MA Art & Environment – (M.A.)

For full-time students this is a one-year course delivered over 45 weeks. Alternatively, you can study the course part-time over two years, totalling 90 weeks. The academic year begins in October and ends in September.

This course has been developed from the research group in Art, Nature & Environment (RANE) and has built upon aspects of the MA Arts & Ecology, formerly run at Dartington. It combines staff-led and group-led workshops and seminars, independent research, individual tutorials, ongoing practice-based projects, written assignments, a dissertation and the realisation of a final body of work. There may also be occasional ‘intensives’ during the course together with the potential for exhibitions and events beyond the College context.

The seminars reflect on the many different ways that artists engage with issues of environment. They’re designed to provide a broad knowledge of this mode of practice and focus in depth on specific examples. These act as a catalyst for further research and exploration to consider how artists engaged with such work reach their selected audiences and interact with them. They also provide case studies and methods you can draw on to enrich your own practice, as well as subject specific knowledge for researching your particular environmental art project.

Some of the teaching is shared with other MA courses in the School of Art & Performance. This shared provision provides opportunities for you to engage, and potentially collaborate, with other students and disciplines and includes a practical introduction to research methods appropriate for contemporary art. Research, in this context, is understood to feed directly into the making and understanding of art.

A series of workshops examines ways that artists use mark-making, images, sounds and texts to generate, categorise and present knowledge. The programme also provides professional skills to enable you to develop your practice, including learning about generating funding, writing proposals, documenting work, making presentations and exhibiting. You’ll also be expected to test out your ideas and work in a public context.

The core of the course culminates in your final project, which develops from your individual creative practice that engages with some aspect of the environment and is informed by your own research interests.

In the second half of the course you’ll complete a dissertation that theorises your work and contextualises it within the field of environmental art and thinking. You’ll be encouraged to see your writing as a tool to help you gain a deeper understanding of your practice. In order to support this, a series of seminars will study texts and statements by environmental artists, encouraging you to develop your own style of writing and establish a structure for your dissertation.

The course engages with the wider community of art and environment through the RANE research group, led by Daro Montag. This provides a guest lecture series and further seminars and conferences, drawing on the expertise of international artists and others working with the environment in a lively programme of events. Past speakers have included Alan Sonfist, Lynne Hull, John Jordan, Basia Irland and Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison. Additionally, visitors on the Arts & Ecology MA have included Red Earth, Karen Guthrie, Wrights & Sites, Dr Christian Taylor, Pauline Oliveros and Martin Prothero.

How is the course taught?

Our overall teaching philosophy caters for diversity and is aimed at individual development. There’s considerable flexibility on the course and you’ll have good access to staff for tutorials and informal discussion. The course-specific content is taught through small group seminars, workshops and crits. The units shared with other MA courses are taught through lectures and seminars.