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foUndaTionLevel 3/4 Diploma in Foundation Studies art, design & media

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05. Julia Hopkins

196 197Foundation Diploma in Art, Design & Media

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Foundation students learn a wide range of methods and techniques, while being encouraged to learn through experimentation. The course provides the fundamental basis to study art and design practice, which makes it the preferred route to Higher Education Art & Design specialised study.

The busy studios provide a friendly, enthusiastic atmosphere where you can develop your work and gain confidence. The Foundation course will offer you the time and space to discover where your strengths lie, to challenge and confirm your skills and abilities and to successfully identify your future direction and career.

The course provides a full-time programme over one year or, for those with work or other commitments, part-time study over two years, attending 10 hours per week (daytime only).

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198 199Foundation Diploma in Art, Design & Media

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Stage One (Level 3)

This is diagnostic in nature and enables students to identify their potential and preference for specialist areas of study.

This stage provides an introduction to: Fine Art, Visual Communication, Fashion/Textiles, 3D Design and Lens-Based Media.

Stage Two (Level 3)

Students produce a portfolio of work within their specialist area of study and prepare for application via UCAS and interviews.

Study options include: Fashion, Fine Art, Furniture Design, Graphics, Illustration, Interior Architecture, Jewellery, Painting, Photography, Product Design, Textiles, Theatre Design, Video.

Stage Three (Level 4)

Students complete a Major Project which they present for assessment and certification in the form of a public exhibition.

All stages of the programme are supported by study visits to galleries and sites of interest both locally and in major centres such as London and Amsterdam. Historical and Contextual Studies and a range of drawing classes and workshops continue throughout the course.

Entry requirements: One subject at GCE ‘A’ level or equivalent plus five passes at GCSE including English or Welsh at C plus, or other qualifications deemed equivalent by the Academic Board. All applicants with suitable qualifications are interviewed in an informal and friendly setting and should bring a portfolio of visual work and an example of written work.

Students over 21 years may waive formal qualifications.

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“ Swansea’s Foundation Art & Design was extremely valuable to me. It’s a very nurturing and encouraging course. The tutors are inspiring and it is a fantastic environment to be a part of. Foundation helped me grow as a person and I can honestly say that it has been one of the most appreciated years of my life”.

Jonny Bayes

200 201Foundation Diploma in Art, Design & Media

In recent years the Foundation Art, Design & Media Course at Swansea has become one of the most successful in the UK with an outstanding record of placements and pass rates.

Resources:

The Foundation Studios are located on the 5th floor of the Swansea Business School, right next to the train station, with wonderful views of the city, sea and hills.

The open plan studios provide a friendly and integrated working environment, less than 10 minutes walk from the Dynevor Centre, the Faculty of Art & Design building, where we have access to state of the art facilities, lecture theatres, the library and darkrooms.

Within our own building we have a range of facilities, including a library (Business), canteen and our open access computer suite, with Apple Macs and up to date software, to support student activities from Video editing to searching the internet for a University place.

Students benefit from generous shared studio space and individual work-stations for all students, facilities for print-making, dyeing and woodwork, a small darkroom and a range of digital, textile, and other equipment.

Workshops on book-binding, casting and other practical activities take place in both our own studio and the workshops in the Dynevor Centre, with taster classes being provided by all the undergraduate courses.

Future careers and graduate success

Students progress on to a variety of degree courses in universities throughout the country and many stay on to study at Swansea.

Application

Applications for this course should be made directly to us, please contact us at artanddesign@smu.ac.uk or visit our website for details.

The Foundation course is free and no tuition fees are charged. There is an annual studio fee.

“ I came to Foundation from a non art backround. I felt instantly at ease, encouraged and happy in all the workshops and with all the teaching right from day one. I got so much out of the course it really was a life changing experience.  I gained confidence in my art work and made great friends. I chose to specialise in Fine Art and loved the freedom to work it gave me. I decided to go on and do a Fine Art degree. In my first term it has made it clear that Foundation at Swansea is way above other foundation courses, shown by how confidently I can talk about my own work, and positive comments from my tutors about my contributions to group crits”.

Ada Cook

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202202 203Foundation Staff Profiles

Tim Stokes

Tim studied Fine Art, specialising in animation and video.

Tim produces work in a range of media including video, animation, photography, drawing and mixed media. Recent work has been concerned with destroying and reconstructing personal narratives – “the need to hold onto something: a memory, a time… and the inability of ever truly being able to do so”.

As technician/demonstrator Tim provides technical and practical support to the course, including specialist workshops in animation, video editing and Photoshop.

Bella Kerr

Bella trained in Fine Art and Film and has been an active practitioner since graduating.

Drawing has provided continuity in a practice that has spanned installation, small-scale multiples, film, set design and photography. She has exhibited in a range of contexts from film screenings in major London galleries and international film festivals, to museums and regional galleries. Recent work has been in the form of large-scale installations and written research towards her recent MPhil Reading Rooms: Manifestations of Domestic Space in Visual Art and Literature, 2008.

Bella leads a broad-based Fine Art area within the Foundation course, in addition to her role as Programme Director.

Anna Lewis

Anna trained as a jewellery designer and has been an active practitioner for the last 13 years in this field since graduation.

Working on a large scale and adopting mixed media materials and techniques is key to Anna’s way of working with a focus on a fashion aesthetic. In the past Anna has explored a range of materials such as feathers, leather, wood, silver and silk, often fusing hard materials with textile print processes. An interest with adopting hand made techniques and combining them with advanced technologies such as laser, water jet cutting and digitally printed textiles grew into the focus for Anna’s MA in Textiles. Key research areas currently explore the notion of beauty, death, and the uncanny.

Anna leads the Fashion and Textiles area within the Foundation course and also inputs into lens-based media, drawing on her experiences of collaborating within fashion photography and music video as a stylist and production designer.

Eilish O’Donohoe

Eilish trained in Textiles and Fine Art and completed an MPhil on the relationship between Image and Text in 2004.

Eilish’s practice revolves around the visual nature of language, of the materiality of text and of visible language as imagery. She is particularly interested in the notion of the book as object, as container, as material form and as a conveyor of her artistic and theoretical practice. The now almost defunct industry of Letterpress is central to her studio work.

Eilish is the Contextual Studies co-coordinator and leads the Visual Communication area within the Foundation course.

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Melanie Evans

Melanie trained as a graphic designer and has worked actively in this field since graduating. She continues to work as a freelance designer combining it with the marketing and exhibition curation of arts based businesses in addition to her lecturing commitments.

Melanie describes her work as informed by: Russian Constructivism, Bauhaus, Peter Saville, Herbert Bayer, El Lissitzky, Film Noir, Die Neue Typographie, and led by design principles including: the paramount importance of composition, the use of grids to create order out of chaos and working intuitively.

Shellie Holden

Shellie trained in Textiles, Manchester Metropolitan University, BA (HONS 1995 and Goldsmiths College of Art, MA, 2006, London

Her practice lies on the peripheries between drawing, making and textiles. She uses these disciplines to explore the materiality of making combining paper and thread, words and spaces, fantasies and memories.

Shellie lectures across disciplines on the Foundation Art and Design Programme - fashion/textiles, 3d design and fine art.

Anthony Arrowsmith

Anthony trained as a photographer and exhibits regularly.

Of recent polaroid work he wrote: “Instant photographic images are as close to drawing that mechanical reproduction can aspire to. They are individual, unique, singular images that are not repeatable”.

Anthony is co-leader of the Visual Communication area within the Foundation course, focusing on photography and lens-based media.

Katherine Clewett

Kath trained as a Fine Artist and has recently completed an MA.

In relation to her research she writes: “3D drawings or models allow me to expand form before considering function”.

Kath leads the Applied Art & Design area within the Foundation course, focusing on 3D studies.