ObjectivesThe MA Fine Arts degree programme will enable you to develop and locate your practice in relation to current bodies of knowledge and practice in the fine arts. You will build a strong and increasingly confident practice through awareness and interaction with current contexts of professional practice and research. There will be opportunities to consider and engage with a diverse range of disciplines, methodologies and practices - including collaborative practice - both within and beyond current fine arts practice. As part of York St John University's Creative Practice hub, this MA programme shares some of its modules with a companion MA award in Performance. Whilst your focus will be on Fine Arts, there will also be opportunities for exciting cross-disciplinary study across these two programmes. The programme will provide you with the opportunity to develop your creative practice and thinking and provide you with a platform from which to disseminate your work. We seek capable, questioning and dedicated practitioners from a diversity of fine arts practices whether in the UK, Europe or beyond to join us in York and make the most of the opportunities our programme offers.
Entry requirementsIn order to apply for a place on the MA programme, you must normally have one of the following: -An honours degree at 2:2 or above in a related subject whether as a single honours specialism or in a combined or joint honours pairing with another subject. -Experience of working in a professional arts environment or extensive experience of arts practice. Academic tutors will consider such applications on an individual basis. If you do not meet the above criteria, you may be considered for registration on the taught modules. You may then be able to progress to Masters level if you successfully complete the taught modules. If you are an international student, you will need to demonstrate that you have equivalent experience/qualifications as above. If your first language is not English, you must show evidence of English Language competence at IELTS level 6.0 (in all areas of the test) or equivalent.
Academic titleMA/PgDip/PgCert Fine Arts
Course descriptionThe curriculum, which also supports awards at Postgraduate Certificate and Postgraduate Diploma levels, is uniquely designed and focused on developing artists' abilities and capacities for professional, vocational and academic innovation. We emphasise relationships between composition, reflection, practice and dissemination across a dynamic breadth of fine arts disciplines and discourses. Teaching, learning and research on the programme will enable discovery of the variety of ways in which composition, creation and dissemination in fine arts practice has evolved into its present media and forms.
This degree enables students who already have some experience of fine arts practice to expand their artistic horizons, develop their reflective abilities and expand their portfolio as thinking practitioners.
You will follow two strands of modules through the programme:
Practice, Reflection, Dissemination
This strand, consisting of two 40-credit modules, is designed to enhance your abilities as a self-reflective practitioner. It recognises the deep interrelationship between reflection, documentation, dissemination and production, in terms of the development of an artist's work and practice in terms of its function and operation within critical and public domains. You will be introduced to the variety of ways in which composition, creation, dissemination in the production of fine arts practice has evolved into its present media and forms. This will be accompanied by investigation into the potential of strategies concerning documentation as useful modes of reflection and realisation. This module strand will be primarily
focused around your own practice, contextualised by examination of various key practitioners, modes or theories.
Creativity & Knowledge
This strand, consisting of two 20-credit modules, is designed to deepen and broaden your understanding of the interrelationship between arts practice, knowledge and research. It will consist of investigation into concepts of practice-based research in the arts and the examination of the implications of the widening of traditional concepts of research that such developments entail. The modules will also interrogate, through workshop-based practice, the possibilities for the generation and communication of knowledge in and through practice. The modules will draw on both your own practice, being undertaken in the Reflective Practice strand, and upon the work of key practitioners and theorists of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Masters Independent Project
Together these taught elements lead MA candidates into the final Independent Project module, where you will undertake an extended period of supervised practice-based research which is expected to draw together and implement the resources provided earlier in the programme.
MA programme enrollment:
Full-time: Over one year
Part-time: Up to five years' duration
The programme begins in September each year. The taught modules will normally consist of weekly sessions scheduled on one day a week, with full-time candidates attending the whole day, part-time students for half the day. There may also be the occasional intensive weekend session.