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Student work by Kimberley Gaskin. Dolls made from baked goods and fruits

Fine Art BA (Hons)

Want to explore your creativity, ideas, and instincts in a vibrant community of artists, thinkers and makers? And shape the future of contemporary art?

Key information

How to Apply
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BA (Hons) Fine Art emphasises the importance of ‘thinking through making’ to support life-long professional development. You’ll enhance your critical thinking, collaboration, independence and creativity skills in an ethical, diverse and sustainable context. Through this approach, you’ll develop skills and knowledge relevant to a broad range of contemporary applications.

You will shape your distinctive career path as an artist and join generations of graduates who have achieved national and international success.  Whatever your choice of medium, we will encourage and support you in developing your practice and a substantial portfolio. You’ll have access to the tools you need to make and create, including Printmaking facilities, 3D studios and a foundry, our historic Munnings Life Drawing Studio, Painting studios and Augmented and Virtual Reality.

Your creative development will include gaining valuable professional skills related to promoting and selling your work, curation, contracts, costing and networking. Opportunities will emerge through the course team’s close links with regional and national galleries like Tate Modern, Wysing Arts Centre, Firstsite, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts and OUTPOST.

Why study with us

  • Learn a variety of fine art approaches paired with a historical and theoretical foundation to encourage debate and reimagine the future of fine art practice.
  • Gain key advanced techniques from drawing to digital media and technical knowledge through comprehensive workshops, developing your creative practice through experimentation, risk taking and playfulness.
  • Work in our incredible studio space and workshops and explore different media techniques and materials.
  • Learn how to contextualise your work and think practically about the audience while exploring collaborative, collective and socially engaged approaches.
  • Develop business skills such as sales and promotion, growing your audience, curation, contracts, costing jobs and presenting your outcomes.
  • Through our links with regional, national and international organisations, gain opportunities to engage in collaborative projects, including with other courses.

Course details

Integrated Foundation Year (optional)

Our Integrated Foundation Year is designed to equip students with the necessary skills, knowledge and confidence to thrive in their chosen degree subject. The course provides a comprehensive introduction to various disciplines, blending critical thinking and creative problem-solving with practical hands-on experience. This year serves as a bridge to undergraduate studies, allowing students to explore their interests within a supportive and inspiring environment, while familiarising themselves with the campus, workshops, and tutors.

Find out more about our Integrated Foundation Year.

Year 1

Core Units

In your first unit, you will focus on developing your skills across all fine art disciplines, with practical work playing an important role in informing art theory and critical and historical perspectives. The unit helps you to acclimatise to Higher Education and to the University through projects and workshops, using different resources of the University campus. You will explore inspiration and ideas, identify your practice interests, and develop new working methods. You will be encouraged to be open to new and innovative ways of working through experimentation, practice and text-based research. Group tutorials will enable you to review work in progress, discuss ideas, form strategies for moving forward with your practice, and identify interests and concerns that will underpin your practice as an artist.

40 credits

In this unit, you will explore and experiment with techniques, materials, media, idea generation, and critical evaluation. You will craft a statement of intent to determine the theme(s) and direction of your practice and contextual research. From this starting point, you will work independently in the studios and project spaces to explore, test and critique your work. Skills-based workshops will also encourage experimental approaches to making. Throughout the unit, you will work on projects to challenge your perception of fine art, expand the range of your knowledge, and, in some cases, spark your imagination when you feel the creative block. Cross-university events will allow you to work in disciplines other than Fine Art alongside peers from other courses.

80 credits

Core Projects

The first week of each academic year is called Wayfinding week. It’s an opportunity get your bearings, establish new connections and, after your first year at Norwich, re-establish old ones. Your course team will talk you through the year ahead and explain the expectations for the year. We’ll help you navigate new encounters and identify areas to focus on as you progress through your course.

An important element of Wayfinding Week is taking part in our annual ‘Make it Manifest(o)’ project. Your course team will introduce the project in which we’ll ask you to consider your hopes and vision of the year ahead at Norwich and work with students in other year groups to bring your ideas to life. The project culminates in a celebratory display of work across the campus.  The project will help you to develop your critical creativity through different approaches, concepts, and mediums. You’ll encounter diverse perspectives and build friendships and networks within our university community.

Interchange weeks are opportunities to step away from your disciplinary studies and engage in projects, workshops, visits and talks that extend your knowledge and understanding of the world. Whether you learn a new skill or take part in a global challenge project with students from other courses, you will come away with new insights to take back to your course. Interchange is part of the schedule for all Norwich students with sessions held across and beyond the campus led by university staff, visiting lecturers and students.

Year 2

Core Units

In this unit, you will continue to develop your own voice and find ways of working based upon themes and contexts of your choice, while developing knowledge of the way that your work fits into different global contexts. You will also choose from a variety of specialist workshops to enhance your skills and identify the key themes you wish to explore throughout the unit. As the year progresses, you’ll delve deeper into your ideas, analysing the strengths and weaknesses of your work through tutorials, lectures, seminars, and workshops. You’ll also explore different exhibition formats through the development of an interim exhibition. Through a series of lectures, you will be introduced to theories, concepts and global contexts, which you will discuss with peers and staff during seminars. You’ll further your understanding of research by exploring the relationships between sources, methodologies, themes, and ideas in support of your evolving practice.

80 credits

This unit focuses on helping you understand your practice in a broader context through collaboration and interdisciplinary working, including working with students and staff from other courses. You can choose to be a part of an externally-facing project or define your own project with external partners. Project briefs will encourage you to be a part of project management teams to learn more about the dynamics of team working. This collaborative learning experience will expose you to a range of new processes and approaches that will develop your creative thinking. Through our programme of lectures, discussions, cross-university events and gallery visits, you will continue to engage with current ideas, practices, and debates surrounding contemporary art that will help you see beyond your specialism.

40 credits

Core Projects

The first week of each academic year is called Wayfinding week. It’s an opportunity get your bearings, establish new connections and, after your first year at Norwich, re-establish old ones. Your course team will talk you through the year ahead and explain the expectations for the year. We’ll help you navigate new encounters and identify areas to focus on as you progress through your course.

An important element of Wayfinding Week is taking part in our annual ‘Make it Manifest(o)’ project. Your course team will introduce the project in which we’ll ask you to consider your hopes and vision of the year ahead at Norwich and work with students in other year groups to bring your ideas to life. The project culminates in a celebratory display of work across the campus.  The project will help you to develop your critical creativity through different approaches, concepts, and mediums. You’ll encounter diverse perspectives and build friendships and networks within our university community.

Interchange weeks are opportunities to step away from your disciplinary studies and engage in projects, workshops, visits and talks that extend your knowledge and understanding of the world. Whether you learn a new skill or take part in a global challenge project with students from other courses, you will come away with new insights to take back to your course. Interchange is part of the schedule for all Norwich students with sessions held across and beyond the campus led by university staff, visiting lecturers and students.

Diploma Year (optional)

Level 5 Diploma (120 credits)

Students have the opportunity to spend a year after the second of their degree (or the third year if studying for a degree with an Integrated Foundation Year) enhancing their employability options through a Level 5 Diploma. They can choose from courses designed to provide:

  • opportunities to gain industry insight, developing employability skills through a series of supported experiences, expanding professional networks and building confidence in the workplace, or
  • an introduction to creative computing, building an understanding of how coding skills can be used to advance and complement creative practice.

Find out more about our Level 5 Diplomas.

Final Year

Core Units

This is the first and shorter of the two units that make up your final year of undergraduate study. Your advancement in creative practice involving technology, materials, and processes will be developed through discussions with staff and peers in studio sessions and ‘Creative Uncertainty’ groups, where you will work on projects alongside staff. You will have opportunities to use project spaces and external venues for experimentation, collaboration, display, critique, curation, performance and discussion. Future and emerging practices in your discipline will be explored through visiting lectures, reinforced by tutorials and peer feedback. You will produce a research report that expands on the research ideas you developed in your second year. You’ll apply various research methods and methodological approaches, informed by your approach to your creative practice and future career aspirations.

40 credits

Your final unit allows you to research, conceptualise and create a self-determined final-year project(s), building on the skills, knowledge and understanding you have gathered throughout the programme. Group discussions and tutorials will provide ongoing support for your studio practice, as you solve challenges to produce ambitious outcomes. Guidance on professionally presenting your work will be offered from its development to final dissemination. Throughout the unit, you will enhance your creative approaches by engaging in workshops fostering a critical mindset and proficiency with materials, technologies, and processes. Your final unit centres around a curated degree show and other shows or publications you may produce from which you will build a portfolio, allowing your work to be viewed by curators, collectors, buyers and gallery owners.

80 credits

Core Projects

The first week of each academic year is called Wayfinding week. It’s an opportunity get your bearings, establish new connections and, after your first year at Norwich, re-establish old ones. Your course team will talk you through the year ahead and explain the expectations for the year. We’ll help you navigate new encounters and identify areas to focus on as you progress through your course.

An important element of Wayfinding Week is taking part in our annual ‘Make it Manifest(o)’ project. Your course team will introduce the project in which we’ll ask you to consider your hopes and vision of the year ahead at Norwich and work with students in other year groups to bring your ideas to life. The project culminates in a celebratory display of work across the campus.  The project will help you to develop your critical creativity through different approaches, concepts, and mediums. You’ll encounter diverse perspectives and build friendships and networks within our university community.

Interchange weeks are opportunities to step away from your disciplinary studies and engage in projects, workshops, visits and talks that extend your knowledge and understanding of the world. Whether you learn a new skill or take part in a global challenge project with students from other courses, you will come away with new insights to take back to your course. Interchange is part of the schedule for all Norwich students with sessions held across and beyond the campus led by university staff, visiting lecturers and students.

Assessment

Assessment for this course is entirely coursework-based, meaning there are no exams. Your progress will be evaluated through the projects and assignments you complete for each unit. Throughout the year, you’ll receive ongoing feedback to help you refine your work and develop your skills. To support your learning and ensure you achieve the course outcomes, we use a variety of assessment methods, including:

  • Finished pieces of work
  • Presentations
  • Written work
  • Your research
  • A reflective journal

Find out more about Assessment at Norwich

Some of the people you’ll be working with

Lecturers

Our facilities

Look around our city-centre campus, and you will find studios, media labs, and creative spaces in 13 buildings that sit among the cafés, bars, independent galleries and shops of Norwich’s cultural quarter.

Here to help you succeed

The UK’s creative sector is thriving, contributing £111.7 billion annually to the economy and offering over 2 million jobs.

Employability and career development are integral to every unit of our courses, ensuring students are well-prepared for the industry. Our students go on to secure exciting roles, launch successful businesses, and make a lasting impact in many sectors worldwide.

From day one, you’ll also get specialist career advice from our Business and Employability Team to help support you as you plan your career.

Typical career paths

Throughout your Fine Art degree, you’ll have the chance to develop links with regional and national organisations and through the visiting lecture series you’ll get to network with contemporary artists, curators, academics and writers.

Our graduates are renowned for their unique voice and vision, leading them to Turner Prize nomination and inclusion in the UK’s annual New Contemporaries exhibition and Saatchi Art’s Rising Stars.

  • Practising Artist
  • Community Artist
  • Exhibition Organiser
  • Arts Administrator
  • Art Consultant
  • Gallery Manager
  • Researcher
  • Curator
  • Teacher/lecturer
  • Digital media artist
  • Art Handler

92% of our graduates are in employment or further education within six months of graduating”

Graduate Outcomes 2021

Portfolio Advice and Guidance

Portfolios should show examples of your work — both finished and work in progress — that demonstrate your interests and skills. Your portfolio should be made up of work that reflects your creativity, personal interests and influences, as well as demonstrating your technical skills and ability. It doesn’t have to be perfect as we can assess your potential from your work in progress.

Your portfolio should be relevant to this course, but you can include a wide range of work that shows your creativity, technical competence and understanding of storytelling.

Get more advice on presentation formats, layouts and when to submit your portfolio in the application process.

BA Fine Art student Elly Lynn painting a section of a mural for a wall inside a pub

Student work

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