The Open College of the Arts' blog
Here you will find examples of student work from Photography, Fine art, Graphic Design, Illustration, Music, Textiles design, Sculpture and Creative Writing.
The basic aim is that your work looks coherent and that the assessors can effortlessly navigate it. It may take you a couple of assessment events to get this right but as you progress through the degree programme, repeatedly sending work for assessment you will develop and perfect ways of organising your work.
“Take your writing seriously. If you don’t, no one else will. Don’t try to do a perfect first draft. You should see mine – they’re pathetic. Writing is re-writing.”
The first meeting of the London Group will be held on Saturday 14 April 2018, starting at 10.00am and finishing at 16.30pm This interactive day will be led by Fine Art Programme leader Caroline Wright.
OCA tutor and assessor Liz Cashdan looks at the work of BA (Hons) Creative Writing student Lindsay Peaston.
Sketchbooks are personal and can reveal much about how a student goes about the business of discovering and learning. I like to see books that are bursting with work as it is generally evidence of a submission full of speculation and discovery.
It has given me the confidence to believe in my work and my ability as a composer, justifying the efforts I made in the writing, developing and refining this score. Also, as mentioned above, it fulfilled my dream of hearing one of my compositions performed live, by other musicians.
OCA Visual Communications tutors and assessors look at the work of Brian O’ Carroll, Harry Kidd and Lina Homer.
If you aren’t too busy and find yourself at a loose end in New York, the exhibition runs until the 25 January, and as an added bonus, for the same entry fee you can see the “Demoiselles d’Avignon” by Picasso, “Starry Night” by Vincent and a host of other modern masterpieces too numerous to mention, five floors above “Greenberg Contradictions 1”, Mickos is on the low floor, of course, to catch the passing trade.
This simple presentation meant the samples were easy for assessors to go through; the logic of the development was clear and any collections of samples were grouped together, either on one sheet or on a series of sheets.
Throughout the time that David has been emailing his work to me I have been impressed by his organisational skills, the development of his written and visual work and his willingness to take on board my suggestions for developing the work.
We have 100 hardcopy versions of this issue to give away, just email Course Support with your name, student number and postal address by the 5 January.
Through my writers’ group, I’ve met far too many talented writers who are frozen with fear when it comes to submitting their work for publication. I can understand why; I went through it myself. For years I would whip up tsunami-sized excuses as to why my work wasn’t good enough to be inflicted on others. Then something happened: I finally let go of my fears and insecurities, and my work found its way into the inbox of a publisher.