Fine Art
Entry requirements
UCAS Tariff
Although many of our students do come in with top grades and high UCAS points, these aren’t necessarily essential for entry. We typically ask for a minimum of 104 UCAS points, but we understand that talented artists, designers and makers can have a wide range of relevant strengths and skills beyond formal qualifications. We’re just as interested in exploring your portfolio as we are in seeing your grades.
You may also need to…
Present a portfolio
About this course
This course has alternative study modes. Contact the university to find out how the information below might vary.
Arts University Plymouth is an arts university for the 21st century, preparing students who are uniquely placed to provide creative solutions to the complex global challenges of a changing world. Formerly known as Plymouth College of Art, we were granted full university title in Spring 2022. We are now the city of Plymouth’s first and only specialist arts university, allowing us to offer our students a dynamic and unique learning experience.
In May 2022 we were awarded the **Best Small or Specialist University at the 2022 WhatUni Student Choice Awards**, coming top in a list of well-respected specialist UK universities, based on unbiased and honest reviews from students across the UK, in a category that highlights the quality of our provision as a specialist creative university.
Our Fine Art course is, at its core, rigorous and questioning, encouraging an ambitious diversity of approaches in thinking and making. Promoting an interdisciplinary exploration of contemporary art, we encourage an ambitious, self-directed and critically engaged approach to developing creative practice. This is a dynamic course where you will gain skills to critically question and actively create.
The course is characterised by its focus on the development of individual practice-based study through exposure to a wide variety of material methods and modes of art practice. Led and supported by a stimulating community of creative practitioners, the core academic team are experienced artists who are active makers, writers and researchers in contemporary fine art practice. The course encourages diversity in thinking and making, based on the potential in material exploration, collaborative working, cross-fertilisation of ideas and the exploration of new concepts and materials.
With opportunities for working collaboratively, deepening cultural understanding and exploring new processes in workshops, you’ll be working in a learning environment that provides a meaningful link between your studio practice and contemporary art theory. The course is interdisciplinary, enabling you to engage in workshops for drawing, sound, glass, installation, video, clay, performance, painting, scale and sculpture, projection mapping, wood, video, printmaking, critical writing, 3D casting in plaster, alginate, rubber and traditional sculptural practices.
The Fine Art course includes a framework of professional practice opportunities; you will develop an unrivalled understanding of the professional art world through our ongoing partnerships which include emerging and established galleries, museums, creative organisations and practising artists. You will develop a professional understanding of the creative activity of external partners and will be very well placed to enter the professional creative sector upon graduating.
We are committed to encouraging studio and post-studio practices, creating artwork that can inhabit a range of settings including galleries, artist-run spaces and site-specific or event-based projects. During your studies you are given and will also create regular opportunities to exhibit and test your practice in the public domain. We currently work with KARST gallery in Plymouth, and we have collaboration projects with Otis College of Art and Design in LA, Alfred University in New York and Winthrop University in South Carolina. The college’s onsite public exhibition space, MIRROR, also draws a range of national and international artists and exhibitions, allowing for the opportunity to engage with artists through related workshops, talks and screenings.
Our students are ones who relish questioning; they have a hunger to learn and an ambition in their independent practices. The course will teach you to take risks; this will situate you in the world as and active agent, and instil in you a sense of yourself as a thinker and maker. Study with us and you’ll expand your critical approach alongside developing rich skills in questioning, making and analysis.
Modules
Our programme provides a dynamic and stimulating learning environment from which to test new models of practice, while investing in the rich relationship between practice and theory.
We are committed to encouraging studio and post-studio practices, creating artwork that can inhabit a range of settings including galleries, artist-run spaces, and site-specific or event-based projects.
You will be able to place your work within the wider context of contemporary fine art practice, helping to prepare you for your artistic career or continue your journey through postgraduate study.
Tuition fees
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The Uni
Arts University Plymouth
Arts, Design and Media
What students say
We've crunched the numbers to see if overall student satisfaction here is high, medium or low compared to students studying this subject(s) at other universities.
How do students rate their degree experience?
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Art
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Who studies this subject and how do they get on?
Most popular A-Levels studied (and grade achieved)
After graduation
We don't have more detailed stats to show you in relation to this subject area at this university but read about typical employment outcomes and prospects for graduates of this subject below.
What about your long term prospects?
Looking further ahead, below is a rough guide for what graduates went on to earn.
Art
The graph shows median earnings of graduates who achieved a degree in this subject area one, three and five years after graduating from here.
£13k
£16k
£18k
Note: this data only looks at employees (and not those who are self-employed or also studying) and covers a broad sample of graduates and the various paths they've taken, which might not always be a direct result of their degree.
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Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF):
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This information comes from the National Student Survey, an annual student survey of final-year students. You can use this to see how satisfied students studying this subject area at this university, are (not the individual course).
This is the percentage of final-year students at this university who were "definitely" or "mostly" satisfied with their course. We've analysed this figure against other universities so you can see whether this is high, medium or low.
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This information is from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), for undergraduate students only.
You can use this to get an idea of who you might share a lecture with and how they progressed in this subject, here. It's also worth comparing typical A-level subjects and grades students achieved with the current course entry requirements; similarities or differences here could indicate how flexible (or not) a university might be.
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Post-six month graduation stats:
This is from the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education Survey, based on responses from graduates who studied the same subject area here.
It offers a snapshot of what grads went on to do six months later, what they were earning on average, and whether they felt their degree helped them obtain a 'graduate role'. We calculate a mean rating to indicate if this is high, medium or low compared to other universities.
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Graduate field commentary:
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The Longitudinal Educational Outcomes dataset combines HRMC earnings data with student records from the Higher Education Statistics Agency.
While there are lots of factors at play when it comes to your future earnings, use this as a rough timeline of what graduates in this subject area were earning on average one, three and five years later. Can you see a steady increase in salary, or did grads need some experience under their belt before seeing a nice bump up in their pay packet?
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