Sculpture

There will be several opportunities to collaborate with others, but at a minimum, your programme will include 277 contact hours and 1523 independent study hours. Contact hours can consist of lectures, seminars, tutorials, critical forums and workshops, among other types of teaching delivery.

Teaching types included on your programme can consist of briefings, projects, tutorials, seminars, lectures, critical forums, technical inductions, technical workshops, offsite visits and blended learning.

The programme is delivered across three terms and includes a combination of programme, School and College units.

Term 1

In Sites and Situations (45 credits), you identify the intention of your practice, its context and its relation to site and material. This begins with an orientation of the culture and philosophy of the programme, the

location (city and building), facilities, staff and other students’ work.

Sites and Situations embeds the central notion of thinking-through-practice. This is achieved through tutorials, critiques, seminars, panel talks and off-site activities. Sites and Situations supports you through the production of work, demonstrating the ability to develop a creative, innovative and individual practice. Through the unit, you will locate their work within a critical context that reflects current and emerging approaches to the production of sculpture and the wider arts and humanities.

Term 2

The Expanded Field (30 credits) you identify the future direction of your practice, its relation to materiality and immateriality. There is a focus on collaboration and an interdisciplinary context. This further embeds the culture and philosophy of the programme: experimentation, innovation and critical reflection.

The Expanded Field encourages the development of an individual studio practice, within a wider

matrix of professional relationships. This is achieved through collaborative off-site projects, workshops and a lecture series that is designed to support and encourage self-reflection, creative responses and a critical understanding of the creative economy.

The School-wide unit Urgency of the Arts (15 credits) asks 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 ta diversf 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 recognising, 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, students will develop an understanding of the contemporary concerns that shape and influence artistic practice.

You will be supported in understanding their work's possibilities, complexities and impact. They will be encouraged to contextualise it within broad cultural landscapes to recognise and emphasise its potential anthe complex waysch their work may be received and understood.

Terms 1 and 2

AcrossRCA (College-wide unit, 30 credits)

Across terms 1 and 2, you will participate in AcrossRCA. This unit aims to support youin meetingt the challenges of a complex, uncertain and changing world by bringing you together to work collaboratively in interdisciplinary teams on a series of themed projects informed by expertise within and beyond the College. These projects will challenge you to use your intellect and imagination to address key cultural, social, environmental and economic challenges. In doing so, you will develop and reflect on the abilities required to translate knowledge into action, and help demonstrate the contribution the creative arts can make to our understanding and experience of the world.

Term 3

The Independent Research Project (60 credits) 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 hotoan activate your work in a public context, experiment with the most appropriate forms of realising your ideas and gain critical feedback.

The IRP exhibition takes place mid-way through the unit. It will be followed by a reflection and further development period, which emphasises planning for continued practice and research post-graduation. The Independent Research Project offers a point of synthesis through exhibition and subsequent critical reflection. The focus is on self-directed study.

Assessment will be based upon the Portfolio of Practice. A reflective document that looks at the key elements of development which led to your research and exhibition. Also, how has creative identity been forged for future practice? The Portfolio of Practice will include the ideas and context from which the work emerged, including experimentation, decision-making, conceptual ambition, (im)materials and meaning.

AcrossRCA is a compulsory 30-credit unit which is delivered as part of all MA programmes.

Situated at the core of your RCA experience, this ambitious interdisciplinary College-wide unit supports you in responding to the challenges of complex, uncertain and changing physical and digital worlds. Developed in response to student feedback, AcrossRCA creates an exciting opportunity for you to collaborate meaningfully across programmes.

Challenging you to use your imagination and intellect to respond to urgent contemporary themes, this ambitious unit will provide you with the opportunity to:

• make connections across disciplines
• think critically about your creative practice
• develop creative networks within and beyond the College
• generate innovative responses to complex problems
• reflect on how to propose ideas for positive change in local and/or global contexts

AcrossRCA launches with a series of presentations and panel discussions from acclaimed speakers who will introduce the themes and act as inspirational starting points for your collaborative team response.

Delivered online and in-person across two terms, the unit has been designed to complement your disciplinary studies and to provide you with a platform to thrive beyond graduation.