Art BA (Hons) (Top-up) - University Centre Leeds

BA (Hons) Art (Top-Up)

See your future in full colour with the BA (Hons) Art Top-Up Degree. Delivered from studio space in the creative quarter of Leeds city centre, it offers a supportive and creative environment to explore and develop your artistic style. It combines practical, academic and industry practices to help you find and establish your place in this thriving sector. Offering a robust programme that is reflective of creative and cultural industries, this course will support you on your chosen trajectory.

There’s never been a more exciting time to develop your artistic flair - the creative industries are booming, with previous growth in the industry up by 7.4% (five times the growth across the UK economy as a whole). The arts and culture industries contribute around £10.5 billion to the UK economy (House of Commons, 2019) and in 2020 the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the HM Treasury announced funding of £1.57 billion for cultural, arts and heritage institutions. This makes pursuing a career in the creative arts the perfect way to become a successful practitioner.

What you learn

You will study 120 credits and the modules may include:

Year 1 (Level 6)

Ideas and Concepts (20 credits)
The aim of this module is to engage you in your creative output, exploring and challenging various ideas and concepts through practical investigation.

Major Creative Project (40 credits)

As the name suggests, this module enables you to produce and exhibit a body of creative work.

Collaboration Project (20 credits)

Delve into the exploration of collaborative practice. Within the module you will develop a professional external project working across specialisms of your choice.

Contextualising Practice (30 credits)

You will explore and develop an area of academic research related to your creative practice, culminating in a written dissertation.

Portfolio Review (10 credits)

This module gives you the opportunity to present your work through interview to external industry professionals.

Benefits/ Skills you will develop

This programme’s range of practical academic and industry-focused modules allows you to experience the reality of being an artist through real industry opportunities. Through practical and written research, alongside collaborative projects, you will be given the opportunity to showcase many skills. A variety of assessments will also equip you with the confidence to put these professional skills into practice.

Other benefits include:

Study a range of practical, academic and industry-focused modules
Explore and develop a range of specialist skills relevant to creative practice
Build your confidence through assessments that mirror real industry environments
Experience working within studio environments
Delve into contemporary art and design practices
Engage with local creative businesses, artists, collectives and entrepreneurs
Create a professional portfolio of work
Build a strong network of contacts
Organise and carry out a live external collaborative project with other students

Through modules like Collaboration Project, where students organise and carry out a live external collaborative project, our graduates understand the mechanics of their creative sector and have the creative and transferable skills to navigate and operate within it.

Assessment

Our assessments draw on a range of skills to reflect the activities typical of a practising artist in the industry.

Ideas and research are assessed through a presentation as well as written and practical outcomes. Reflection and evaluation are important in self-directed learning, feature in the collaboration module and inform the Portfolio Review.

Creative practice and practical outcomes are the chief component of assessment on the BA (Hons) Art course. The Major Project and Ideas and Concepts both require practical bodies of work that demand creative stamina.

There is an expectation of presenting the creative work through exhibition opportunities both during the course and at its culmination; as well as having the chance to present work in an interview scenario to external professionals.

Assessment methods may include:

Portfolio
Log
Project
Interview
Research proposal presentation
Dissertation
Exhibition

Entry requirements

A typical offer is likely to be pass at Foundation Degree or a Merit profile in a relevant HND, together with a number of GCSE grades at C or above including English.

All students are to present a portfolio of artwork and supporting academic text which is disclosed during an interview or correspondence for distance applicants.

International qualifications will be assessed against these criteria.

Speakers of other languages need to have an IELTS score of at least 6.0 or a recognised level 2 English qualification.

All students must be able to demonstrate either by qualifications or testing that they have the required literacy skills to complete the course.

Offers are made subject to reference

What's next

The course prepares you for a range of roles in a variety of areas, dependent on your own areas of interest and career aspirations. It allows the development of a strong body of contemporary work which may lead to work as a practising artist or further study, as well as many freelance or community projects and directives.

You may wish to follow a career in arts administration or curating, or go on to explore further areas of research following your dissertation.

Students may wish to progress internally on to the MA Creative Practice or PGCE course, or externally on to other creative MA programmes or teaching qualifications.

Job roles could include: