OCA News: Creative Arts Update

The Creative Arts Programme Leader, Doug Burton, will leave the OCA in November after twelve years of service to develop his Arts business. During this time, Doug has been instrumental in developing the Creative Arts degree to meet student’s expectations for a contemporary interdisciplinary programme that is unique in many ways within the university sector. There have been many positive changes over recent years, and the Creative Arts team will continue to work hard to deliver an exciting, challenging and rewarding experience for our students. 

As we move forward, Creative Arts Programme Tutor Adam Thompson will take over as Programme Leader, and we plan to recruit and expand the tutor team in the coming months. Doug and Adam have worked together for several years in various capacities at OCA, and Adam will lead the programme through the next periodic cycle of academic advancement. Work is already underway in continuing to broaden the degree offered through exciting group work initiatives and building on the Skills Hub resources to enable Creative Arts students to undertake a wide range of rich micro courses across OCA disciplines. 

The Creative Arts team chatted with Doug about his time at the OCA and what the future holds for the programme. 

Doug, can you tell us about your time at the OCA, what are you most proud of?

When I started at the OCA in 2011, I was a tutor and assessor across the Painting and Creative Arts degree. It was a very different time then, with huge portfolios of work being delivered to my front door and regularly coming up to the Michael Redbrook Business Park for assessment and development days. I applied for the programme leader job soon after I joined and was thrilled and very daunted at my successful application. The organisation was much smaller then, and there was a lot of freedom to be creative within higher education and develop new strategies for improving the programme.

I’ve been involved in many creative educational projects during my time, which have been a lot of fun and hard work. Some highlights include leading, creating and validating the Drawing Degree, co-authoring the Short Course Investigating Place, co-authoring the Foundation unit Materials and Making, developing the Skills Hub, writing and editing over thirty units of all shapes and sizes and authoring a paper on ‘Distance Learning in Creative Arts Education’ as well as representing the OCA at the Ijade conferences.

It took a few years for me to learn about our students, what they felt was working, and what was missing from their Creative Arts degree. I began to form a picture of their requirements and, in 2017, set about a plan for evolving the programme. I think the work I’m most proud of is understanding what a creative arts student is and what it means to be a creative practitioner. The new programme of study (3×3) that, with the support of senior teams, we developed for our CA students reflects this open, flexible nature of interdisciplinary study across art and design.

How will you use what you have learned from your time at the OCA in your new ventures?

Most recently, working with the Creative Arts team has been a great privilege and one that I have hugely enjoyed. I think that I will take from here this experience of working with a team and being creative with academic tasks. I am continuing my work in HE as an External Examiner, and I’m also planning to tutor and support students from the South West with my knowledge of the Arts, as well as spending some much-needed time on my artistic practice.

Adam, can you tell us a little about your background?

I’ve been with OCA since 2016, initially working across Creative Arts, Fine Art, Painting and Drawing programmes. I was the Sculpture Unit Leader and co-authored the Material and Making Foundation, alongside the HE4 and HE5 Sculpture units. More recently, I’ve been developing Skills Hub resources, Creative Arts programme content and the Creative Conversations initiative at HE6. When OCA introduced Programme Tutors it was a good opportunity to consolidate my skills and experience within the Creative Arts department as this felt the best match with my personal practice and creative interests across a variety of disciplines and contexts. Developing the new Creative Arts programme of study with the team has been an exciting opportunity which I’m keen to continue developing in the coming years. 

Link to Staff profiles: https://www.oca.ac.uk/about-us/our-tutors/?_sft_tutor_cat=creative-arts-tutors