After leaving class early on Friday 4th November from the last day of the life drawing week I felt I needed to consider my UCAS options. Therefore I felt it was just as important to check out BA (Hons) courses on my doorstep as well as other courses throughout the country.
I hadn't completely made up my mind at the time what area I wanted to specialize in next year. I wanted to make the correct decision. I had been looking at all courses of interest at other universities; such as art and photography. I was considering trying to do a broad degree that I could use both elements upon, a course that wasn't too specific in the area chosen.
I left the main studios at roughly 12:55 on a mission to aim at finding the fine art talk room for 1:00pm. Surprisingly there were a considerate amount of people, few of which were late comers from our art, design & media course.
The courseleader, David Blackaller, gave us a brief undertsading of what it was like to be a student studying at degree level in Northbrook. He mentioned that the fine art course was very broad based and you could quite easily take a non medium specific approach to things. The course provides flexible working areas and a wide range of media could be used. Some examples of these were sculpture, drawing, photography, painting and printing etc. This sounded brilliant to me; not having to stick in a dedicated allocation of an area. This meant that I could also be able to possibly work and get ideas and inspiration from others and apply to a different medium. The main reason why I had not jet chosen a narrower area was because I felt I hadn't yet had enough time to relate to other areas of working such as textiles and sculpture.
As well as having a fine art BA (Hons) course at Northbrook, you could also choose another three sections within this space. These being painting, sculpture and printmaking. I felt I would have gone for the broadest section as I didn't feel I had enough knowledge of the others.
The structure of the course seemed very similar to what we had been completeing at this current moment. The first year involved a few weeks of fine art workshops, of which you would be going into more deatil in this specific section. Then there would then be two studio practise briefs as well as lectures on cultural and supporting studies. The second year was also very similar and we were told by the beginning of this year which study you were most interested in and start carrying this forward. By the third year you would be creating and setting your own briefs as well as creating a dissertation.
I was told that students from previous years had exceeded in this course and had gone to places such as Central St Martins and Glasgow School of Art to study their masters. Other progression paths that were mentioned by David were found employment in museum work, teaching and freelance.
I was also very interested in how to apply. After asking David he mentioned that you apply the same way as other universities around the country by apply via UCAS. You needed 160 UCAS points from A Levels or A BTEC diploma. I was surprised by this because I considered it to be a low entry requirement and hence not being very good. I now realise that possibly I may have underestimated Northbrook at degree level as many of the other universities even with high UCAS points to get in relate getting in pretty much strictly to your portfolio evidence. I was happy with the fact that at Northbrook you got the chance to have a face to face interview.
To conclude this fine art course I sum it up by saying it would be the perfect course for me. The only major flaw I feel against this course nevertheless is the fact that it is not what I consider to have huge connections in this area. There would not be as many places to exhibit and it would be harder to make a name for yourself. A perfect place for me to study would happen to be in Brighton, London or Edinburgh. This is because all cities are influenced by the creative scene and there are lots of links. I feel Northbrook may not have so many. Even though I love the structure and the teaching style I think this gives it away. If this course was in London I would be applying to it next year.
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