Print

Throughout your studies, you’ll debate questions of originality, authenticity, and value in the realm of multiplying images. You’ll navigate the intricate difference between hard copy and screen-based images, amidst discussions about NFTs and social media's role.

Enhance your work with access to well-equipped technical workshops throughout the College – though note our focus isn't on teaching technical skills, but on technology's impact in communicating and distributing images, ideas and understanding.

There will be several opportunities to collaborate with others, but at a minimum, your programme will include 255 contact hours and 1,545 independent study hours. Contact hours can consist of lectures, seminars, tutorials, critical forums and workshops, among other types of teaching delivery.

Teaching types included on your programme can consist of briefings, projects, tutorials, seminars, lectures, critical forums, technical inductions, technical workshops, offsite visits and blended learning.

The programme is delivered across three terms and includes a combination of programme, School and College units.

Term 1

In Orientation, Induction and Experimentation (45 credits), we begin with the notion of orientation, a term originating from ‘Orient’.

‘a person's basic attitude, beliefs, or feelings in relation to a particular subject or issue’

• Where do I begin?
• What is my current practice/interest /skill set?
• What interests me in the wider field?
• What work by other artists/writers is relevant to my practice?
• How do I describe/speak about what I do?

You will begin the programme with a series of orientation sessions and technical inductions. Seminars and external visits to exhibitions and archives will help you understand the expanded field of Print in the context of the broad field of contemporary art. You will be encouraged to experiment with new ways of making to challenge existing models of thinking and demonstrate this through studio practice.

Term 2

Development and Context (30 credits) deepens an engagement with producing work and, through discussion, understanding how it might be read, displayed and contextualised. To this end, holding a group exhibition/event and a publication project gives you deadlines and experience of professional contexts.

The School-wide unit Urgency of the Arts (15 credits) asks how arts and humanities research and practice can engage with our current socio-political climate and how it might shape, be necessary and essential in contemporary cultural debates.

The unit introduces you to diverse perspectives, approaches and methods relevant to contemporary practice and thought in the arts and humanities. The delivery, predominantly based on workshops and featuring specialist presentations by leading artists, aims to assist you in recognising, questioning, expanding, and reevaluating your own artistic practices and disciplinary assumptions. Through interactions with staff and students from across the School and a variety of methodological approaches, you will develop an understanding of the contemporary concerns that shape and influence artistic practice.

You will be supported in understanding your work's possibilities, complexities and impact. You will be encouraged to contextualise it within broad cultural landscapes to recognise and emphasise its potential and the complex ways your work may be received and understood.

Terms 1 and 2

Across terms 1 and 2, you will participate in AcrossRCA (15 credits). This unit aims to support you in meeting the challenges of a complex, uncertain and changing world by bringing you together to work collaboratively in interdisciplinary teams on a series of themed projects informed by expertise within and beyond the College. These projects will challenge you to use your intellect and imagination to address key cultural, social, environmental and economic challenges. In doing so, you will develop and reflect on the abilities required to translate knowledge into action and help demonstrate the contribution the creative arts can make to our understanding and experience of the world.

Term 3

The Independent Research Project (60 credits) is an opportunity to build a body of work that addresses the key ambitions of your research and practice. You will work towards presenting a work or works in the IRP Public Exhibition, which enables you to explore how to activate your work in a public context, experiment with the most appropriate forms of realising your ideas and gain critical feedback. The IRP exhibition takes place mid-way through the unit. It will be followed by a reflection and further development period, which emphasises planning for continued practice and research post-graduation.

The IRP emphasises the sharing of work with an audience. The focus is on completing work which synthesises and builds upon the work of the last two terms. You will be expected to make, curate and exhibit in the context of a group exhibition. Most Print students would work in exhibition, though a few may choose publication as the principal form. You will have submitted a plan for your independent research project at the end of the second unit based on the experience of the exhibition and publications projects in unit 2.

AcrossRCA is a compulsory 30-credit unit which is delivered as part of all MA programmes.

Situated at the core of your RCA experience, this ambitious interdisciplinary College-wide unit supports you in responding to the challenges of complex, uncertain and changing physical and digital worlds. Developed in response to student feedback, AcrossRCA creates an exciting opportunity for you to collaborate meaningfully across programmes.

Challenging you to use your imagination and intellect to respond to urgent contemporary themes, this ambitious unit will provide you with the opportunity to:

• make connections across disciplines
• think critically about your creative practice
• develop creative networks within and beyond the College
• generate innovative responses to complex problems
• reflect on how to propose ideas for positive change in local and/or global contexts

AcrossRCA launches with a series of presentations and panel discussions from acclaimed speakers who will introduce the themes and act as inspirational starting points for your collaborative team response.

Delivered online and in-person across two terms, the unit has been designed to complement your disciplinary studies and to provide you with a platform to thrive beyond graduation.