Course description
Content
Illustration in the 21st Century demands strong voices: entrepreneurial image-makers who can tell their own stories. Camberwell has a long tradition of imaginative illustrative art, and the MA builds on this strength. The course focuses on originality and authorship, aiming to encourage visual thinking, research skills and storytelling ability, while developing your entrepreneurial qualities, communication and professional skills. The teaching team is made up of cutting-edge practitioners and educators, encouraging passion, commitment, and the ability to draw on personal experience to challenge conventional illustration.
Course Highlights
Trips to museums and galleries around London are a vital part of the course. There are visits to the Association of Illustrators and in the Spring some students visit Italy for the Bologna Book Fair.
MA Illustration Staff
Professor of Illustration Janet Wooley leads the course. Janet is an award-winning illustrator and has worked for numerous publications worldwide. Annabelle Hartman is a children’s book author and illustrator who works in the publishing, editorial, advertising and internet areas. Recent projects include As Big as a Mountain which she wrote and illustrated for Pavilion Books.
The team also includes illustrator and educator Anne Howeson, cartoonist and publisher Marc Baines (Kingly Books) and animator Stephen Cavalier, recent projects Monkey Dust BBC2 and 3, and work for Sony Playstation, Sky TV and Channel 4.
The critic and curator Paul Tebbs, whose writing regularly appears in Sourse, Afterimage and Art Review leads the Postgraduate Professional Development unit.
In 2003, the quality of postgraduate learning at Camberwell was officially recognised by the Quality Assurance Agency, the higher education standards authority. The spirit of challenge engendered by the college’s postgraduate community and its capacity to incorporate both traditional and new technologies won special praise. The QAA found our teaching to be current, responsive to students’ needs and informed by staff research and professional practice.
Structure
A series of seminars, workshop inductions, research time and field trips, will familiarise you with the College environment, the city of London, and the work of fellow students and staff. You will begin to develop your proposal, an ambitious and engaging project to sustain you throughout the course. We offer you time to implement both critical and practical skills. The development of your personal project is also a time in which to consider how your practice continues and the directions you may choose to take. Many students choose to participate in external ventures, competitions or exhibitions and form their own discussion groups. During the final development and completion of your personal programme attention is given to personal focus, artistic direction and application. The final work is presented in the form of a public exhibition. Studies are complemented by lectures, seminars and workshops designed to help you develop wider contextual understanding, research skills and awareness of professional issues. MA Illustration is part of the postgraduate community at Camberwell and there are a number of ways in which the MA courses interact, most notably through research skills and career development. There is also a shared lecture programme, which draws upon the richness of research within the College and the University.
Postgraduate Professional Development Programme
Your MA at Camberwell includes the chance to improve your research and career development skills. You’ll have access to workshops in IT skills, individual and group tutorials for discussions on professional issues, and tutor-led seminars.
Career Prospects
The range of creative destinations is wide and former students have had a number of successes. Recent graduates have gone onto work for Rave Magazine in Bombay and Samsung Advertising in Europe.
Entry Requirements
-A good honours degree in a related subject
-Portfolio and/or slides of supporting work
-International students must show proof of IELTS level 6.5 or above in English on enrolment
-Project Proposal
Project Proposal
Application for MA courses is by proposal. You’ll need to include with your application form a short proposal outlining your project, the research question it will address, its context, your methodology and the resources you would like to draw upon. Your project will need to be sustained to completion by a combination of independent study and tutorial advice. Studies are complemented by lectures, seminars and workshops designed to help you develop wider contextual understanding, research skills and awareness of professional issues
The Project Proposal should outline:
-Research Question - What are you proposing to discover or explore?
-Context - What work, both theoretical and practical, relates to your project?
-Methodology - What methods will you employ to research your project? RResources - What equipment, facilities and expertise will you require to carry out your research?
