-Fine-Art,-UCA-Farnham_152-0618-P_3.jpg "Student work from BA (Hons) Fine Art Farnham")
Fine Art BA (Hons)
Farnham
Course overview
On our BA (Hons) Fine Art degree course at UCA Farnham, you’ll become an artist – but you will also become so much more, with a wealth of adaptable skills to take with you into the career of your choice.
Our course reflects the dynamism and attitude of contemporary art and is focused on experimentation, play and intellectual enquiry, which can be mediated through a range of final outcomes.
Throughout the course, there are thematic core units which include critically informed research-led lectures, a range of practical workshops and introductory critical and creative tasks.
And because Fine Art sits within an interdisciplinary programme alongside Photography and Digital Art degrees, you’ll have the opportunity to work across disciplines through elective units and across-course collaborations and learning opportunities. This will give you the chance to build your own learning programme around your research interests.
You also 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: W101
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: W10K
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: W10M
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: W104
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: W10L
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 International Integrated Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year: W10N
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 primary week at the beginning of the course will be used to prepare you for university learning. Many of the workshops on offer will be programme wide and will be enhanced with subject specific learning. You will be introduced to a range of skills workshops designed to audit and refresh your existing skills in order to prepare you for the commencement of the course learning.
The Real
This is a programme-wide unit, run in course-specific groups, giving you with the opportunity to investigate core subject-specific themes and ideas interpreted through the lens of ‘the real’. You’ll explore situations or communicate ideas about the social, political, and economic circumstances that shape human experience.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity
You’ll be able to demonstrate an awareness of how your own social identity (such as, gender, race/ethnicity, class, disability, sexual orientation, and religion) informs how you navigate creative practices.
Elective - Digital Storytelling
This is an interdisciplinary skills-based elective unit open to Photography and Fine Art students. You will be introduced to a range of creative and technical workshops to develop core skills in film language, cinematography, sound recording and post-production techniques.
Elective - Photography
This is an interdisciplinary skills-based elective unit open to Fine Art and Digital Arts students and introduces you to multiple photography skills to build and enhance your existing skill set.
Opportunity
During this opportunity week you will receive one personal tutorial that feeds back on the previous terms work. There will also be a number of refresher workshops designed to recap on any skills.
The Body
You’ll be introduced to a range of genres, styles, and critical and methodological approaches which are related to or centred on the body and our relationship to the body. This is a good opportunity to improve your research skills and gain a deeper understanding of your own creative practice.
Professional Identities
This employment-focused programme-specific unit offers you the opportunity to identify relevant professional contexts and navigate your relationship with these contexts.
Learning Enhancement
In this unit, you’ll have the opportunity to undertake enhanced subject-specific workshops and training to enrich your existing skill set.
Launch
You’ll prepare for the year ahead with a range of refresher skills workshops designed to recap on previous learning, together with preparation work for the forthcoming core unit Spatial Practices.
Spatial Practices
You’ll explore spatial practices and their relationship to ideologies and systems of power, looking at the ways in which fine art practices document, intersect with, and subvert traditional approaches to space and place.
The Conscious Practitioner
You’ll engage with subject specific concepts of inclusion, exclusion, and diversity, and interrogate how belief systems, values, and attitudes influence approaches to creative practices.
Conceptual interdisciplinary elective
This research-informed, conceptually driven interdisciplinary elective unit is for Fine Art, Digital Arts, and Photography students, to meet your own bespoke learning journey.
Opportunity
During this opportunity week you will receive one personal tutorial that feeds back on the previous terms work and take part in workshops designed to recap on any skills that was omitted during term 1. You’ll also prepare for the forthcoming core unit Expanded Practices.
Expanded practices
You’ll explore fine art as an expanded field of creative practice, and how it can open out across multiple mediums and engages with the world. We want you to examine imaginative possibilities that sit between meaning and materiality using a range of approaches and processes.
Professional development
You’ll build on the work you did in Year 1 on your professional outlook, develop the necessary skills to confidently engage with relevant professional contexts, and putt together a professional experience plan.
Professional experience
Following on from the previous unit, you’ll get the opportunity to engage with external-facing professional contexts as part of your journey from student to graduate. This will enable you to understand how your practice sits within a range of professional contexts outside of an educational environment.
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
Your final Launch Week is a space in which you can reflect on your own independent learning journey. You will be encouraged to rework an existing piece of work to produce a new outcome and be guided through how to draft a viable proposal for the next unit.
Final Major Project - development
You’ll begin developing work for your final major project, identifying and experimenting with a range of relevant creative and technical methodological approaches in a way that reflects your own research interests.
Critical contexts
Drawing from interdisciplinary approaches to gathering research, you’ll be able to synthesise and contextualise your research interests within relevant critical contexts through either the written or spoken word.
Opportunity
During this opportunity week you will receive a personal tutorial that feeds back on the previous terms work, and work independently to refine your final major project..
Final Major Project: Realisation
In this two-component unit you’ll complete your final major project with a major body of work that reflects your individual practice, and also complete your independent professional exit plan, as part of your transition to either a professional or postgraduate environment.
This course offers the opportunity to study abroad for part of your second year. To find out more about studying abroad as part of your course please see the Study Abroad section:
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 for 2021 entry. The details for 2022 entry will be available here in due course.
Further information
For more detailed infomation 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-Farnham.jpg "Jennie Murton, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Farnham")
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Farnham_2.jpeg "Abigail Jones, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Farnham")
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Farnham-2.jpg "Lucy Winnicott, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Farnham")
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Farnham.jpg "Joy Millett, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Farnham")
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Farnham.jpg "Elizabeth Parker, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Farnham")
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Farnham.jpg "Alessandra-Breviario, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Farnham")
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Farnham-2.jpg "Jaz Bartlett, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Farnham")
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Farnham.jpg "Anna Stevens, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Farnham")
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Farnham.jpg "Julia Da Costa, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Farnham")
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Farnham.jpg "BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Farnham")
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Farnham_152-0618-P_2.jpg "Student work from BA (Hons) Fine Art Farnham")
-Fine-Art,-UCA-Farnham.jpg "Hubbah Choudhury, BA (Hons) Fine Art, UCA Farnham")
Facilities
Extensive studio spaces and access to work shop for painting, sculpture, wood and plaster and mould making; campus print studios with relief and block printing, plate or stone lithography, intaglio, letterpress, photopolymer plate printing and screen-printing; metals workshop with blacksmithing area and forge for large scale projects and also lathes, mills and bandsaw; modern library with a wealth of books, journals, special collections and online resources.
Fine Art studios, UCA Farnham
Print studios, UCA Farnham
Sculpture workshop, UCA Farnham
Materials workshop, UCA Farnham
Course connections
As a long-established and well connected course, Fine Art at our Farnham campus has strong industry links with highly regarded names in the art world, including:
- The Institute of Contemporary Art
- Jerwood Space
- Zeitgeist Art Platform
- Henry Moore Institute
- Blythe Gallery (Imperial College)
- Resonance FM
- Leeds and Cass Sculpture Foundation.
Students have exhibited at galleries such as 242 Gallery, 10 Gales, Blyth Gallery at Imperial College London, Bargehouse in South Bank and so on. They've exhibited locally at The Lightbox in Woking, James Hockey Gallery and Alice Holt Forest in Farnham and Watts Gallery in Guildford. They've also been selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries, the Jerwood Drawing Prize and the Threadneedle Prize, amongst other competitions.
Our alumni have won the Jerwood Drawing Prize, John Walker Painting Prize and Neo Art Print Prize, and recent graduates have gone on to become practicing:
- Artists
- Curators
- Creative project managers
- Special effects prop makers
- Set designers
- Teachers
- Writers
- Production assistants
- Technicians
- Arts administrators
- Entrepreneurs
- Gallery owners
- Illustrators
- Art historians.
The adaptability instilled in our students has translated into exciting and diverse opportunities for many of our graduates, such as creating concert projections for Madonna, collaborations with Sadler’s Wells and the highly specialist casting of human organs for medical research.
You may also like to consider further study at postgraduate level.
Visit our 2021 grad show site to see the incredible work created by our graduating students
Visit the 2021 GradshowOur Staff
"I loved that, through the work on the course, I could participate in different areas of exhibition-making, fundraising events, work placements opportunities, internships, workshops and more."
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.
To view the equivalent entry requirements for your country please select it in the list below.
Don't meet the international entry requirements or English language requirements?
You may be able to enter the course through the following entry courses:
Pre-sessional English courses in the UK or China
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
W101
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UCAS Code for course with Professional Practice
W104
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UCAS Code for course with Integrated Foundation Year
W10K
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UCAS Code for course with Integrated International Foundation Year
W10M
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UCAS Code for course with Integrated Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year
W10L
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UCAS Code for course with Integrated International Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year
W10N
Get in touch
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