Cambridge School of Visual & Performing Arts

MA Art & Design

This flexible project-based postgraduate course is open to artists and designers wishing to develop fresh assumptions for their creative practice by means of innovative, practice-based, research-driven approaches to creative enquiry. Informed by a spirit of interdisciplinary experimentation, and underpinned by conceptual understanding, MA Art & Design promotes awareness of the value-informed nature of leading-edge contemporary art and design.

MA Art & Design is open to applications from graduates from art and design subjects, as well as graduates from subjects other than art & design with an appropriate portfolio. In all cases, the course welcomes applicants desiring a transformative experience, who are excited by the prospect of examining disciplinary approaches in an interdisciplinary environment, and who are motivated by qualities of invention, discovery and enterprise.

During the intensive 12-month programme in our central Cambridge studios and workshops, you will explore and advance subject specialist approaches at the same as exploring interdisciplinary perspectives for your practice. You will develop confidence in a range of skills and forms of communication and find inspiration and fresh directions for your practice by experimenting with methods, materials, processes and ideas, driving your creative practice and fuelling your professional ambitions.

Subject Specialisms

MA Art & Design gives you the flexibility to study your chosen art or design subject specialism within a single Master’s course. Whether coming from, or desiring to move towards, Fine Art Practice, Spatial Design, 3D, Product Design and Craft Practice, Photography or Moving Image, the emphasis is on the development of a leading-edge creative practice, which culminates in an Independent Major Project and a professional portfolio, which builds upon existing understanding, and which extends your knowledge of your subject area in an experimental interdisciplinary environment.

The course sits alongside our specialist programmes in Fashion: Design, Fashion: Branding & Creative Communication, Visual Communication: Graphic Design, and Visual Communication: Illustration & Animation, offering you the flexibility to specialise or work across subjects.

Unique Opportunities At The CSVPA Graduate School

This programme offers outstanding specialist tuition combined with extensive academic contact and studio access. As a Master’s student at CSVPA, you will benefit from:

• Expert tuition from industry-active professional designers, artists, visual communicators and researchers, with unrivalled understanding of contemporary art and design practices, the importance of visual intelligence and experimental approaches to learning, and a passion for sharing their knowledge and skills.
• Imaginative and contemporary project briefs, which prioritise experimental practical approaches, and which are underpinned by research-led conceptual understanding.
• Unique opportunities to engage in creative collaborations with Academic Faculty, Departments, Colleges, Doctoral Researchers and Undergraduate students at the University of Cambridge.
• Exclusive access to contemporary creative industry expertise, by means of workshops, talks and projects, as well as the opportunity to participate in a competitive internship scheme in partnership with Hearst Magazines UK, publisher of titles including Digital Spy, ELLE, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar and Elle Decoration.
• Intensive learning experiences tailored to your needs and ambitions, with high levels of personalised support and extensive 1:1 tutorial time.
• A postgraduate qualification that will help you to gain distinctiveness and further your creative and professional ambitions.
• Collaborating with a creative, interdisciplinary and global postgraduate community, developing individual skills in a sharing and collective context.
• Studio workspace, accessible every day of the week.
• Access to specialist art and design resources.
• A small, supportive and specialist creative arts college in a beautiful, historic and cultural city—a creative hotspot and home to one of the UK’s most dynamic and international student communities.