Admission Criteria

Candidates must be able to satisfy the general admission requirements of the University of the West of Scotland as specified in Chapter 2 of the University Regulatory Framework together with the following programme requirements:

SQA National Qualifications

or GCE

or SQA National Qualifications/Edexcel Foundation

Year 3
HND in Art, Design, Computer Arts, Contemporary Art Practice, Filmcraft, Animation, Photography, Visual Communication, Audio Visual Technology, Digital Media, Sound Production, Technical Theatre, Production Arts or relevant discipline and English Higher (B grade or above) or relevant alternative.

Other Required Qualifications/Experience

Further desirable skills pre-application

All applicants will be expected to submit a personal statement, reference and portfolio. Full explanation of this will be provided to applicants through an Admissions Staff contact. Initial offers and rejections will be made on the basis of the above. Should places remain available after this first stage, remaining applicants will be invited for interview. Full details of the interview criteria will be provided to the applicants ahead of their interview date through an Admissions Staff contact.

General Overview

BA (Hons) New Media Art is a two-year undergraduate degree programme and aims to provide a creative and critical learning platform where students explore diverse relationships between artmaking and emerging media technologies. Students will discover/rediscover and develop their creative practices through the following four phases:

[3rd Year] Space-based: Audiovisual Art, Motion Graphics, Time-based Art

[4th Year] Specialism-based: Portfolio Development, Independent Projects

Throughout the course, students will learn historical, contemporary, cultural and social contexts of new media art and will be introduced to a range of media technologies that can be utilised in arts and other creative applications.

New media technologies and contexts introduced will encourage students to become experimental in learning and utilising technologies in art making, critical in situating their practices at a historical, social, cultural and political context, and autonomous in identifying applications of their creative practices within or across fine art, conceptual art, installation art, film, animation, graphic design, illustration, projection art, sound art, interactive art, community arts or/and education.

Key to the vision of this programme is the world of New Media Art. New Media Art captures the technological innovations which now inform and connect all aspects of contemporary life – providing a way to understand and communicate the relationships between people, places and things. This creative field is now recognised as being one of the fastest growing creative art forms in the world today – with exciting directions being forged by an upcoming generation of artists who recognised the intersections between creative art practice and new technologies.

Programme philosophy

Students are enabled to learn in discovery mode as co-producers of the curriculum. We also recognise that a graduate career is important to our students, so we design our programmes such that the first day in the academy for our students is also their first day in industry. In the context of the current development, our New Media Art provision is distinguished in terms of its cross- and interdisciplinary design, which provides students with a rich and stimulating range of opportunities to learn and produce collaboratively, mirroring the dynamics of real world professional settings.

To support consistent and balanced development, and to allow for student clarity around their own learning journey, the 120 credits of available module content at each level will be mapped with focus across three main strands –

Creative Development, Technical Development and Critical Development.

Beyond this framing device of ‘three strands’, the programme holds an epistemological commitment to integrated practice as praxis, rather than an artificial and creatively unsustainable separation of practical and theoretical activity, and support students to realise this as they develop through each level.

Furthermore, with this recognised connection between these strands, the programme draws on established set of institutional-level Graduate Attributes, “I am UWS” as a ‘holistic glue’ to illustrate the integrated nature of an accumulative learning journey.

The programme provides students with space to develop their practice in a context of expressive collaboration across and between disciplines. It will also equip graduates with the interpersonal and interdisciplinary capacity to deploy their creativity in pluralistic professional settings. The programme should therefore appeal to the growing number of creative practitioners who want to define their practice in a research-infused context. 

Articulation of academic themes

The development team agree that contemporary and effective New Media Art programmes should cover the following five academic themes:

• Theory
• History, culture and policy
• Research
• Practice skills
• Industry

The programme learning outcomes have been mapped against each of these five themes to ensure that students can objectively demonstrate their achievement in each area. At the same time, however, the programme philosophy rests on an appreciation of practice as a research-infused deployment of technique as a creative and contextual response. As such, the programme learning outcomes are designed to enable students to bring these academic themes together in their practice.

The above caveats notwithstanding, the programme learning outcomes architecture is presented such that the first learning outcome for each characteristic relates to history, culture and policy; the second relates to theory; the third to research; the fourth to practice skills; and the fifth to industry. 

Realisation of graduate attributes

The focus of this programme supports students to become leading creative practitioners, merging art, culture, and technology, placing our graduates in a strong position within the creative landscape. Following an in-depth arts training, students will graduate with aptitudes across the three core areas identified in our Programme Philosophy – namely, Creative Skills, Technical Skills, and Critical Skills. These areas with align with institutionally set graduate attributes (see I am UWS, with these attributes providing a ‘holistic glue’ to map the nature of this integrated practice as praxis (see above).

Student Journey

Full-time students will undertake the modules in the order they appear in the relevant programme schema. UWS encourages reassessment at the earliest opportunity, so flexibility will be utilised around reassessment to optimise student progression.

Part-time students will agree their learning journey with the programme team, particularly through guidance from their Personal Tutor and, as required, the School’s Education Guidance Adviser. Care will be taken to limit the student workload to 60 credits per academic year, so all other things being equal, the normal part-time journey will be as follows:

Students undertake three strands (40 credit each per year): Creative Development, Technical Development and Critical Development throughout the programme.

Creative Development

Moving Image & Time-based Art - Experimental Animation – Audio-Visual Art – Presentation & Promotion - Motion Graphics

Technical Development

Creative Interventions – Projection art – Creative Arts Research Project – Practice in Context

Critical Development

Research in Creative Practice – Creative Arts Research Project

Postgraduate progression routes

UWS has a corporate commitment to encouraging our students to progress to postgraduate study within the institution. So, in addition to the varied specialist Master’s degrees offered elsewhere, students who graduate from BA (Hons) New Media Art will be encouraged to progress onto our MA Creative Media Practice programme. This is an interdisciplinary programme that provides space for practitioners to explore and consolidate their creative identity across digital content, media, moving and still image, audio, writing and performance. Delivered by expert practitioners, the programme expands on undergraduate experience to further equip students for a career in the creative industries, offering network contacts, the chance to build a portfolio, and essential practical skills.

Employment routes

The programme design enables students to achieve both the “I am UWS” Graduate Attributes, and at the same time recognise their achievement in completing an in-depth arts training, with aptitudes across the three core areas identified in our Programme Philosophy – namely, Creative Skills, Technical Skills, and Critical Skills. Students will graduate with a portfolio of leading-edge creative outputs, a deep appreciation of the industry context of their practice, and a clear understanding of the requirements of a freelance career. 

Graduate Attributes, Employability & Personal Development Planning

Students will follow a course of study that will develop their skills via the UWS Graduate Attributes - Universal, Work-Ready and Successful. This programme additionally developed their performance skills to allow them to develop skills across areas of Creative, Technical and Critical domains. By analysing, inquiring and critically reflecting within the performance industry the students will become academically universal, academically work ready and academically successful. The programme encourages and directs the students to utilise emotional intelligence, ethics, cultural awareness, communication, influence, motivation, creative skills, Imagination and resilience to become personally universal, work ready and successful. The New Media Art programme empowers the student to be ready for employment through work related skills in collaboration, research, social responsibility, leadership, enterprise, ambition, driven, daring and transformation to become professionally universal, work ready and successful.  

Employability:

Post-graduation career opportunities exist in art, design, film, TV, theatre/performance, digital arts, media arts, community arts and education. Recent graduates work for various organisations including Apple, BBC Scotland and the NHS. Others work as freelance illustrators, artists and designers, or with community arts and education organisations.

Further study at postgraduate and masters level is also an option.

Personal Development Planning:

The programme is fully aligned with institutional priorities around the development of graduate attributes and with the institutional policy on personal development planning. The mapping of programme and module learning outcomes and employability-integrated assessment ensures the visibility of graduate attributes, employability and citizenship competencies. Personal development is embedded and explicitly signposted in the curriculum, with students provided with regular opportunities to capture and evaluate progression and development, stimulating reflection, self-regulation and a more constructive engagement with employability. It is recognised that personal development planning is an essential component of lifelong learning and continuing and professional development. To support this activity, all students are provided with access to personal development planning tools and enabled to develop a personal e-portfolio across the programme. The New Media Art programme has been designed with PDP at its core from level 9 to 10. Students will develop professionally, their academic writing skills and critical reflection whilst applying and developing their performance related skills. Students will negotiate with tutors their own learning journey via the programme learning outcomes. 

In addition, this programme strategically deploys individual modules to instil ‘Portfolio Journey’ throughout two years. This accumulative learning journey ideally complements the methodology of New Media Art where students are asked to seek ‘new’ and ‘original’ from ‘familiar’ and ‘unfamiliar’ environments.

Within each module, staff will discuss and identify key parts of their assessment work which will directly feed into students’ individual professional portfolio. These elements will display and showcase key areas of skill and creative competencies which will allow for a range of employment routes. Each year, students will have the opportunity to display and tutors will use student portfolios to monitor their learning and development throughout the programme. This is intended to encourage employability awareness, identify areas for personal development and will support the wider school’s approach to a student learning journey which promotes programme primacy, as opposed to modular.

Ethical Conduct

Generating an awareness of ethical practice in professional conduct is embedded as a key component of the teaching and learning environment for both the BA (Hons) Performance and BA (Hons) New Media Art programmes. Organised around the three core principles of Responsibility, Care and Consent, students and staff (including associate lecturers) attend annual workshops on professional conduct, exploring what constitutes good professional conduct, how to acknowledge poor professional conduct when it happens, and how to challenge questionable attitudes and patterns of behaviour immediately and sensitively in a clear and transparent fashion. The shared learning from these sessions flows through into module activity at all SCQF levels (9-10), where students engage in a practical learning journey that facilitates their ongoing development as autonomous, self-directed, ethical practitioners.

Work Based Learning/Placement Details

Professional based skills are gradually developed in the Creative Development and Technical Development modules of the programme, and students will be introduced to relevant professionals, protocols and employers which will prepare them for the two level ten exit modules Practice in Context and Presentation and Promotion.

Practice in Context offers students the opportunity to gain credit for a specific contemporary practice based specialism within the arts and performance industry. The module is designed to assist students to enhance their skills in such a way that it facilitates career and practice development in a professional manner/environment. Students will be required to demonstrate ability to apply evidence based methods in a practical setting, demonstrating their skills with performance or art based related issues as a ‘reflective practitioner’ in a relevant genre. Students will be expected to demonstrate their awareness and relevancy of their choices leading them to deploy a range of professional creative skills to realise a contemporary practice based specialism. 

Presentation and Promotion module aims to develop students’ critical thinking about career choice and work ethics in combination with their practical projects. The outcome of all student work should demonstrate a critical knowledge and understanding of the ways in which their career plans are developed and conceptualised. The students will utilise a number of processes specific to their cultural study in relation to the wider cultural industries chosen career path such as showreels, exhibitions, installations, audio examples, CV’s, covering letters and promotional portfolio websites to demonstrate their own personal skills. The module will allow students to consider career routes and opportunities and supply them with presentation, communication and generic cognitive skills to move towards employment in the cultural sector.

Engagement

In line with the Academic Engagement Procedure, Students are defined as academically engaged if they are regularly engaged with timetabled teaching sessions, course-related learning resources including those in the Library and on the relevant learning platform, and complete assessments and submit these on time.

Where a programme has Professional, Statutory or Regulatory Body requirements these will be listed here:

As personal development with this module is dependant on studio practice and involves group critique and discussion, students are expected to demonstrate a commitment to this learning journey.

Please see the Programme Handbook for general Programme Attendance protocol.

Where a student has failed to engage in the programme, the Dean of School or nominee may convene a School Panel to consider withdrawal of the student on the grounds of nonattendance.

A student may appeal against the decision of withdrawal on the basis of failing to meet engagement requirements.

Equality and Diversity

The University's Equality, Diversity and Human Rights Procedure can be accessed at the following link: UWS Equality and Diversity Policy

In line with the Equality Act 2010, the curriculum and delivery of Media, Culture & Society programmes are designed to promote the general equality duty, namely to:

• Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other conduct prohibited by the Act;
• Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not; and
• Foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

The programme supports equality of opportunity for students from different backgrounds and with different learning needs. Using appropriate platforms, learning materials will be presented electronically in formats that allow flexible access and manipulation of content. The programme complies with University regulations and guidance on inclusive learning and teaching practice. Specialist assistive equipment, support provision and adjustment to assessment practice will be made in accordance with UWS policy and regulations.

The School of Media, Culture & Society is committed to enabling all learners, respecting diversity, promoting equality and embedding inclusivity in all aspects of its work. It is fully cognisant of and compliant with relevant external and institutional policy in this area. The University’s Equality, Diversity and Human Rights Policy can be accessed at the following link: http://www.uws.ac.uk/equality/

Knowledge and Understanding

Practice - Applied Knowledge and Understanding

Communication, ICT and Numeracy Skills

Generic Cognitive Skills - Problem Solving, Analysis, Evaluation

Autonomy, Accountability and Working With Others

Knowledge and Understanding

Practice - Applied Knowledge and Understanding

Communication, ICT and Numeracy Skills

Generic Cognitive Skills - Problem Solving, Analysis, Evaluation

Autonomy, Accountability and Working With Others

Knowledge and Understanding

Practice - Applied Knowledge and Understanding

Communication, ICT and Numeracy Skills

Generic Cognitive Skills - Problem Solving, Analysis, Evaluation

Autonomy, Accountability and Working With Others

Knowledge and Understanding

Practice - Applied Knowledge and Understanding

Communication, ICT and Numeracy Skills

Generic Cognitive Skills - Problem Solving, Analysis, Evaluation

Autonomy, Accountability and Working With Others

Regulations of Assessment

Candidates will be bound by the general assessment regulations of the University as specified in the University Regulatory Framework.

An overview of the assessment details is provided in the Student Handbook and the assessment criteria for each module is provided in the module descriptor which forms part of the module pack issued to students. For further details on assessment please refer to Chapter 3 of the Regulatory Framework.

To qualify for an award of the University, students must complete all the programme requirements and must meet the credit minima detailed in Chapter 1 of the Regulatory Framework.

Combined Studies

There may be instances where a student has been unsuccessful in meeting the award criteria for the named award and for other more generic named awards existing within the School. Provided that they have met the credit requirements in line with the SCQF credit minima (please see Regulation 1.21), they will be eligible for an exit award of CertHE / DipHE or BA / BSc in Combined Studies.

For students studying BA, BAcc, or BD awards the award will be BA Combined Studies.

For students studying BEng or BSc awards, the award will be BSc Combined Studies.