This module gives you the space to define and develop a major strand of your artistic practice. You'll identify, propose, and negotiate a self-directed project that will grow and evolve as you move through the course – shaped closely by your own methods, motivations, and artistic voice. You'll be supported to deepen the cultural and critical concerns that drive your practice, and we'll encourage you to challenge familiar ways of making, discussing, and experiencing art. Through a mix of group and one-to-one tutorials, you'll question your approach, test ideas, and uncover new practical and conceptual directions. Peer support plays a central role here. Group sessions are student-led, opening up new areas of collective enquiry and giving you space to share emerging insights with one another. Along the way, you'll engage with contemporary debates, refine your processes, and develop the technical and methodological skills you need to realise your proposed work to a professional standard. You'll also practise articulating your ideas – verbally, in writing, or through audio-visual formats – tailoring your communication to a range of audiences. Opportunities to display and disseminate your work, both physically and online, will give you the chance to experiment with how your art enters public and professional spaces. As the module unfolds, you'll learn how to navigate and make the most of our specialist spaces and how to work confidently in a shared studio environment. These range from printmaking and our 3D workshop to photography and digital print facilities. Scheduled visits will introduce you to key cultural institutions across the city, helping you to build familiarity with the networks that shape and sustain local artistic practice.
This module supports the ongoing development of your practice through the sustained advancement of your artwork. You'll begin to apply a heightened level of critical scrutiny to what you make. This ensures you'll cultivate a deeper self-awareness and broadens your understanding of the wider social, intellectual, professional, and commercial contexts in which contemporary art operates. Through a combination of group and individual tutorials, you'll examine and critically evaluate your own practice. Ongoing reflection and dialogue will help you extend your approaches to making, researching, articulating, and displaying your work. As your confidence grows, your thinking will move beyond your immediate circle of tutors and peers to consider how your work resonates within broader professional contexts. Using platforms such as artist websites, social media, or other forms of publicity, you'll experiment with ways of positioning yourself publicly as an artist. You'll refine the critical ideas that underpin your practice and situate your work with confidence within global theoretical and professional conversations. As the module progresses, you'll take increased ownership of your learning. Co-created seminar activities allow you to set the agenda for studio discussions, drawing directly from the interests and issues emerging within your own practice. You'll have opportunities to display and disseminate your work, both individually and collectively, testing different ways of presenting your practice in broader public and professional contexts. Finally, you'll produce professional-standard documentation of your displays or presentations, alongside high-quality promotional materials that support your emerging profile as a practising artist.
Prepare for the final dissemination of your expanded art practice, positioning your work and artistic identity within outward-facing professional contexts. You'll demonstrate high levels of independence and autonomy, consolidating a robust and sustainable practice while showing professional proficiency in making, articulating, and displaying your work. Individual tutorials provide a framework to develop and communicate an expanded critical understanding of your practice. Through ongoing testing, presentation, display, and promotional or commercial activity, you'll explore the most effective means to disseminate your work. Group tutorials focus on the audiences for your artwork, helping you critically evaluate the effectiveness of models drawn from the wider professional art world. You'll work closely on proposals for your final display and presentation, considering the forms these can take and how effectively they communicate your ideas. As the module progresses, you'll be encouraged to self-organise with your peers in producing promotional materials relating to your final public event. This could be printed or online, and will develop key professional skills in collaboration, creating a shared group identity that also reflects your individual practice. At the end of the module, you'll produce a set of professional-standard materials. These may include high-quality documentation of your work/extended practice, articulations of your critical ideas, and other promotional materials such as a website, PDF portfolio, or other digital/printed matter. To celebrate your achievement on the course, you'll present your work at a public event, culminating in the Degree Show.