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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From the end of January Photography Programme Leader Gina Lundy will be taking maternity leave. We are really excited to welcome Dan Robinson into the role whilst she is away. Below, Dan and Gina discuss the coming 12 months, course review and the vision for the Photography Programme going forward.
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In fiction, ‘voice’ refers to the person who’s speaking, more commonly called ‘the narrator’ (it’s unusual to refer to the ‘narrator’ in poetry). The narrator may be a character in the story (as in first person narratives) or they may be someone telling the story but not actually present (as in third person narratives).
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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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What is meant by ‘voice’ in poetry? Personally I don’t think it’s easy to distinguish between ‘voice’ and ‘style’. Both are abstract terms that are concerned with the overall effect of a piece of writing rather than any specific technique, so both are the sum of all the other parts of the writing craft. In both fiction and poetry, ‘voice’ and ‘style’ are created from word choice, tone, use of punctuation and grammar, rhythm, choice of subject matter, choice of point of view, use of imagery, and so on. In poetry, specific poetic techniques also contribute to voice, including line length, line breaks, use of stanzas, rhyme and meter.
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‘Photography is Simple’ is a notoriously difficult assignment. It’s controversial (especially the older version which gave you the option to submit just one word for your assignment notes). The work coming in has been variable and it’s really tripped some people up, including some of our most confident students. So I decided to give it a run through myself.
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We are proud to announce that OCAs first ever 2019-2020 prospectus is available for interactive viewing, download or delivery*!
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Peter Haveland, a tutor on visual studies and photography courses is retiring from his teaching career and leaving OCA. He’s been working with OCA for the best part of twenty years, so has seen the organisation evolve and grow. To mark Peter’s retirement, and out of my own curiosity, I asked him a few questions to reflect on his time as a tutor.
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With BIG DRAW I got to experience different tools, forcing me into learning mode which I really enjoyed. It certainly has been an illuminating experience and I want to suggest that anyone embarking on a course at OCA should do this as a teaser to get started.
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Overall, it was an excellent day, where we learned a considerable amount, had some hands-on activity and had the chance to meet some of our fellow local students. I very much hope the group will meet again in the future.
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