Fine Art MA

Course structure

The course runs for 12 months full-time and 24 months part-time.

Regular seminars, tutorials and crits take place each Tuesday and Wednesday. Most students are part-time and attend each Tuesday in Year 1 and each Wednesday (plus Tuesday evening) in Year 2. Full-time students attend group activities on both of these days and spend the rest of the week either researching or working in our shared studios.

Part-time students research and make work in their own studios outside the university and use university facilities (such as workshops or libraries) for practical and presentation purposes. All students have access to the Postgraduate Project Space to install and exhibit work.

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Making sure that what you learn with us is relevant, up to date and what employers are looking for is our priority, so courses are reviewed and enhanced on an ongoing basis. When you have applied to us, you’ll be told about any new developments through Student View.

Areas of study

The course is split into two main sections. Both involve elements of theory and practice – together with portfolio and visual documentation preparation – and culminate in assessed exhibitions.

Section 1

The first section (one year part-time or six months full-time) concentrates on the identification and development of your chosen mode of practice, with a degree of re-evaluation and experimentation being the norm.

You will display and discuss your work within a group to form a social and professional bond with your fellow students. You will also attend lectures and seminars given by the regular staff team and visiting guest speakers.

Section 2

The second section prepares you for the final assessment exhibition. This involves regular crits and group meetings. You will present a seminar linked to your work, develop your professional practice and networking skills, and receive tutorials on the extended essay that you write during the summer vacation.

Modules

• Reconfiguring Practice: Proposal and Presentation
• Research and Practice Methods: Research Journal and Research Portfolio 
• Research and Practice Methods: Presentation
• Consolidating Practice: Exhibition and Visual Documentation
• Critical Review Essay
• Fine Art Mentoring (option module)

Student views

“Tutorials were very good, helpful and to the point.”

“It has been interesting to have a varied response to work from different tutors, advisers and mentors.”

“I attended video editing and woodwork inductions – both of which were clear, thorough and well led. The Media Centre is particularly fantastic.”

“The course has helped me to reconfigure my practice and has enabled me to get to the next level – putting my work into a theoretical framework has been a valuable tool.”

Meet the team

Amy Cunningham

Amy Cunningham is a multidisciplinary artist, lecturer and researcher, who uses the singing voice, video, materials and drawing to explore the texture, patterns and glitches in technologies and environments. Addressing both the obsolete and the futuristic, her artworks have included a fictional computer game in a real eighteenth century garden, opera as a video installation and an Internet broadcast as a song cycle.

Currently she is developing a series of work which explores the relationships between the architecture of leisure, wildlife and industry within coastal environments.

Read more about Amy Cunningham and visit Amy's Vimeo site.

Other teaching staff include Sean Dower, Alex Pollard and Louisa Buck.

International requirements and visas

We can help you meet our English language or academic entry requirements.

Visas and immigration advice

Portfolio

We strongly advise you to upload your images to an image-sharing website where tags can be used as specific search criteria to help us locate your images quickly. If you wish to host your images on your own website, the URL must be clearly marked on your application.

Each image should be clearly marked with the following information.

• Description: Please include the title of the work and the date it was completed (time‐based work can be presented as screenshots/stills)
• Optional information: A brief description of your work related to each still image (max 20 words per image)

Image specification and format
All images must be in JPEG format: flattened, optimised for web/screen viewing and 72ppi (pixels per inch), with maximum dimensions of 500 pixels on the longest side. Adobe Photoshop is the ideal programme to use for this.

Find out more about how to create and submit your portfolio.

Course fees

Scholarships, bursaries and loans

We offer a range of scholarships for postgraduate students. Bursaries and loans may also be available to you.

Find out more about postgraduate fees and funding.

What's included

You may have to pay additional costs during your studies. The cost of optional activities is not included in your tuition fee and you will need to meet this cost in addition to your fees. A summary of the costs that you may be expected to pay, and what is included, whilst studying a course in the School of Art are listed here.

• For most courses you will need to budget for the cost of specialist materials, equipment and printing and are likely to spend between £50–£300 per year.
• Costs in your final year of study are very likely to be higher than in earlier years as you bring together your final body of work and portfolio, and you may need to budget between £200 and £1,000.
• For some courses you may also need to budget up to £100 for specialist personal protective clothing which, with care, will last for the whole of your course and beyond.
• For most courses you will have the opportunity to attend field trips and off-site visits, for example to galleries, exhibitions and studios both in the UK and overseas. These are optional and are not required to pass your course. The amount spent would be based on location and number of trips taken, and typically range between £100 and £700 across the duration of your course.
• You will have access to computers and necessary software at City campus and at other locations across the university. However, many students choose to buy their own hardware – usually a laptop, software and accessories. The amount spent will depend on your individual choices but this expenditure is not essential to pass any of our courses.
• Course books and a wide range of magazines and journals are available in the university libraries. You do not need to have your own copies, but if you wish to, you should budget up to £200 over your course to buy them.
• For courses in which there is an optional placement year, you will need to budget for living costs (rent, food, travel etc) in that city/country, as if you were on site at the university.

You can chat with our enquiries team through the Stay in touch panel at the end of this page if you require further information. Or check our finance pages for advice about funding and scholarships, as well as more information about fees and advice on international and island fee-paying status.

Info

The fees listed here are for full-time courses beginning in the academic year 2021–22.

Further tuition fees are payable for each subsequent year of study and are subject to an annual increase of no more than 5% or RPI (whichever is the greater). The annual increase for UK students, who are subject to regulated fees, will increase no more than the statutory maximum fee.

You can find out more about our fees in the university's student contract and tuition fee policy (pdf).

The tuition fee you have to pay depends on a number of factors including the kind of course you take, and whether you study full-time or part-time. If you are studying part-time you will normally be charged on a pro rata basis depending on the number of modules you take.

Campus where this course is taught

Accommodation

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