Outline

Through this short course, you will access the wealth of RCA staff expertise through a unique programme of taught sessions and individualised mentoring. The four-week programme is structured on eight synchronous online taught sessions via Zoom in small multidisciplinary peer groups. Asynchronous engagement and feedback are provided via collaborative digital platforms to maintain and promote independent work between sessions. Upon completion of the programme, you will have an optional opportunity for a portfolio review with an Admission Tutor on the RCA Graduate Diploma.

The carefully structured sessions and exercises are designed to support you through a period of critical reflection and engagement. You will be taken through an intensive process of positioning and presenting your practice, critically engaging with your work, and developing strategies and languages to communicate your research and practice.

Personal Tutor

On starting the programme, you will meet your Personal Tutor. This relationship and access to personalised mentorship is unique to typical short course programmes. You will meet your tutor twice; beginning the programme and for an extended time in the final week. This diagnostic and reflective approach is vital to providing you with specific guidance and feedback.

Week 1 (session days 1 & 2): Navigating Work and Practice

• Lecture: Portfolio as Practice.
• Personal Tutor: Introduction and diagnostic feedback.
• Presentation: Mini-PechaKucha for storytelling.
• Technical: Fundamentals of InDesign for portfolio development.

Week 2 (session days 3 & 4): Framing and Context

• Workshop: Positioning practice and writing a positioning statement.
• Workshop: Telling your story in critical commentary.
• Technical: InDesign surgery and drop in support.
• Presentation: Group review (portfolio strategies and practitioner statement).

Week 3 (session days 5 & 6): Positioning and Situating

• Workshop: Situating practice through multidisciplinary collaboration.
• Workshop: Art of conversation and constellations.
• Project: Multidisciplinary collaboration responding to wicked problems.
• Presentation: Interdisciplinary group project and team presentations (communicating the intangible through contextualising research and insight).

Week 4 (Session days 7 & 8): Communication

• Personal Tutor: Feedback on your portfolio progress, alignment to progression intentions, and guidance to support completion.
• Presentation: End of programme review (resolution and clarity of communication).

Session day 9: Optional Portfolio Review

You can opt to secure an additional portfolio review with an Admissions Tutor from the RCA Graduate Diploma. This will take place after one month of completing the programme. This is to allow you time to work on your portfolio responding to feedback following the final review.

Participants must bring an existing body of current creative work to work on during the course. This body of work is what you will be using from the start of the course.

You will learn to:

• a deep understanding of the role of the portfolio in art and design practice.
• clarity of positioning your practice and greater awareness of how to transform your concerns, interests, skills, and approaches into a communication language.
• strategies for the initiation and maintenance of a portfolio as practice and how to tailor it for different contexts, purposes and audiences.
• increased confidence in discussing and presenting your research and practice in a diverse multidisciplinary peer group.
• a clear understanding of your individual progression requirements and a portfolio developed in Adobe InDesign for making an application.

You will engage and learn within a proven digital environment. There will be a blend of guided contact time through lectures, interactive workshops, presentations, small-group reviews, and one-to-one tutorials.

Outside of guided taught time, you will learn flexibly around your life, progressing your new portfolio at your own pace. You will have open access materials via our dedicated VLE and communing asynchronously through a shared digital platform where questions and feedback can be provided by students and staff.

Technologies you will engage with the programme through, include:

Moodle: Our dedicated Virtual Learning Environment

Moodle hosts a range of valuable resources to enable the learning experience, these include; timetables, reading materials, course slides, and technical tutorials.

Zoom: Video conferencing service, tools and functionality

Engage live with your tutors and peers. The Zoom platform also hosts a range of functions and tools for non-verbal communication, written feedback and commentary, as well as smaller breakout rooms for group work. For privacy and ethical reasons, sessions will not be recorded.

Padlet: The Virtual Studio

If Zoom is our face-to-face contact, Padlet is our shared digital space for learning. Commoning on structured Padlet pages ensures continuous sharing, feedback, and discussion inside and outside taught sessions, creating a collaborative culture through each week of the programme.

Adobe: InDesign

Ideal for those intending to develop a focused art and design portfolio for progression to Graduate Diploma, MA or equivalent level, or if there is a portfolio requirement for MPhil/PhD application.

It is also appropriate for:

• Those who seek career progression and personal development in professional practice.
• Anyone seeking career progression and personal development in professional practice who wishes to pursue a course or career in this area.
• Freelancers or self-employed art and design practitioners.

Please note that this is not a stipulation that you have a formal education qualification in art or design as long as you have a sustained practice equivalent.

In previous cohorts, our globally spread students have ranged from practitioners in senior roles with significant career experience and/or freelance practice, to early career practitioners looking to pursue MA level study or professional development.

The course is convened by Course Leader, Richard Nash, Designer, Artist and Publisher, as well as Senior Tutor (Research) at the Royal College of Art and co-founder of the RCA Artist Publishing Research group.

The staff team combines core staff leading specific sessions and a wider group of staff and ambassadors representing schools and research centres across the college. Our current and previous staff team includes:

• Whiskey Chow: Artist. Tutor (Research) MA Sculpture, Associate Lecturer MA Digital Direction and MA Information Experience Design.
• Gary Clough: Artist. Head of Programme Graduate Diploma.
• Dr Susannah Haslam: Researcher and Writer. Tutor (Research) Graduate Diploma and Cultural Historical Studies.
• Benji Jeffrey: Designer and Artist. Associate Lecturer Graduate Diploma.
• Adam Knight: Artists and Writer. Senior Tutor (Research) Graduate Diploma.
• Dr Ekua McMorris: Research, Writer and Photographer. Tutor (Research) Graduate Diploma.
• Pablo De Miguel Munoz: Consultant, Writer and Editor.
• Alkesh Parmar: Designer and Artist. Tutor (Research) Graduate Diploma.
• Julian Roberts: Fashion Designer. Tutor (Research) Graduate Diploma.
• Cato Barend van Schalkwyk: Designer and Creative Director. Associate Lecturer Graduate Diploma.

Our student Ambassadors are a core part of our teaching team. They are a group of current RCA students and alumni spanning schools across the college. They receive mentoring through the programme and provide an unique access to the students' experience and insight of the RCA.

By the end of this course, you will have:

• a deep understanding of the role of the portfolio in art and design practice.
• clarity of positioning your practice and greater awareness of how to transform your concerns, interests, skills, and approaches into a communication language.
• strategies for the initiation and maintenance of a portfolio as practice and how to tailor it for different contexts, purposes and audiences.
• increased confidence in discussing and presenting your research and practice in a diverse multidisciplinary peer group.
• a clear understanding of your individual progression requirements and a portfolio developed in Adobe InDesign ready for making a relevant application.

The benefits to you include:

• Identifying aims and requirements for progression at the RCA or other institutions, at levels 6, 7, and 8.
• Continuous feedback and a final portfolio review with an RCA Admissions Tutor
• Subject-specific guidance in one of our four pathways:

1. Communication Design
2. Fashion and Textiles,
3. Fine Art
4. Product, Interior and Spatial Design

• Guidance on academic skills and English language support
• Opportunity for collaboration and networking
• Portfolio design, development and technical support

Applications are now closed until further notice.

Applications will be assessed by the RCA course team every 2 weeks until the course is fully booked. We will inform all applicants by email within two weeks after they submit an application about whether or not they have been successful. Unfortunately we do not provide further feedback information.

If the course is fully booked and your application is successful, we will add your name to a waiting list.

Admission Criteria

• Good command of English with IELTS 5.5 minimum.
• A sustained practice through personal and/or professional experience and/or equivalent to BA level.
• A representative body of creative work (outcomes, process, developmental or experimentation).
• Ideally, a sound level of digital literacy and familiarity with Adobe InDesign and any specialism specific software for the creation and/or presentation of work.

How will I know that my place is confirmed?

The offer of a place will only be secured and confirmed when the RCA receives 100 per cent of the course fee payment. Places are secured on a first-come basis on receipt of appropriate payment.

How can I pay for the course?

The course needs to be paid in full by one instalment and via the online payment system using a debit or credit card. Once you are offered a place on the course you will receive a secure online booking link. Please complete the registration and booking process to make the booking. Please ensure that you are using the most up to date version of your internet browser. We regret that it is not possible to pay the course fee by instalments.

Watch the latest IN SESSION talk: Portfolio as Practice.

In this talk editor and curator Dr Gerrie van Noord, Gary Clough and Richard Nash discuss the importance of art direction, critical writing and content curation in the construction of a portfolio.

Using examples selected from their own practice and publishing projects, they explore how the portfolio, as a self-authored publication, can function in different contexts and for different purposes.

This is an opportunity to learn about some of the strategies that are important to positioning yourself through your portfolio to fully exploit your creative potential in art and design practice.