This module aims to prepare you for the final year of study, when you conduct your own personal research project. You will be guided through the skills and techniques needed to design, execute, present, and reflect upon academic research.

This includes how to:

• formulate research questions
• how to write literature reviews
• how to choose appropriate methodologies and datasets
• how to interpret data
• how to conduct ethical academic research

Building on the relationship between theoretical understanding and artistic practice, this module will introduce you to a broad range of theories and ideas relevant to contemporary art practice and thinking. You will explore ideas such as:

• New materialism
• Fourth and fifth-wave feminisms
• Object-oriented philosophy
• Posthumanism
• The Anthropocene
• Hauntology
• The relations that exist between art and science

Join us as we combine intellectual rigour and curiosity with the freedom to confidently explore your creativity from an increasingly informed position. You will be encouraged to explore different forms of writing that enable you to develop ideas and express yourself in a range of appropriate formats.

Imagination, experimentation, creative risk-taking, and transformation are at the heart of this module and fundamental to your development as a practicing artist.

You will engage creatively with workshops that encourage experimentation and risk-taking, exploring ideas and processes that extend beyond traditional studio practice including collaborative, site-specific, socially engaged, and curatorial projects.

Exploring diverse themes such as the environment and sustainability, global connections and local place, you will dive into the transformative role of art in the wider world. Developing digital skills relevant to these contexts will equip you to create innovative and forward-thinking approaches to contemporary art.

This module explores how digital technologies, in their multiple forms, figure in our everyday lives and the global societies we live in. This includes social media platforms, search engines, publicly available artificial intelligence chatbots as well as the multitude of apps that mediate every aspect of our lives, from access to news and information to dating, food and consumption, education, and professional life.

We will analyse the affordances of digital technologies in connection to questions of power, context, and embodiment. This module will stimulate you to start seeing how media and technology do more than transmitting messages and information. Instead, they have an ontological role in shaping social relations, subjectivities, practices and cultures.

Attuning you to this role, this module allows you to understand media as much more than simply channels of representation or communication. The assessments in this module give you plenty of space to articulate your own experiences in everyday life to the theoretical literature and conceptual frameworks that you are introduced to in this module.

Our everyday lives are saturated by images of all kinds. This module will introduce you to some key ‘ways of seeing’ our world of images. We will explore questions such as:

• How are images made, who gets to produce them and, importantly, from whose point of view?
• How do pictures circulate?
• How do viewers read and interpret images?
• Who gets to look and through whose eyes?
• How do these processes and practices relate to power?

We’ll consider these questions in relation to a range of media texts, from photographs and advertisements to television and film.

This module will allow you to spend the year working in a graduate-level placement role in the industry or sector that interests you most. Throughout the year, you will build an awareness of what is required in the professional workplace whilst developing a range of transferable skills.

During the module you will reflect on and critically analyse: your own career readiness, the ongoing development of your self-awareness in terms of skills and professional knowledge, and your understanding of current workplace practices and professional etiquette.

Our Careers and Placements Team will support you during your placement with online contact and learning resources.

In this module, you will undertake an in-depth study on a topic of your own choice. The module is designed as a culmination of your learning journey on the programme, and to undertake the research, you will draw on the knowledge you have gained throughout your studies. You are expected to conduct your final project independently, with the support of an allocated academic supervisor, and will demonstrate skills in designing, planning, managing, and producing a substantial piece of work. The final project may focus on academic literature, empirical research, or incorporate elements of media practice.

Refine your practical skills as you develop and present a professional body of practical work appropriate for a Fine Art degree show.

Over the course of this year-long module, your growth as an artist will be supported through lectures, workshops, tutorials, and peer reviews, all guided by tutors who are practicing artists and writers. You will also build a strong foundation in professional practices and transferable skills essential for a successful career in the arts.

Through deepening your understanding of your own practice, the art world, curation, and the transformative power of creativity, you will be prepared to contribute meaningfully to local, national, and global artistic discourses and practices.

You can also choose to take additional credits in either Advanced Art Practice or Writing for Artists, enabling you to build on your strengths, interests, and career aspirations.

How has the experience of being part of a media audience transformed in recent years? How do we make sense of being a fan nowadays? In what ways do fan culture and audience community manifest social transformations on both local and global scales? This module aims to provide you with a critical understanding of fandom and audiences in a global and transnational context. The module will focus on issues such as participation, pleasure, performance, and power by investigating fan culture and audience communities of a wide range of transmedia texts in a global perspective. You are encouraged to analyse the multi-layered dynamics between individual fan, fan community, audience participation, media texts, and industries through interdisciplinary lenses, for example, feminist studies, queer studies, and postcolonial studies.

In this module, you’ll delve into the structure, function, and evolution of ‘traditional’ and digital media industries, ranging from journalism and consumer industries to streaming services and online content creation. You will consider the economic, cultural, and technological forces driving these industries, and their societal impact. You’ll debate the role of media regulation and policy in shaping the ever-changing media industries today.

This year-long module provides extended space and support for your growth as an artist.

Refine your practical skills as you develop and present a professional body of practical work appropriate for a Fine Art degree show.

You will be supported through lectures, workshops, tutorials, and peer reviews, all guided by tutors who are practicing artists and writers. You will also build a strong foundation in professional practices and transferable skills essential for a successful career in the arts.

Through deepening your understanding of your own practice, the art world, curation, and the transformative power of creativity, you will be prepared to contribute meaningfully to local, national, and global artistic discourses and practices.

• What will our digital future look like?
• How could AI transform global societies?
• What media will we watch, listen to, wear, be tracked by, or collaborate with – whether in smart cities, virtual workplaces, or even in outer space?

These are the big questions that this module will explore, addressing how past visions of technological futures inform the speculative digital landscapes we imagine today. This module examines the social, cultural, and political implications of these technologies, addressing issues such as personalisation, surveillance, platform governance, and digital inequalities. You will explore critical debates on issues such as automation, data governance, digital labour, and ethics while reflecting on the future of digital media in everyday life.

‘The body’ is a key site of both control and resistance in media culture. This module explores how media representations, cultural norms, and societal structures shape perceptions of the body, identity, and agency. Thinking about body politics through an intersectional lens, you’ll critically examine issues like gender, sexuality, race, disability, class, and body type, unravelling the intricate connections between media and the lived experience of the body. We’ll think about what kinds of bodies fit social and cultural norms, how these norms are circulated and embedded in the public imaginary, and whether bodies can be re-imagined as sites of resistance.