Study visit review Archives | The Open College of the Arts

Study event review: OCA Photography Midlands

10 of us Midlands OCA photography students spent a highly enjoyable afternoon with Birmingham based artist Stephen Burke at the Blast! Festival of Photography Sandwell, West Midlands.

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.

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.

Study event review: OCA East of England

The session focused around making a mini-concertina book and each student successfully made their book. In the session, students were shown how to cover hard backed covers and hopefully gained some useful tips on how to glue cover materials and on the assembly of books.

Study event review: Thinking through art

Having Emma and the students talk around my project, helped me consider it from other viewpoints and look at other options. This has greatly helped me to think about what I’m doing for the project and will inform the direction this will take through the rest of the degree.

Study event review: Arts & environment. Part 2.

These events are part of a program of Art & Environment visits taking the context of climate change as a backdrop for explorations of art, design and ecology, environment and nature.

Study event review: Arts & environment. Part 1.

In our discussion about trial and error and finding the right working conditions to be able to experiment as part of the creative process, OCA student Bernadette summed it up nicely, “Lets set out to make loads of mistakes.”

‘I am tired of guilt…’

At ‘Don McCullin’ you’re not supposed to think so much as feel. But the other function of an art gallery, besides educating us, is surely to provide a public space for debate and criticism. And I’d like to concentrate on that part now, rather than the private response, because what is there to say about our private responses to those photographs except that they’re valid?

Study event review: OCA South West

It’s about taking a 360degree approach to out practice to examine it and how it relates to the world now- so as to establish its currency in terms of dialogue (amongst other things).

Study event review: Thinking through art

Although some of the reading was quite heavy going, we were able to pick out the salient points and find quotations that resonated with our own experience, ideas or concerns or stimulated new thinking.