The Open College of the Arts

The OCA BA (Hons) Creative Arts degree gives you an exciting opportunity if you have a passion for more than one creative arts practice. This Open degree programme allows you to choose from the full range of distance learning courses available through the OCA, combining the study of art, creative writing, art history, printmaking, sculpture, music, graphic design, illustration, book design, and photography. You may combine the media which interest you most, studying poetry and music for example, or art alongside creative writing, or illustration together with photography.

The Creative Arts Open Degree provides a unique opportunity for OCA students to fulfil their creative potential by studying two disciplines in depth to degree level. The development of a new level six programme for this degree gives a real opportunity to grow in its ability to merge two separate disciplines and create one final body of work, contextualise this work and develop an understanding of a professional practice.... [-]

The programme will allow you to gain experience of writing in a variety of literary forms including life writing, poetry, script writing, short fiction and writing for children, as well as developing your critical understanding of the theoretical and conceptual issues central to the practice of writing.

The OCA BA (Hons) Creative Writing degree programme is sensitive to the fact that students will be enrolling at different levels of writing expertise. Some will be novices for whom this is a first serious foray into creative writing and want to become a writer of published works; others may already have a portfolio of published work behind them. Whatever they bring with them to their degree, studying through OCA will provide a structured and supportive context within which they may foster their formation as writers and gain educational validation for their work. The Level 6 units have been designed to afford an opportunity to focus on a large-scale creative project. Your progression towards its production is facilitated by a mentoring model of tutor-student relationship; students are able to choose their tutor at this level, selecting the specific individual whose specialist expertise most closely matches the nature of the work envisaged.... [-]

The OCA BA (Hons) Graphic Design degree curriculum focuses on the visual language of graphic design and application of creative problem solving to deliver visual solutions that communicate effectively. The combination of typography, image, and layout are the basic visual building blocks of graphic design and are explored through an investigation of visual language and dynamics, in relationship to wider visual culture and through their application in a range of design contexts.

A practical and contextual understanding of typography and type design is introduced at HE Level 4 and extended at Level 5 of this Graphic Design Open degree. Editorial design, infographics, wayfaring, branding, campaigning, and identity design are introduced as specialist practices at Level 5. Students are encouraged to expand their definitions of graphic design through an exploration of contemporary practices and the relation to on-going developments in print, new media and other forms of communication.... [-]

This unique BA (Hons) Interior Design Open Degree places emphasis on the positive reshaping of attitudes and preconceptions of interior design. It is designed to foster ambition and creativity so that students can become spatial dreamers, architectural investigators and playful innovators of interiors.

The BA (Hons) Interior Design will encourage students to challenge and propose new and innovative occupations of space and will allow students the freedom to develop their own individual design identities, using digital and analogue software and techniques. The course will encourage students to creatively explore and challenge the notion of space and how it is used, whilst incrementally introducing them to the technical, practical and professional skills of interior design. Students will question both the physical and the invisible, initiate rigorous methods of the process led research and experimentation, as the foundation of imaginative and well-realised designs.... [-]

With our open learning approach, the OCA’s Visual Communications degree (comprising of Graphic Design and Illustration courses) provides a real alternative to traditional campus-based learning. Our inspiring course materials enable you to work at your own pace, in your own time, and whenever you choose to study.

The BA (Hons) Visual communication course offers an accessible distance learning experience through which students are encouraged to develop a sense of visual inquiry, expand their horizons, and begin to find a personal creative voice within their practice. The course provides an interdisciplinary approach to study through which students can choose and explore a breadth of subjects, moving towards specialisms in graphic design, illustration or a combination of these subjects.... [-]