OCA preloader logo
creativity Blog Posts- Page 4 of 26 - The Open College of the Arts

To find out more details about the transfer to The Open University see A New Chapter for OCA.

#WeAreOCA

The Open College of the Arts' blog

Browsing Category:

creativity


Study event review: Interior Design & Garden Design thumb

Study event review: Interior Design & Garden Design

On a sunny Saturday in November a group of Interior Design and Garden Design students and tutors met up at the Royal Festival Hall on Londons’ SouthBank. It was a long anticipated event (delayed somewhat by Covid) that some had been looking forward to for two years!

Read More
Writer’s Block (From the Perspective of a Composer) thumb

Writer’s Block (From the Perspective of a Composer)

The creative process and the editorial process are completely different things. When you are creating things, encourage the editorial part of your brain to take a nap, so you can work fearlessly, with no inhibitions. Then, when it is time to edit what you have done, make amendments, and focus on the detail, wake the editorial part of your brain back up. 

Read More
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.

Read More
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.

Read More
Tutor News: Farewell and thanks to Peter Lester thumb

Tutor News: Farewell and thanks to Peter Lester

After almost five years with OCA Graphic design Department, and many more in design education, notably  Nottingham Trent University, as head of Masters Studies in Visual Communications, Peter Lester is to retire.

Read More
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.

Read More
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. 

Read More