To find out more details about the transfer to The Open University see A New Chapter for OCA.
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Huge congratulations to OCA Creative Writing tutor Vicky MacKenzie on this highly prestigious book deal for her novel. Any of her students will agree that she is a wise and wonderful writer as well as a wonderful tutor – so it’s great news to hear of the imminent publication of this fascinating book.
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The Bloomberg New contemporaries is the leading graduate art prize in the UK. This year I am delighted to say that a graduate from our own painting pathway has made it through the incredibly competitive first stage of the process.
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Gwen Bird’s fourth submission for Drawing 1: Exploring Drawing Media shows how developing ideas by working through material processes rather than thinking about conclusions or results can result in creative breakthroughs. While having a goal in mind is not necessarily a bad thing when making work, it can sometimes overwhelm and obscure really interesting potential ideas that emerged from the act of making.
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I want to share my thoughts on using video recordings as a useful tool in an active reflective practice. I will draw on my experiences as a tutor and as a textile designer and maker currently studying for an MA in Textile Design at the Royal College of Art (RCA).
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Studying Interior Design, Spatial Design, Interior Architecture – or any kind of design of the built environment – can lead to many different careers. In this series of blog posts we are looking at the experience and careers of different design professionals and finding out what inspired them to study in the first place. Our fourth design professional is Grant Armstrong, an experienced supervising art director and production designer for film and television.
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As a tutor that’s seen a lot of these projects, it’s perhaps important to mention that no two projects are the same and there isn’t really a ‘right’ answer. The important thing to take from this is that a complex project doesn’t arrive fully-formed but is developed over time. The final format (at least for now) of this work is a recreation of Mel’s teenage bedroom – something that she couldn’t have imagined when she started.
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This painting ‘Cabin Crew 20 minutes to Landing’ was created during the lockdown in that studio from many photographs and the memories from coming into land after days away on long haul trips. I painted it for my fourth assignment Practice of Painting and decided to submit it to Grayson Perry’s Art Club, the travel episode.
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For the last ‘Expressing Your Vision’ groupwork session we decided to try something a little bit different and invited all EYVers from March assessment to share the best of their submissions with their fellow students. The idea was more for a celebration than a crit, but with such a creatively diverse set of assignments there were plenty of questions to be asked and the session naturally developed into a wide ranging discussion on different aspects of the course and photography in general.
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As the lockdowns are (hopefully) drawing to an end, it’s worth looking at examples of how some students have channelled their experiences into their student work. For many people this historic period has provided the opportunity of ready-made subjects for creativity. Not only artists, but the public in general have been getting very creative. Much of this is part of a community spirit to entertain, to lift the mood of others and to brighten up homes that seem increasingly like a scene from Groundhog Day.
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OCA student Suzanne Conboy-Hill has negotiated the use of one of her art works by the internationally renowned company Swatch®. The story touches on so many aspects of life as a working artist; the power of Instagram for Visual Art, copyright and intellectual property, pricing and contracts, that I asked Suzanne and her tutor Hayley Lock to share a conversation about Suzanne’s experience with Swatch®.
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