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 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 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.

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 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 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.

Following the same course structure as our Advanced Studio Practice module, this module allows you to dedicate the maximum time possible (75 credits) to developing your practical skills in the studio.

A final year module, students must take the module in Studio Practice in year 2, to be able to choose this module in their final year.

The module is designed to enable students to who are committed to developing their distinctive voice as an artist, through extended studio practice, to support their ambition to work as an artist, or go on to pursue postgraduate study in Fine Art.

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.