Critical Reflections explores a number of key interdisciplinary philosophical and cultural concepts which will enable you to analyse, engage with, and reflect upon artworks in your own discipline. It also allows you to establish a common set of concepts which can be shared by students from all LICA subjects.

The structure of the module consists of six three-week blocks as follows:

1. Aesthetics
2. Experience
3. Post-structuralism
4. Marx and Post-Marx
5. Waves of Feminism
6. Thinking with the Earth (new materialism)

Regular plenary lectures make connections across the arts, and are supplemented by seminars/workshops which allow students to work in their subject groups (art, film, theatre, design) on ideas and examples specifically tailored towards these disciplines.

This practical studio module helps you develop practical digital making skills using a range of different materials through experimentation and the development of design responses to particular problems. This module is taught though a series of design exercises including laser cutting, 3D scanning, 3D design and printing, and simple electronics with Arduino. These exercises enable you to develop understanding of how materials and technology inform and influence the development of design artefacts and how construction methods and associated technologies constrain and support the development of artefacts, both physical and digital in nature. This module allows you to consider how a specific design problem may be explored through a particular lens and/or given constraints.

This practical studio module focuses on people as being both the recipients and potential creators of design. You will learn how to use methods and tools that enable you to gain insight into the diversity of user groups (the individual, community, young, old, etc.) that may be both designed for and with. You will develop and apply practical design skills such as concept development, creative problem solving and visualisation. You will develop a deep awareness about the user experience by conducting primary and secondary research that includes gaining empathy with potential users, prototyping, testing and iterating potential design solutions. This module allows you to develop a portfolio piece that demonstrates your ability to conduct robust user research and transform that research into a design solution that can generate positive user experiences as well as help tackle some of the big issues facing society.

This module develops your knowledge and skills in fine art thinking and making. The module prepares and encourages you to direct your own research and to develop a self-reliant and independent approach to studio practice.

You will work in your own dedicated studio space with 24/7 access. You will be supported by specialist tutors who are practicing artists. You will belong to a tutor group led by dedicated tutors with expertise in your area of practice.

To support your creative development you will engage in one-to-one tutorials, group tutorials, technical workshops, and peer-feedback. You will also be encouraged to visit exhibitions and attend our visiting artist programme of talks.

This practical fine art focused module will introduce the skills and sensitivities needed to work outside the studio through interactions with people, places, and technologies. The module introduces you to the way that current fine art practitioners employ a wide range of strategies for such interaction. You will work through practical projects and critical reflection. The course will begin with an art historical grounding for this area of practice. You will then experiment and test out new ways of working in a variety of locations and situations such as: in the rural or urban landscape, in the virtual online world, or in a social space such as a cafe. We will explore a range of processes such as conversation, performance, video, movement and digital interaction.

Throughout the module you will build a range of skills and knowledge of technologies, for example: practical considerations in working ‘off-site’ (responding to and researching a place, collaborating with the public, gaining permission to work in specific sites); digital tools for working with networks and strategies and sensitivities for working with people (ethics, interviews, collaborations etc).

This module introduces you to principles and processes for designing digitally interactive products, services and systems, which are applicable to a wide variety of scenarios. You will have the opportunity to gain a historical and theoretical understanding of designing for interaction, while also being encouraged to develop your practical digital interaction design skills. You will explore how to use paper-based and digital software tools to prototype novel interactions and iteratively evaluate them with potential audiences. The aim is to identify strengths and weaknesses that can help improve both your prototypes and your process. With emphasis on responsible interactions, you will explore how to creatively and critically design interactions that seek to benefit people and the planet.

This practical studio module aims to develop your skills in a range of approaches and software tools for designing new and imaginative 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional visualisations. Through design studios and software labs, you will learn about the ways in which designers creatively use visualisation tools and visual thinking to develop their ideas, explore possible interventions and communicate possible futures to different audiences. You will develop competencies in a range of 2-dimensional approaches that draw on theory and techniques from graphic design and information design and you will build on this foundation to develop competencies in visualising 3-dimensional objects and spaces that draw on architectural and product design principles. The module will encourage you to develop an iterative and disruptive approach to generating visualisations, which actively engage with contemporary design issues and contexts.

This module will enable you to develop a range of graphic skills with the opportunity to approach and represent ideas, issues and experiences in a documentary manner. The module is designed to be relevant to creative practice in Fine Art, Theatre, Film and Design. You will have the opportunity to expand your knowledge and experience of observational and on-site drawing, and develop their learning and experience by engaging in further technical training and by introduction to drawing beyond the studio and 'in the field'. On completion of this module our aim is for you to have significantly developed their knowledge and awareness of drawing and the ability to engage in independent study and develop a substantial personal project for assessment.

The module provides training and experience in visual communication through painting in the broadest sense. Our aim is to provide students with an understanding of painting as an ‘expanded’ and interdisciplinary art form. Weekly workshops will introduce you to the scope of contemporary painting and some of its methods and approaches. You will develop skills through experimentation with a range of traditional and contemporary painting methods, approaches, ideas and equipment. Building on the teaching, you will develop an independent project that extends the language of painting beyond conventional bounds.

This module aims to give students a grounding in “the contemporary” as a key critical concept used in artistic discourses, and provide a number of ways that students can explore and articulate their own contemporaneity. In conversation with cutting edge ideas from art, science, technology and popular culture, the module will enable participants to discuss and identify what they are contemporaries of, how they relate to their own time as artists, citizens and critical writers and what this necessitates in their own practices.

Students will engage in critical discussion of key terms used to define the current moment, such as Anthropocene, Singularity, Post-Truth, and Globalisation, as well as understanding how particular technologies and phenomena, such as distributed and decentralised networks, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and genetic engineering are reshaping the contexts in which the arts are made. These topics are explored through lectures and seminar discussions in which students are encouraged to produce and define their own position and modes for articulating what makes them contemporary.

The module is designed for creative students who wish to use writing and material practice to explore their own relationship to the ecologies, politics, trends, technologies, and aesthetics that typify our experience of the world today.

You will spend this year working in a graduate-level placement role. This is an opportunity to gain experience in an industry or sector that you might be considering working in once you graduate.

Our Careers and Placements Team will support you during your placement with online contact and learning resources.

You will undertake a work-based learning module during your placement year which will enable you to reflect on the value of the placement experience and to consider what impact it has on your future career plans.

This module supports you to develop your own distinctive voice as an artist. Our aim is for you to take increasing responsibility for the creative and conceptual direction of your artwork. You will work in your own dedicated studio space with 24/7 access and be supported by specialist tutors who are practicing artists. You will belong to a tutor group led by dedicated tutors with expertise in your area of practice. Teaching is delivered through one-to-one tutorials, group work and peer feedback. You will also be encouraged to visit exhibitions and attend our visiting artist programme of talks. The module culminates in a final end of year public exhibition.

The size of your studio practice module depends on your degree programme. Singe honours students study 60 or 75 credits, combined honours students must take at least 30 credits.

This practical studio module considers contemporary issues (ecological sustainability, health and wellbeing) or ‘wicked problems’ through the exploration of a specific context (space, place or practice). Typically, this is an intensive design project that lasts for ten weeks. You will develop skills in critically evaluating a particular context to inform the development of appropriate design responses, which you will visualise to a professional standard. You will conduct design research and apply practical design skills that respond to the findings of your contextual analysis. Your portfolio piece will demonstrate your ability to understand not only the opportunities and constraints presented by a particular context but also the ways in which design interventions may affect that context.

This Speculative Design studio helps develop your ability to think critically by considering how emerging technologies might affect our lives in the future. You will develop a world-building approach to consider the potential futures of a chosen emerging technology (e.g. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Robots, Diamond Batteries, Biomimetic Materials, etc.) by creating a range of 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional artefacts that help to domesticate and concretise such a future. In doing this, you will be able to explore and critically evaluate the potential societal implications of particular futures based on current weak signals in the present - and you will learn how to practically represent your vision for the future to an external audience in a manner that is both plausible and engaging. This module therefore results in a portfolio piece that demonstrates critical, imaginative and futures-focused thinking and designing.

This module allows you to undertake a major independent research project on a topic of your choice, presented in the form of a dissertation or a practice-based project and an essay. The module is taught through lectures focused on research skills and one-to-one supervision. Upon completion, you will be able to demonstrate your ability to undertake a major project that includes conducting research, engaging in a sustained critical analysis of relevant texts, building an argument and applying this to practice.

This optional module provides advanced, theoretical perspectives for design interactions, building upon the general framework for designing interactive products and systems, introduced in the second year Design Interactions module. You will extend your knowledge and understanding of the theory, research and practice of design interactions into specialised areas, which may include human-computer, human-human, human-place and human-system interactions. Advanced Design Interactions allows you to consider the role that design plays in these different types of interactions, and introduces you to specific methods or ways that you might research design interactions that are interesting to you. This module draws directly from the research expertise of staff in ImaginationLancaster, our globally recognised design research lab, so that you are exposed to cutting-edge concepts in these fields. As such, Advanced Design Interactions provides you with an understanding of some of the most up-to-date issues and challenges facing those who design interactions today. The module also gives you the opportunity to design a research project or interaction, which further gives you some skills that will be helpful if you wish to pursue design research as a graduate.

This module looks at the many ways in which artists engage with writing, texts, language, and books and to understand art writing's relation to and difference from art criticism, including art writing as art criticism and when art criticism becomes art. It traces the relation between the visual and the literary in poetry, and examines the deconstruction of language, writing and the book and 'conceptual writing'. There will be a focus on artists who use writing and language in the gallery including Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Ed Ruscha, Lawrence Wiener, John Latham, and Xu Bing, and the use of text, writing and language in computer and digital art, from early experiments in algorithmic mark-making to online artworks. Other areas to be studied include autofiction, fictioning and Glitch Poetics. The module also examines the future of art and writing, especially in the light of AI writing systems such as GPT-3.

The module has two aims. Firstly, it aims to explore methods of improvising or choreographing movement from the practice and study of drawing, and, reciprocally, approaches to drawing that emerge from the experience of movement and the analysis of motion. This is assessed through either a staff-supervised, student-led group choreographic project with documentation or, alternatively, a portfolio of drawings presented at the end of the module. Secondly, the module examines twentieth and twenty-first century works in which choreographers have collaborated with visual artists. This part of the module is assessed through an essay. Teaching is through lecture, seminar and practical compositional exercises in movement and drawing.

This module provides an opportunity for students to develop an understanding of the ways in which creative practitioners produce and deliver their work. It will provide an overview of the challenges faced by freelance practitioners, producers and small cultural companies within the creative industries. You will also develop a working understanding of the key management and enterprise skills involved in delivering creative projects. Working in groups you will put your learning into practice through the delivery of your own live creative arts project. This will enable you to understand the skills, knowledge, attributes and behaviours relevant for employment in the arts and creative industries.

This module allows you to work in a team and undertake a practical design consultancy project with a real-world client. You will learn what Design Consultancy is and how to become a design consultant. Throughout this project, you will work closely with your client, teammates and tutors to address some of the challenges your client is facing by designing a product or service based on robust design research. Projects vary in nature since they respond to the client's needs but may take the form of a design audit, a new product development, design guidelines, brand positioning/strategy or UX research. Your project will be defined through a negotiation between you and your client that responds to the client's needs and aligns with your team's abilities. During your design consultancy project, you will develop skills in problem definition, data collection and analysis, design conceptualisation, visualisation or making, presentation and report writing. You will also gain professional experience that can help you to develop your employability skills. The Design Consultancy module develops your ability to manage the realities and complexities of design research problems whilst developing your teamwork skills and building your confidence in working directly with clients.

The module will be taught through workshops which examine the methods, process and approaches in drawing that are at the cutting edge of contemporary fine art drawing practice and at the boundaries of other disciplines. The workshops provide knowledge, skills, and opportunities to test and try approaches. This learning will be developed through independently researched work. This independent work is documented in a sketchbook and extended at the end of the syllabus to provide a final major project.

This module explores the complex relationship between innovation and design with a particular emphasis on the need for successful design to engage with networks of innovation that include a broad range of stakeholders. You will develop your understanding of innovation as a discipline, and identify and evaluate some of the different modes of innovation. This module also allows you to explore practically the relationship between innovation and design and develop design concepts that employ ‘innovation’ thinking.