are five students studying Undergraduate Degrees on Drawing, Painting and Fine Art at levels one and two with OCA. We have been meeting for a number of years to support each other with our studies. Last year we agreed to work together on a collaboration project, none of us had tried this before.

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Practice-as-research and Research-as-practice. The Creative Arts work of Stage 3 student Gesa Helms. thumb

Practice-as-research and Research-as-practice. The Creative Arts work of Stage 3 student Gesa Helms.

In May, after concluding Stage 3 of the Creative Arts pathway, tutor Rachel Smith spoke with student Gesa Helms to explore the interweaving between practical and theoretical work in her practice and how practice-as-research methods have informed her three Stage 3 modules. 

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