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European Fine Art Masters:

Art Society Nature

A two-year, full-time programme accredited by the French art school ESADHaR

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The first of its kind in the UK, the Art Society Nature programme is a unique Anglo-French collaboration between The Margate School and the École Supérieure d’Art et Design Le Havre-Rouen (ESADHaR).

The programme provides an alternative approach to higher education through a series of practical and critical modules where students are encouraged to explore how art can be used to benefit, protect and sustain the world.

We take an open and inclusive approach to fine art practice and encourage inclusive and sustainable approaches to material investigation accompanied by enhanced critical enquiry.

Each cohort is capped at 15 places so that we can provide a very low student to tutor ratio, a high level of one-to-one time and encourage whole group collaboration. 

 

**This course operates at postgraduate level but a degree is not required if the candidate can demonstrate sufficient experience and practice in a relevant field. 

Artwork by Anna Presilia, Fine Art Masters Student

* This course runs subject to recruiting the minimum number of students each academic year.

The course consists of a suite of modules that include practical workshops, ongoing cumulative modules that run across the two year programme, tutorial support and a programme of Guest Lecturers.

Taught sessions include 

  • one to one and group tutorials with TMS tutors and guest lecturers

  • seminar discussions and group critiques within and across the 2 years of study

  • collaborative work within TMS and with ESDAHaR student
     

Taught sessions are on Tuesdays and Wednesdays with the majority of sessions taking place at TMS

 

The Margate School believes that learning in a collaborative and critical environment will nurture independent thinking, self-confidence and raise aspirations. Classes will be hands-on, dynamic and may extend outside of the school building. You will be studying in a busy, sociable environment alongside studio holders and the wider TMS community. 

 

The Art, Society, Nature coordinator and tutors are research active practitioners with a core team of regular and visiting tutors teaching specific modules.

 

We work with you to develop your practice, with your feedback helping to shape the programme each year.

Term Dates

October 2023 to June 2024

Deadline To Apply

Applications Are Open

Interview Dates

TBC Applications Are Open

Core Module

01

Mémoire

This module adds creative response to the traditional model of a written dissertation. Working across both years of study, students undertake a body of research that identifies, articulates and contextualises the themes within their work. Theoretical contexts and the material influence of artists are considered as case studies with the Mémoire including creative responses where written outcomes can take many different approaches and be presented in different forms. 

 

Progression accumulates through lectures, introductions to research and practice based arts, group discussions, creation of a blog and seminars.

Core Module

02

History & Philosophy of Art

Providing a basis for research into critical discourse, this module runs across both years of study.  Students are introduced to a wide range of theory related to contemporary practice including embodied learning, intersectionality,  permaculture and transition arts, meta narratives, storytelling, and more. Social, cultural and environmental issues are also considered through the consideration of discourse addressing the rise of production, exchange and values, new materiality, thing theory, consumerism and ethics.  

 

The module take a discursive approach through regular tutor presentations, group seminars and tutorials.

These practice-based modules each run across eight weekly sessions and are based on the premise of making. 

Practice Module

01

Maker & Body

Where creative themes include embodied and haptic drawing as movement, memory and presence. Sessions are based on themes of the body as societal, other, subverted, fragmented, watched, medicalised and fictionalised.

Practice Module

02

Making a Stand

This module looks into the role art has played in all forms of Protest. Students reflect on and explore how their practice can influence society, promote and achieve change, from the everyday to mass movements, whilst also developing individual approaches to aesthetic styles and identities.

Practice Module

03

Making Visible

This considers the expanded field of photography through the exploration of digital and analogue approaches to photographic materiality, apparatus and language leading to the production of artists books and zines.

Practice Module

04

Making Digital

Where students investigate the use of digital media to create short film works. Module elements include the use of software, stop motion, compositing and computer graphics and considers speculative disciplines such as science fiction, epistemology and new writing of the image.

Practice Module

05

Making Sounds & Something Else

Which introduces students to sound technology, sound art, experimental music, sound and public space, sound sculpture and practices of listening.  The module includes improvised and performed approaches to sound-making and listening as practice and includes practical workshops on editing, composition, ways of combining sound and soundscape recording.

Additional Units 
 

These run across both years of study and include: 

 

Guest Lectures where practicing artists and researchers introduce the wider context of making in the UK and Europe.

 

French Language where students are invited to play with words, rules and structures to assess the possibility of translating and reflecting on their practice in another language.  Students analyse their own artefacts, created or otherwise, articulating the layers within their work and the possible words associated with it.

 

Internship where, with the support of TMS,  students negotiate a period of professional development in their field of study at the end of their first year.


Tutorial support with each student allocated 5 tutorials per semester in addition to regular taught modules and workshops.

Term Dates

October 2023 to June 2024

Deadline To Apply

Applications Are Open

Interview Dates

TBC Applications Are Open

* This course runs subject to recruiting the minimum number of students each academic year.

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