In its 30 years OCA has evolved from face to face and correspondence courses to a blended internet and distance based offering and has defied traditional educational boundaries imposed by age, geography, previous experience and privilege. Through technology we can create a borderless community which serves personal, creative and autonomous interaction between students, tutors, and peers.
Read More
Based on student feedback, OCA has committed to introduce group work as a core teaching element by 2020-21. We envisage that all undergraduate students can expect access at least one session per course unit or annually, and group work will be offered in addition to existing one-to-one tuition.
Read More
Pattern has been a huge anchor for my own practice, and it is often intrinsic to designing and creating textiles even if we don’t realise it. I wanted to share images of contemporary practitioners that explore pattern within their work, but also focus on works that use under-celebrated materials- the things that are perhaps classed as mundane, or simply overlooked.
Read More
Post-study success, however that looks for individual students, is a key ambition of OCA. We hope that our courses will provide you with valuable skills, but in addition to this we are developing initiatives to provide opportunities to network with peers, develop collaborative projects, and set up businesses. With this in mind, we are establishing a new Enterprise Enhancement Scheme, providing funding to students to engage in enterprise activity.
Read More
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.
Read More
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.
Read More
