BA (Hons) Fine Art

The Study Abroad module is a semester based 60 credit module which is available on degree courses which facilitate study abroad within the programme. You will undertake a semester abroad at a partner university equivalent to 60 UK credits. This gives you access to modules from your discipline taught in a different learning culture and so broadens your overall experience of learning. The course of study abroad will be constructed to meet the learning outcomes for the programme for the semester in question, dependent on suitable modules from the partner and will be recorded for an individual student on the learning agreement signed by the host University, the student, and the home University (Northumbria). The module will be assessed by conversion of graded marks from the host University.

Learning outcomes on the year-long modules on which the student is unable to attend the home institution must be met at the host institution, and marks from the host are incorporated into the modules as part of the overall assessment.

To support the development of your practice there will be a series of lecture and seminar sessions investigating how historical and contemporary artists have questioned society and its cultures. Focusing on key examples in their historical context, artists’ manifestos and writings, theoretical texts and creative strategies, we will investigate what constitutes a “critical art practice” through two key questions: what are artists critical of; and how is that criticality expressed? Examining historical and contemporary examples, we will focus upon four main areas:

• Questioning the institutions and spaces of the artworld
• Critique of society and its structures
• Questioning cultural conventions and traditional methods of representation
• Questioning humans’ relationship with the environment.

You will learn about key themes related to historical, theoretical, and critical developments in and influences on contemporary art practice relevant to an understanding of recent debates and developments, allowing you to contextualise your own studio practice within the terms of history and theory in preparation for Level 6. This will allow you to develop a deeper critical understanding of the relationship between form and content in your own art making and you will learn how to develop a professional understanding of appropriate technical and conceptual strategies for the production and presentation of your artworks.

You will develop the ability to reflect critically on the historical and contemporary relationship of artists to society at local, national and global levels, and develop competence in skills enabling you to undertake critical visual analysis, independent research, and present findings through the medium of discursive writing.

This module enables you to learn through the work of your peers and position your evolving practice against contemporary frameworks and theoretical ideas in current art practice. Through the learning you will develop the intellectual and practical skills required to start to assess your own work and studio position allowing you to take responsibility for the development of your visual enquiry. All of your learning underpins your studio practice with a strong subject specific knowledge base and the range of strategies aims to engender your confidence in identifying and understanding new knowledge in relation to your practice.

Through a studio-based approach supplemented with intersectional theory, the students learn about diverse topics, such as race, gender, sexuality, and class in a global context. The module will enable students to establish a deeper understanding of practice by examining how their own and others’ cultural backgrounds affect creative expression. Tutors conduct the teaching and extend their pluralistic artistic and academic positions into pedagogy. The design of the seminars and learning resources instigate dialogue and debate, prompting students to recognise the politics of visual representation and its social implications in different cultural contexts and publics. In addition to encouraging collective and collaborative artistic processes, the students receive support to investigate questions of identity within their studio practice through one-on-one tutorials, where they receive direction for individual artistic and research interests.

This module blends history, theory, and practice through a series of lectures, seminars, workshops, and briefs. Throughout these you will be encouraged to consider the methods/forms by which artists have engaged directly with art institutions and communities. Since at least the 1990s there has been an explosion of art production that aims to organise and engage with other people – whether it’s referred to as community arts, participatory practice, social engagement, new institutionalism, new genre public art, or useful art. In these practices artists no longer make objects but organise and engage people, and these projects can take place in galleries and museums or outside in community spaces. At times these practices are politically utopian, at others ethically transgressive.

To start, this module will introduce you to theoretical and contextual ideas about this shift in contemporary art production through a series of lectures. Alongside, seminars will introduce an essential ‘toolkit’ for facilitation and for staging interactive or educational activities: these will include risk assessments, funding applications, reports, the nuts and bolts of building a participatory art practice. To support your ongoing professional practice, you will learn about exhibition and outreach processes, and explore broader questions relating to audience, ethics, professional skills, and safe working. You will devise creative responses and activities in response to a brief and be supported in the development of your independent practice. For assessment you will be required to reflect upon your personal experience, learning and development.

The learning within the module centres on bringing your studio-centred artmaking and contextual contemporary art knowledge into live work projects within professional artworld work environments through a placement and supporting workshops.

The central topics of the learning are:
• Preparing for effective live working within a professional artworld project.
• Establishing applied knowledge and understanding of the North East regional artworld, its organisations, intuitions and grass-roots ecologies.
• Applying independent artmaking and arts knowledge (developed through the programme) into live work projects within professional artworld contexts.
• Learning (externally to the teaching) through a live work within a professional artworld work context.
• Evaluating and reporting on the learning and knowledge development from a live work within a professional artworld work context.
• Building career and employment knowledge through live working within a professional artworld work context.
• Establishing networks through live working within a professional artworld work context.


Keywords and critical frameworks are:
Live project placement
Contemporary art practice
Collaboration and collective working
Mentorship and professional learning
Networking and careers enhancement
Art Education, Art Research, Contemporary Art Projects
Enhancing cultural capital
Enhancing social capital


In this module you will learn how to engage responsibly and effectively within professional working contexts. You will learn how to contribute through a small peer-group into a collective and collaborative work environment, and you will learn how to evaluate and reflect-on the range of skills and learning you are developing through that process. You will learn how to apply learning to focus-on and expand post University work opportunities and your onward careers ambitions. You will learn to evaluate and report objectively on your work and outputs within live working contexts. You will learn how to meet professional work standards, and mobilise your artmaking in ways open and enhance future work and career opportunities.

On this module you will learn how to develop an exhibition proposal in a way that considers the development of your studio work in relation to its audience and the audience experience. In doing so you will learn to establish a wider independent appreciation, knowledge and understanding of the external professional contexts that frame and position the activities and production of your work in an exhibition beyond the studio. In doing so you will extend your understanding of the research-led enquiries that professional artists undertake to develop exhibition proposals, including the research methodologies that artists and gallery professionals use to understand and respond to the diverse social and geographic contexts of any exhibition’s production and presentation. You will learn about methodologies, mediums and materials that artists use to present their ideas in the proposal. You will also learn to enhance your understanding of professional contexts within the contemporary artworld in relation to career pathways and professional opportunities. You will develop transferable professional skills in areas presentation, communication, project management, problem solving and the ability to reflect critically on your actions and achievements.

This module is an opportunity to think through the place of technology in art practice, in relation to theories of technology in society and culture. You will be supported in developing your studio practice through the application of, or engagement with, current and past technologies. We will take an experimental approach to working with machines, computers and other forms of technology, taken broadly. The module supports the theoretical development of your studio practice, through a series of focused workshops, seminars and other events.

The module will support you in working towards a group exhibition which will focus on interactivity and responsivity through the employment of, or exploration of, technologies of communication. This will be supported in studio and through seminars, tutorials and visits.

The module draws in contemporary theory with a focus on technology as an extension of human values. A seminar series will introduce themes of power, control and agency in technology, giving space for discussion of technology and communication in the digital age. We will approach these questions from a global perspective, drawing in Yuk Hui’s theory of cosmotechnics, in order to understand that there is no single definition for technology.

In this module you will learn about how worldbuilding has been used as a strategy within contemporary art, and you will have the opportunity to develop worldbuilding possibilities in your own developing critical practice. We will look at relevant examples of such worldbuilding practice and consider the aesthetic, political and ethical worlds they put forward. You will also be introduced to practices and thinkers that consider the plurality of worlds that already exist all around us, and how these might be foregrounded in artistic work.

Academic skills when studying away from your home country can differ due to cultural and language differences in teaching and assessment practices. This module is designed to support your transition in the use and practice of technical language and subject specific skills around assessments and teaching provision in your chosen subject. The overall aim of this module is to develop your abilities to read and study effectively for academic purposes; to develop your skills in analysing and using source material in seminars and academic writing and to develop your use and application of language and communications skills to a higher level.

The topics you will cover on the module include:

• Understanding assignment briefs and exam questions.
• Developing academic writing skills, including citation, paraphrasing, and summarising.
• Practising ‘critical reading’ and ‘critical writing’
• Planning and structuring academic assignments (e.g. essays, reports and presentations).
• Avoiding academic misconduct and gaining credit by using academic sources and referencing effectively.
• Listening skills for lectures.
• Speaking in seminar presentations.
• Presenting your ideas
• Giving discipline-related academic presentations, experiencing peer observation, and receiving formative feedback.
• Speed reading techniques.
• Developing self-reflection skills.