MA Fine Art: Digital

MA Fine Art: Digital

MA Fine Art Digital at Central Saint Martins supports a broad range of experimental art practices. It will test and challenge your work, bringing it into a contemporary critical context. Our research-based teaching strategies actively seek to extend your experience and skills. We work responsively to your changing needs as individuals. We also encourage collaborative projects in relation to your work.

Students on MA Fine Art Digital work in many media – including painting, sculpture, print, installation, time-based and digital. The course offers an environment where complex social, cultural and artistic viewpoints are negotiated. Here, art-making is a testing ground for ideas and media. Artists who study with us are open to change – not just in expanding their practices – but also in creating new positions. Our focus is on bringing your work to the critical scrutiny of the academic setting. Through these interactions, you will develop your individual research into a confident, sustained practice.

On this course, we place emphasis on creating a supportive but challenging space for investigating your creative practice. MA Fine Art Digital has a track record of innovative teaching and its flexible structure is designed for widely accessible learning, allowing students to engage from incredibly diverse settings. This offers students the enriching experience of collectively exploring what art is in a digital environment. Whatever media you are investigating, the opportunities afforded by the online space are broad and exciting.

On this course, diverse approaches to creative practice are supported by strong critical engagement with contemporary technologies of making and dissemination. Weekly group sessions act as forums for cross-course and transdisciplinary exchange and collaboration. An intensive program of study will develop your skills and knowledge of research methods in art-related fields. Your learning will extend across our postgraduate Art program, offering input from the College’s research community. On the course, we aim to provide you with a range of opportunities and learning experiences, giving you a broad skill set to go out into professional life.

Unit 1: Research, Development and Practice

In Unit 1, you will develop a study statement which gives direction to your practice. You will start and maintain a reflective blog that documents and evaluates your practice-based research. This will form the framework for how you will develop your work in Unit 2.

Unit 2: Knowledge and Communication

The emphasis of Unit 2 is a combination of ambitious practical work and a deepening awareness of the context of your work within a community of practice. This is evidenced in the ongoing use of your reflective blog and active involvement in group discussions. You will also write a research paper which contextualises your practice. Collectively, this forms the foundation for your work in Unit 3.

Unit 3: Reflection and Presentation

During Unit 3, your focus will be on resolving your work in relation to your study statement with a wider contextual understanding. You will present your research as part of a symposium and your practical work in a public exhibition. Consideration will be given to your future practice and personal and professional development.

Credit and award requirements

The course is credit-rated at 180 credits.

On successfully completing the course, you will gain a Master of Arts (MA degree).

Under the Framework for Higher Education Qualifications, an MA is Level 7. All units must be passed in order to achieve the MA but the classification of the award is derived from the mark for the final unit only.

If you are unable to continue on the course, a Postgraduate Certificate (PG Cert) will normally be offered following the successful completion of 60 credits, or a Postgraduate Diploma (PG Dip) following the successful completion of 120 credits.

• Study statement
• Inductions and Workshops
• Technical Moodle
• Weekly online group sessions
• Reflective journal/blog
• Personal and peer group tutorials
• Guest speaker program and seminars
• Participation in debates and discussions
• Research workshops
• Formative assessment and tutor feedback
• Independent learning
• Public engagement

Camberwell’s MA Fine Art Digital graduates go on to work in a wide range of settings, with many now self employed and regularly exhibiting their work in galleries, festivals or running their own creative businesses.

Other alumni work in the wider creative industries as creative directors, designers, photographers, videographers or educationalists. The expanding role of the digital is transforming all creative work and creating new opportunities that could scarcely be imagined just a few years ago.

MA Fine Art Digital is offered online in extended full-time mode which runs for 60 weeks over two academic years. You will be expected to commit 30 hours per week to study, which includes teaching time and independent study.

The course has been designed in this way to enable you to pursue studies, while also undertaking part-time employment, internships or care responsibilities.

The online mode works successfully across the world’s time zones by carefully timing synchronous weekly group sessions in the afternoon UK time. This allows North and South American students to connect in the morning, European, African and Middle Eastern students through the afternoon and Central to East Asia in early to late evenings. Other activities are asynchronous and can fit around your own commitments.

Students will need an internet connection and computer or mobile device to engage with online learning. Working from their own homes or studios, students will be able to access all synchronous and asynchronous materials online. We emphasise options that are as open and cross platform as possible, using both the University’s virtual learning environment and supporting students in building their own, personal learning environments.