Fine Art BA (Hons)
Length:
3 or 4 year options
UCAS Code:
W101 (3 Year)
W102 (4 Year)
Institution Code:
N39
Optional Diploma Years:
Creative Professional Development (1 year, Level 5 diploma), or Creative Computing (1 year, Level 5 diploma), available between years 2 & 3
Want to explore your creativity, ideas, and instincts in a vibrant community of artists, thinkers and makers? And shape the future of contemporary art?
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 Content
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.
Year 1
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
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
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
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)
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.
Final year
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
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.
Careers Information
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.
Typical career paths include
- Practising Artist
- Community Artist
- Exhibition Organiser
- Arts Administrator
- Art Consultant
- Gallery Manager
- Researcher
- Curator
- Teacher/lecturer
- Digital media artist
- Art Handler
You’ll also get specialist creative careers advice from our Business and Employability Team to help support you as you plan your career.
Clare Gregory
Tabbed Section
Typical UK offers
A / AS Levels – GCE
GCE A/AS Levels 3 A-level qualifications at grades BCC (104 UCAS Tariff points) or above. Where candidates are not taking 3 A-levels, Norwich University of the Arts will consider combinations of A-level/AS-level and other Level 3 qualifications.
BTEC Extended Diploma (QCF or RQF)
Distinction, Merit, Merit in an art, design or media related subject
BTEC Diploma (QCF or RQF)
Distinction*, Distinction* in an art, design or media related subject
T Levels
A T Level in any subject with overall grade Merit or above
UAL Extended Diploma
Merit
UAL Level 3 Foundation Diploma in Art and Design
Pass
UAL Level 4 Foundation Diploma in Art and Design
Pass
Foundation Diploma in Art and Design
Pass
Access to Higher Education Diploma (Art and Design)
Pass
International Baccalaureate Diploma
A minimum of 26 points
Norwich University of the Arts welcomes applicants of all ages from all backgrounds. Your application will be primarily assessed through your portfolio (if required), responses to questions asked and personal statement, so even if you have no formal qualifications or do not meet our typical offers it can still be worth applying.
If you are studying at the time of your application and your application is successful it is likely that you will receive a conditional offer.
If the qualification that you are studying is not shown, do not worry as we are able to accept other pre-entry qualifications as well as combinations of different qualifications. Please do contact our Student Recruitment Team if you have any queries.
International applications
We accept qualifications from all over the world. To find our entry requirements from a specific country, please check our dedicated international pages.
Most international students are required to hold an English language qualification. Applicants are required to have a minimum UKVI approved IELTS exam score of 6.0 overall, with a minimum of 5.5 in each section. Equivalent English language qualifications are acceptable such as, IB English language syllabus A or B/English Literature (Grade 4).
We also accept some alternative English qualifications. Learn more about our English entry requirements.
You can email us on international@norwichuni.ac.uk if you’d like to discuss your application individually.
BA (Hons) Fine Art degree portfolio 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 space.
You may wish to include some of the following:
- Evidence of working independently, developing your own ideas or inquiries
- Drawing, which could include images from observation, experimental or imaginative work
- Sculpture, or installation in any medium
- Painting
- Printmaking
- Collage and mixed media
- Textile work
- Photography
- Sound design
- Film or moving image
- Performance, installation, socially-engaged or interactive work
- Collaborative group work
- Digital work (using Adobe Creative Suite or free open source software)
Further portfolio advice and tips
Get more advice on presentation formats, layouts and when to submit your portfolio in the application process.
2024/25 University fees for new entrants
Norwich University of the Arts will assess students’ tuition fee status using the guidance provided by the UK Council for International Student Affairs
Students from the UK or Ireland and EU students with ‘Settled’ or ‘Pre-Settled’ status will be charged ‘Home’ fees if they meet the relevant residency requirements. They will usually be eligible for a tuition fee loan from the UK government, meaning that they won’t have to pay Norwich University of the Arts’ tuition fees upfront.
Students who do not meet the necessary residency requirements will usually be charged ‘Overseas’ fees and will not be eligible for the UK government tuition fee loan. Since 2021/22, this includes new entrants from the EU, EEA, and Switzerland who do not have ‘Settled’ or ‘Pre-Settled’ status, because the UK has now formally left the EU.
| Fee status | Course | Annual fee |
|---|---|---|
| Home | Undergraduate degree (full-time three and four year degree) | £9,250 |
| Overseas | Undergraduate degree (full-time three and four year degree) | £18,000 |
Inflation in subsequent years
The rules for inflation on fees in subsequent years depend on the type of fee status and level.
- For Home undergraduate students starting in 2024, inflation may be applied to your fees in later years, if the UK government were to increase the fee cap beyond the current limit of £9,250 per year. If such an increase were to apply, we would confirm this in advance to you of each academic year, and we would limit the increase to the maximum allowed by the Office for Students.
- For Overseas undergraduate students starting in 2024, inflation will be applied to your fees in later years. We will confirm this in advance to you of each academic year, and we will limit the increase to no more than the Office for Students’ recommended inflationary measure, which is RPI-X. RPI-X is calculated by the Office for Budget Responsibility. In setting fees for the following year, we will use the Office for Budget Responsibility’s RPI-X forecast for quarter 3 of the relevant year.
For Home and overseas postgraduate degree students starting in 2024, fees will remain the same for each year of your course.
Financial support for UK students in 2024
Tuition fee loans and loans for living costs are usually available to UK and some EU students, as well as non-repayable Norwich University of the Arts bursaries based on family income. Find out more about applying for funding.
International students
We offer a range of scholarships for international students to support your studies with us.
- Group briefings
- Academic tutorials
- Group tutorials
- Lectures
- Workshops
- Critiques (crits)
- Seminars
- Finished pieces of work
- Presentations
- Written work
- Your research
- A reflective journal
Work-based Learning Opportunities
Between Years 2 and 3 of this course, you’ll have the opportunity to undertake one of the following additional qualifications:
Creative Professional Development (1 year, Level 5 Diploma)
Our Creative Professional Development Diploma gives you the chance to spend a year exploring your post-uni job options through a structured programme of input sessions and work-based learning. This year offers two much-sought-after industry placements – the first lasting six weeks, the second 12 weeks, and a group project or ‘hackathon’ exploring freelancing and business start-up.
Creative Computing (1 year, Level 5 Diploma)
Our Creative Computing Diploma introduces you to coding and computational skills that will advance and complement your creative practice. No prior experience of coding is needed, just a curiosity about creative computing and a desire to push your own practice into new realms. You’ll also develop a wider knowledge of the creative tech industries, available roles and opportunities.
Integrated Foundation Year
Four year degrees are exactly the same as our three year degrees but include an extra year of study at the beginning – an Integrated Foundation Year.
An Integrated Foundation Year is about developing the skills, knowledge and the confidence you need to successfully complete your degree course. Building on your experience from A Level or equivalent courses, the Integrated Foundation Year curriculum allows time to develop the practical, creative and conceptual skills that are critical to successfully completing an undergraduate degree at Norwich. You will achieve this, making full use of the University workshops and studio facilities.
While studying an Integrated Foundation Year on BA (Hons) Fine Art you will begin to establish your individual creative voice and follow your own direction through projects designed to challenge and stretch you. You’ll undertake both studio and research led projects that will inform the development of your work and enhance your contextual awareness.
You’ll benefit from inductions in the workshop areas used throughout your degree, and you will also have mixed year critiques with Year 1 Fine Art students. You will also be able to engage with the Fine Art lecture programme, which is open to all years, as well as having the opportunity to curate and realise an exhibition outside the confines of the University.
Typical UK offers and entry requirements for Integrated Foundation Year entry
GCE A/AS Levels
2 A-level qualifications at grades CC or higher.
BTEC Extended Diploma (QCF or RQF)
Merit, Merit, Pass in an art, design or media related subject
BTEC Diploma (QCF or RQF)
Distinction, Merit in an art, design or media related subject
T Levels
Pass (D or E on the core)
UAL Extended Diploma
An overall Pass
UAL Level 3 Foundation Diploma in Art and Design
An overall Pass
Foundation Diploma in Art and Design
Pass
Access to Higher Education Diploma (Art and Design)
Pass
International Baccalaureate Diploma
A minimum of 24 points
Norwich University of the Arts welcomes applicants of all ages from all backgrounds. Your application will be primarily assessed through interview and portfolio review so even if you have no formal qualifications or do not meet our typical offers it can still be worth applying.
Find out more about four year degrees at Norwich
Teaching Staff
News
@norwichuniarts
Norwich University of the Arts is proud to announce that it has been named the inaugural Arts University of the Year by the Daily Mail University Guide…
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Distinguished artists and visionaries to receive Honorary Professorships
Norwich University of the Arts will award Honorary Professorships to five outstanding individuals next week as part of its summer graduation ceremonies.
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Body Matters AHRA International Conference
Thursday 21 November – Saturday 23 November 2024
The 21st Architectural Humanities Research Association International Conference is taking place at Norwich this November, with the theme ‘Body Matters’.
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In conversation with
Emily-Rose is in her final year studying BA (Hons) Fine Art, and talks to us about her creative practice, why she chose Norwich and interests outside university.
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