Print

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

Your work will be enhanced by access to well-equipped technical workshops although you will not be expected to develop new technical approaches. Rather, a key focus of your study will be to reflect on how technologies are used to communicate and distribute images, ideas and understandings.

Term 1

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?

The programme will start 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.

You'll also take AcrossRCA (15 credits), which supports you in working across disciplines to use creative and critical thinking and practice and collaborative approaches to respond to urgent contemporary themes.

Term 2

Development and Context (30 credits)

The aim of this unit is to focus on deepening an engagement with both producing work and through discussion, understanding the ways in which it might be read, displayed and contextualised. To this end the holding of a group exhibition/event, and a publication project give you deadlines and experience of professional contexts.

Urgency of the Arts - School-wide unit (15 credits)

In term 2, School of Arts and Humanities Masters’ students will participate in a School-wide unit called "The Urgency of the Arts." In this unit we ask how arts and humanities research and practice can engage with our current socio-political climate, and how might it shape, be necessary and essential in contemporary cultural debates.

The unit introduces you to a diverse range of 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 recognizing, questioning, expanding, and reevaluating your own artistic practices and disciplinary assumptions. Through interactions with staff and students from across the School, as well as through a variety of methodological approaches, you will develop an understanding of the contemporary concerns that shape and influence artistic practice. You will be encouraged to reflect on these as a means to articulate the potential of your own work within the context of broad cultural landscapes and urgent cultural debates.

You'll also take the Core Skills unit (15 credits) supports you in advancing your academic and professional skills to aid the development of your personal projects at the RCA and beyond in your professional practice and career.

Term 3

Independent Research Project (60 credits)

The 60-credit Independent Research Project (IRP) 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 you can activate your work in a public context, experiment with the most appropriate forms of realising your ideas and gain critical feedback. The IRP public event takes place during the unit and will be followed by a period of reflection and further development, 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 on your studies in the previous two terms. You will be expected to make 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 term based on the experience of the exhibition and publications projects in the Development and Context unit.

In the weeks after the public event you will be encouraged to build upon your practices, consolidating the skills you have developed across the year, both technical and conceptual. This will be in dialogue with tutors and technical staff helping you to realise ongoing works and the articulation of a professional identity as an artist, as you consider your practice looking forward. You will not be expected to develop new technical approaches but only build on skills gained where appropriate. This period will include opportunities to share work in progress and your plans for the future with peers, discussion of potential projects, publicising work and preparation for exhibitions and events outside the RCA timeline. Thinking ahead to accessing resources for artists and considering access to print facilities, this will be a period for reflection and preparation.

This MA is delivered over 45 weeks.

AcrossRCA

At the RCA we are working – as artists, designers, architects, historians, writers and curators – within physical and digital worlds that are undergoing constant change, and defined by shifting complexities and interconnections. The 15-credit AcrossRCA unit supports you in working across disciplines to use creative and critical thinking and practice and collaborative approaches to respond to urgent contemporary themes.

The unit revolves around a set of thematic pillars that reflect key areas of flux, uncertainty and complexity that cut across local, global, individual and collective contexts today. Working in interdisciplinary collaborative groups, you will develop your thinking and reflections on a key issue, question or tension under the umbrella of a larger theme as you generate a creative response. The focus is on learning through the process of the collaborative development of an idea. Rather than aiming for a completed product, solution or concrete answer, AcrossRCA is about an openness to what is generated through experimentation, dialogue and reflexivity. What happens when we move across disciplinary borders and put the kinds of knowledge, experience and skills we each bring to the RCA into conversation with others?

This provides you with opportunities to:

• share and adapt approaches from your personal practices and/or discipline;
• collaborate with peers outside your programme;
• interrogate collaboration through experimenting with and reflecting on collaborative models and approaches, and thinking about what your practice means in relation to others;
• critically reflect on your responsibilities as a creative practitioner and the role of creative practice in making our understanding and experience of the world;
• position your practice and skills and what you bring to a team and larger context.

This engagement with perspectives and practices from across disciplines and across the College is designed to complement your disciplinary studies, feed back into your individual work, and provide you with a platform to thrive beyond graduation.

Core Skills

The Core Skills unit (15 credits) supports you in advancing your academic and professional skills to aid the development of your personal projects at the RCA and beyond in your professional practice and career. The unit also supports you in moving from Term 1 to the independent work you will undertake in your IRP in Term 3, as an opportunity to more deeply and systematically develop and deploy select core skills related to your practice. The transferable academic and professional skills covered in this unit reflect those required of a postgraduate student, and are adapted by Schools and programmes according to specific disciplinary perspectives and requirements. The Core Skills complement the work you are undertaking in your programme units and underpins and elevates the development of your future direction. The Core Skills will focus on specific skills most relevant to your expanded discipline, which may come under areas including inclusive, critical, sustainable and ethical approaches, the networks of knowledge, practice and communication within which your work sits, and the positioning of your practice. Throughout, the unit emphasises how these skills are situated not only disciplinarily within art, design, architecture, communication and humanities practices, but also within larger contexts, inside and in the world beyond.

The unit is informed by the following three themes:

• Making Meaning: How does questioning and contextualising inform the development of your practice? This theme builds on skills in critical and creative thinking, reflective practice, navigating complexity and research.
• Making Together: How do we think and make in dialogue and collaboration with others? This theme encompasses skills such as inclusive, ethical and sustainable practice, and peer learning and building networks.
• Making Public: How is your work and practice positioned within larger ecologies? Exploration of this theme may include developing skills in engagement, communication, entrepreneurship and leadership.