-Fine-Art,-UCA-Canterbury-5.jpg "Amy Hampson, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Canterbury")
Fine Art BA (Hons)
Canterbury
Course overview
Our BA (Hons) Fine Art degree course at UCA Canterbury will support you to build on your creative passions, gain new skills, experiment, and fine-tune your work, interests and thinking.
We want you to work with curiosity, develop ideas and themes, and consolidate your practice. With the support of our staff, you’ll experiment with a range of traditional and contemporary media, including painting, sculpture, installation, photography, film, sound, performance, animation and printmaking.
You’ll also develop a deep theoretical and critical understanding of Fine Art, and learn business and self-promotion skills. There will be plenty of opportunities to meet other students, make friends and to build a professional network that will give you a strong foundation on which to build your career.
This course will give you a wealth of transferable skills, distinguished by your creativity, ability to cope with change and hardworking, flexible attitude to work.
You have the option to complete a Professional Practice Year as part of this course. This will give you the opportunity to develop your professional, academic and personal potential, equipping you to be confident and engaged in creative workplaces. Employers widely recognise these qualities, and a significant proportion of placement students are offered graduate-level jobs or go onto postgraduate study.
Our standard three year undergraduate degree for those who meet the entry requirements for higher education.
UCAS Code for 3 year/standard: W100
A four year degree programme, including a foundation year to help develop your creativity before you embark on year one of a degree.
UCAS Code for course with Integrated Foundation Year: W10F
A four year course, specifically designed to provide international students with the English language and creative skills before they embark on year one of a degree.
UCAS Code for course with Integrated International Foundation Year: W10H
A four year programme, which sees you spend an entire year gaining valuable industry experience prior to your final year of study.
UCAS Code for course with Professional Practice: W103
A five year course, including a foundation year to help develop your creativity before you embark on year one of a degree, and a year on a professional placement gaining valuable industry experience prior to your final year of study.
UCAS Code for course with Integrated Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year: W10G
A five year course, including an international foundation year concentrating on English language and core creative skills before you embark on year one of a degree, and a year on a professional placement gaining valuable industry experience prior to your final year of study.
UCAS Code for course with Integrated International Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year: W10J
Course Details
The content of the course may be subject to change. Curriculum content is provided as a guide.
UCA’s Integrated Foundation Year is designed to give you the skills you’ll need to start your degree in the best possible way – with confidence, solid knowledge of creative practice, study skills and more.
You’ll explore a range of creative techniques and develop your portfolio, with your chosen subject in mind. We’ll work with you throughout the year to ensure you’re on the right track and give you the tools to achieve your highest potential on your degree.
For our students coming from a non-UK educational background, UCA has launched an Integrated International Foundation Year, based at UCA Farnham to bring students from around the world to one hub of creativity.
This year of preparatory study is designed to give you the skills you’ll need to start your degree in the best possible way – with confidence, solid knowledge of creative practice, study skills and the English speaking and writing skills you’ll need to succeed.
You’ll explore a range of creative techniques and develop your portfolio, with your chosen subject in mind. We’ll work with you throughout the year to ensure you’re on the right track and give you the tools to achieve your highest potential on your degree.
Launch
This is your introduction to the Campus and to the Course. As well as to the contexts and forms relevant for the Fine Art programme. You will be asked to make an impactful and meaningful collaborative project.
What is Fine Art?
As you’re introduced to contemporary art practice, you’ll be asked to be experimental and take risks with your work, in both written and practical forms. You’ll take part in workshops covering art in all forms, from printmaking to photography, painting to woodworking. You’ll also learn how art history, contemporary theory, cultural studies and the wider global world can shed a different light on the work that you make in the studio.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion 1
By exploring what is meant by gender, race, disability, sexual orientation, religion and social class, you will have the opportunity to explore how dominant culture mindsets contribute to the inclusion or exclusion of individuals or groups, and the ways in which divisive practices of ‘otherness and belonging’ are enacted, questioned and challenged in the context of contemporary Fine Art practices and a wider global arena.
What is Fine Art? Modes
Building on What is Fine Art? Experimentation, you’ll make and document a new piece of work for the purposes of display, write a short report or short audio-visual presentation on selected aspects of the lecture programme, and a literary review.
Opportunity
For Opportunity Week, you’ll go on visits to locations, attend a range of events both course-specific and independently led, and respond to a Call Out – where creative responses are asked for around a given theme, before being presented and celebrated across campus.
The Practice Lab
For this unit you’ll have the choice to produce work across two experimental “pathways” which cover the various aspects of Fine Art, alongside a record of lectures and seminars. You’ll also prepare and produce a record of talks, lectures and seminars for the purpose of delivering a presentation during a seminar within their staff-led tutor group
Connections 1
As part of your work in establishing professional networks, you’ll prepare and deliver a personal network sketchbook on selected arts organisations, galleries, museums, biennials, triennials, festivals within their location, that are directly and indirectly involved in Fine Art creative industries.
The Practice Lab – Display
From your work in the Practice Lab unit, this is your chance to exhibit and communicate creative outputs, and work with others in the display and curation of your own and others’ work. Collaboration is encouraged to explore the interdisciplinary nature of curation and installation. You’ll put together a project proposal, and display and document a body of work for a range of audiences.
Launch
As well as looking ahead to your second year you will be asked to contribute to an collaborative project. It will be important to consider how this work is received and understood and should have some form of ‘impact’ within the community of the campus.
What is my practice?
This unit gives you the chance to explore a range of themes, contexts and ways of working that you can choose, to help you refine your own practice. There’s a series of elective lectures and seminars which offer a breadth and a variety of subjects and attitudes with which to engage, covering socio-political, cultural, economic, technological, global and international perspectives.
The conscious practitioner
Building on Equality Diversity and Inclusion 1 in your first year, this unit will help you continue to develop and demonstrate an understanding of the theoretical and practical issues around the ethics of diversity, in the contexts of sustainability and current environmental concerns.
Interdisciplinary elective
This is your chance to explore beyond Fine Art, working collaboratively across courses to experiment and realise creative responses to briefs. What you choose to do must build on your experiences within your chosen sphere of focus.
Opportunity
For Opportunity Week, you’ll go on visits to locations, attend a range of events both course-specific and independently led, and respond to a Call Out – where creative responses are asked for around a given theme, before being presented and celebrated across campus.
Contemporary practice
Working as an individual or as part of a collaboration, you’ll get the opportunity to research and prepare for exhibiting this work in an off-site display, which will give you further experience of public exposure. All the while you’ll be further refining your own practice and identifying the ideas, themes and processes that resonate most.
Connections 2
With the support of your tutors, you will be encouraged to build on your sketchbook from Connections 1. You’ll prepare a presentation on your current work to an audience. You can work collaboratively with clearly defined roles, or individually on these initiatives. You will also be required to apply for work experience placements, internships, call outs, and competitions
Contemporary practice (curation) – placement
With the support of your tutor, the placement offers the opportunity for you to engage with organisations in the negotiation of a site for the purpose of displaying your work off-site. The unit encourages you to consider your studio work as a specialised practice in relation to available sites.
If you opt to complete a professional practice year, this will take place in year three. You will undertake a placement within the creative industries to further develop your skills and CV.
While on your Professional Practice Year, you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee for that year. This fee will be determined using government funding regulations. Based on current regulations, we expect this to be a maximum of 20% of the tuition fee rate that you are charged for your second year of study. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during this year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this as you approach your Professional Practice Year.
Please note: If you are an international applicant, you will need to enrol onto the course ‘with Professional Practice Year’. It will not be possible to transfer onto the Professional Practice Year after enrolment
Launch
Looking ahead to your third year you will be asked to contribute to a collaborative project. It will be important to consider how this work is received and understood and should have some form of ‘impact’ within the community of the campus.
Degree show – preparation
You’ll produce a body of work, an artist statement, and a work-in-progress catalogue of your work ready for the Degree Show – and recognise the direction of your practice in order to be employment-ready beyond life at UCA.
Degree show – written
Alongside the previous unit, you’ll start working towards your dissertation. You have two choices on how to present your work. Option 1 is an 8,000-word dissertation or 30 to 40-minute audio-visual presentation. Option 2 is a 5,000-word critical contexts piece or a 25 to 30-minute audio-visual presentation.
Opportunity
For Opportunity Week, you’ll go on visits to locations, attend a range of events both course-specific and independently led, and respond to a Call Out – where creative responses are asked for around a given theme, before being presented and celebrated across campus.
Degree Show – Final Major Project
The final major project requires demonstration of an independent and critically informed practice. Refining an approach to presenting work under exhibition conditions is a key aspect of this unit.
Supported by a series of seminars and workshops on the professional practice of Fine Art, including postgraduate options, you are required to document your work to a standard appropriate for postgraduate activity to produce a Professional Practice Portfolio. Your artist statement will form part of your professional portfolio outlining the ideas and influences that inform your work.
This course offers the opportunity to study abroad for part of your course. To find out more about studying abroad please see the Study Abroad section:
Across the entire duration of this course you will be required to maintain and evolve a Progression Portfolio. Through this you will learn how to curate and build a document of all of your research and developmental/experimental work across each unit of the course. This portfolio will allow you to reflect, review, update and present all of your unit outcomes in one place to demonstrate your knowledge/understanding, technical and professional skills as a Visual Communication practitioner. This is your first step in placing your own practice in an industry context. This will also form an important component for each assessed element of the course.
Tuition fees
2022 course fees for Year 1 entry and Integrated Foundation Year:
- UK students - £9,250
- EU students - £9,250 (see fee discount information)
- International students - £16,950
If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, for 2022 you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee of £1,850 (UK students) and £3,390 (International students). You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during your Professional Practice year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this.
Additional course costs
In addition to the tuition fees there may be other costs for your course. The things that you are likely to need to budget for to get the most out of a creative arts education will include books, printing costs, occasional or optional study trips and/or project materials. These costs will vary according to the nature of your project work and the individual choices that you make. Please see the Additional Course Costs section of your Course Information for details of the costs you may incur.
Further information
For more detailed information about our course fees and any financial support you may be entitled to please see our fees and finance pages.
The fees listed here are correct for the stated academic year only. Costs may increase each year during a student’s period of continued registration on course in line with inflation (subject to any maximum regulated tuition fee limit). Any adjustment for continuing students will be at or below the RPI-X forecast rate.
Industry placement
offer
Preparing graduates for successful careers underpins everything we do, and all students on this course will be offered an industry placement anywhere between two weeks and a year in length, depending on their individual needs. We’ll draw on our wide range of contacts within the creative industries to ensure you’re offered opportunities that align with your interests and future career aspirations.
Course specifications
Please note, syllabus content indicated is provided as a guide. The content of the course may be subject to change in line with our Student Terms and Conditions for example, as required by external professional bodies or to improve the quality of the course.
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Canterbury-3.jpg "Annie Brown, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Canterbury")
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Canterbury.jpg "Annabelle Edginton, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Canterbury")
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Canterbury-7.jpg "Emily Rose Driver, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Canterbury")
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Canterburyt-4.jpg "Joshua Burgess, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Canterbury")
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Canterbury-1.jpg "Coral Pryke Syrett, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Canterbury")
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Canterbury.jpg "Francesca Fraser, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Canterbury")
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Canterbury-2.jpg "Emma Thurman Newell, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Canterbury")
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Canterbury-4.jpg "Maisie Holmes, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Canterbury")
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Canterbury-5.jpg "Megan Gibson, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Canterbury")
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Canterbury.jpg "Elliot Arnell, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Canterbury")
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Canterbury-2.jpg "Nicholas Ramsden, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Canterbury")
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Canterbury-3.jpg "Yilin-Zheng, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Canterbury")
Facilities
There are large purpose-built studios for each year of the course, used for group tutorials and personal working and a 3D workshop with machines for working in wood, metals, plastics and ceramics. There are also workshops for plaster and rubber casting, glass casting, slumping, fusing and enamelling (kiln), ceramic bisque and gloss firing, low melt metal casting, and carving (wood, stone and polystyrene). Finally, there are printmaking studios for relief and block printing, intaglio and screen-printing.
Fine Art studios, UCA Canterbury
Sculpture studios, UCA Canterbury
Print studios, UCA Canterbury
Fine Art studios, UCA Canterbury
Course connections
As a long-established course, we have a developed Kent wide network which gives our students access to some of the most respected names in the creative industries, including:
- Turner Contemporary Margate
- Folkestone Triennial
- Dover Arts Development
- Stour Valley Creative Partnership
- Crate
- Whitstable Biennale
- Canterbury Cathedral.
While many of our alumni have developed careers as established artists, others have chosen to apply their talents to other fields, becoming:
- Artist practitioners
- Filmmakers
- Project managers
- Animators
- Curators
- Writers photographers
- Arts administrators
- Publishers
- Educators
- Technical instructors
- Designers
- Producers
- Picture/archive researchers.
You may also like to consider further study at postgraduate level.
"My art practice has really developed; I’ve learnt so much about modern art history and practicing artists that I couldn’t have attained elsewhere. I’m a lot more confident in myself as an artist."
Entry requirements
BA (Hons) course
BA (Hons) course with Professional Practice Year
The standard entry requirements* for these courses are one of the following:
- 112 new UCAS tariff points, see accepted qualifications
- Pass at Foundation Diploma in Art & Design (Level 3 or 4)
- Distinction, Merit, Merit at BTEC Extended Diploma / BTEC National Extended Diploma
- Merit at UAL Extended Diploma
- 112 new UCAS tariff points from an accredited Access to Higher Education Diploma in appropriate subject
- 27-30 total points in the International Baccalaureate Diploma with at least 15 IB points at Higher level, see more information about IB entry requirements.
And four GCSE passes at grade A*-C and/or grade 4-9 including English (or Functional Skills English/Key Skills Communication Level 2).
Other relevant and equivalent Level 3 UK and international qualifications are considered on an individual basis, and we encourage students from diverse educational backgrounds to apply.
BA (Hons) course with Integrated Foundation Year
BA (Hons) course with Integrated Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year
The standard entry requirements for these courses are one of the following:
- 64 new UCAS tariff points, see accepted qualifications
- Pass at Foundation Diploma in Art & Design (Level 3 or 4)
- Merit, Pass, Pass at BTEC Extended Diploma / BTEC National Extended Diploma
- Pass at UAL Extended Diploma
- 64 new UCAS tariff points from an accredited Access to Higher Education Diploma in appropriate subject
- 24 points from the International Baccalaureate, see more information about IB entry requirements.
And four GCSE passes at grade A*-C and/or grade 4-9 including English (or Functional Skills English/Key Skills Communication Level 2).
Other relevant and equivalent Level 3 UK and international qualifications are considered on an individual basis, and we encourage students from diverse educational backgrounds to apply.
BA (Hons) course with Integrated International Foundation Year
BA (Hons) course with Integrated International Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year
For these courses you need to have completed 12 years* of schooling (with good grades) and show strong evidence of your ability to successfully complete the programme and progress onto your chosen degree.
*We occasionally make offers which are lower than the standard entry criteria, to students who have faced difficulties that have affected their performance and who were expected to achieve higher results. We consider the strength of our applicants’ portfolios, as well as their grades - in these cases, a strong portfolio is especially important.
Don't meet the international entry requirements or English language requirements?
You may be able to enter the course through the following entry pathways:
BA (Hons) course
BA (Hons) course with Professional Practice Year
For these courses, we’ll need to see your portfolio for review. We’ll invite you to attend an Applicant Day so you can have your portfolio review in person, meet the course team and learn more about your course. If you would prefer to upload a portfolio digitally, there is also the option to submit it online via your UCA Applicant Portal. Further information will be provided once you have applied.
BA (Hons) course with Integrated Foundation Year
BA (Hons) course with Integrated Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year
These courses don't require a portfolio. If you receive an offer, you’ll be invited to attend an Applicant Day where you can meet the course team and learn more about the course.
BA (Hons) course with Integrated International Foundation Year
BA (Hons) course with Integrated International Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year
These courses don't require a portfolio. If you receive an offer, you’ll be invited to attend an Applicant Day where you can meet the course team and learn more about the course.
Apply Now
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UCAS Institution
C93
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UCAS Code for 3 year/standard
W100
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UCAS Code for course with Professional Practice
W103
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UCAS Code for course with Integrated Foundation Year
W10F
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UCAS Code for course with Integrated International Foundation Year
W10H
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UCAS Code for course with Integrated Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year
W10G
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UCAS Code for course with Integrated International Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year
W10J
Get in touch
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