Thinking about assessment and sending work to the OCA head office is an anxious time for students. You have worked so hard over a long period of time, pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and taking knock backs from your…
Recently I read a very good article in the FT by Jason Solomons which starts by asking the question, ‘When was the last new movement in British Cinema… heralding a flurry of new directors and new styles?’
Getting the child’s voice right in writing for children is easier than using a child narrator, or child’s eye view in free indirect discourse when writing for adults. If you have a child narrator in adult fiction, you have to decide if the narrator is looking back with hindsight or whether they are pretending to still be the child they were. There are plenty of examples of both of these approaches and some narratives that fall between the two extremes.
Hearing one’s music is a very important part of learning how to compose. It can be difficult for fledgling composers to secure performances, but it is worth exploring whether there are any local ensembles willing to look at your music.
The exhibition as a whole enabled us to see a range of work from the strongly contrasting lino cuts to the super fine cobwebbby weave of some of the lithograph work which had been even further smoothed over and refined with sandpaper and crayon.
It’s got to be the easiest way to start writing, hasn’t it? Most people have kept a diary at one time or another, and most of us have written letters. Writing from the ‘I’ point of view looks like a doddle compared with handling a number of different characters, because you’re viewing the action from inside one head instead of many. But this approach brings its own problems.
In late July, OCA music students from across the UK and Europe met up at the MAC Birmingham for a day of music making and discussion with music tutor Chris Lawry and saxophonist and publisher Keri Degg. The day was focussed on writing for saxophone with a particular emphasis on composing music for educational and examination purposes. Students got to hear their compositions workshopped and received feedback and advice from tutor and performers, as well as bound scores and recordings to take away for further study.
OCA Drawing and Painting tutor Diana Ali is following up on her success of last years show The Big Painting Challenge and is currently filming the second instalment.
Join tutor Clare Wilson at the Royal Academy of Arts London on Sunday 5 November 2017. We will be visiting Matisse in the studio – an exhibition that explores the relationship between the French artist’s eclectic collection of objects and his work.
Writing students do sometimes get confused about building tension, confusing it with conflict. Although these two aspects of writing both fiction and drama have links, and can be present at the same time, they are not the same.
