Sculpture

Term 1

Sites and Situations (45 credits)

Within this orientation unit you will be provided with the practical and theoretical tools of the programme. Teaching and learning happens within your studio time and workshop time, with regular project space presentations of work, and in group sessions, personal tutorials, critiques, and panel talks. Our lecture series is designed to expand your understanding and knowledge of the creative ecology begins in early in the unit. Sites and Situations culminates in ‘festus’ a collaborative dialogical off-site making, festival of ideas. In Sites and Situations you are supported to identify the intention of your practice, its context and relation to site and context. The unit embeds our central notion of thinking through making and helps you position your work within the current dialogues and debates of contemporary art.

Terms 1&2

AcrossRCA (Cross-College unit) (30 credits)

Across terms 1 and 2, you will participate in AcrossRCA. This unit aims to support you to meet the challenges of a complex, uncertain and changing world by bringing you together to work collaboratively in cross-programme interdisciplinary teams. In your team you will develop a self- initiated themed project, informed by expertise within and beyond the College. These projects will challenge you to collectively use your intellect and imagination to address key cultural, social, environmental and economic challenges. In doing so, you will develop and reflect on the abilities required to translate knowledge into action, and help demonstrate the contribution that the creative arts can make to our understanding and experience of the world.

Term 2

The Expanded Field (30 credits)

This unit encourages the development of your individual, innovative studio practice, and asks you to consider your practice within the wider matrix of professional and peer relationships, contextual and intellectual positions. Teaching inputs in The Expanded Field include our lecture series, which is designed to expand your understanding and knowledge of the creative ecology. The Expanded Field supports you in identifying the future direction of your practice, its relation to materiality/immateriality, and its potentials for dissemination across various platforms. You will be supported in your learning through individual and group tutorials, the lecture series, workshops and group sessions.

Urgency of the Arts (School Unit) (15 credits)

In term 2, School of Arts & Humanities Master’s students will participate in a School-wide unit called "The Urgency of the Arts." In this unit we ask how arts and humanities research and practice can engage with our current socio-political climate, and how might it shape, be necessary and essential in contemporary cultural debates.

The unit introduces you to a diverse range of perspectives, approaches and methods relevant to contemporary practice and thought in the arts and humanities. The delivery, predominantly based on workshops and featuring specialist presentations by leading artists, aims to assist you in recognising, questioning, expanding, and reevaluating your own artistic practices and disciplinary assumptions. Through interactions with staff and students from across the School, as well as through a variety of methodological approaches, you will develop an understanding of the contemporary concerns that shape and influence artistic practice. You will be encouraged to reflect on these as a means to articulate the potential of your own work within the context of broad cultural landscapes and urgent cultural debates.

Term 3

Independent Research Project (60 credits)

The 60-credit Independent Research Project (IRP) is an opportunity to build a body of work that addresses the key ambitions of your research and practice. You will work towards presenting a work or works in the IRP Public Exhibition, which enables you to explore how you can activate your work in a public context, experiment with the most appropriate forms of realising your ideas and gain critical feedback from a group of external arts professionals. The IRP Public Exhibition takes place as part of the unit, and is followed by a period of reflection and further development, which emphasises dissemination of your work over dematerialised platforms, planning for continued practice and research post-graduation.

You will be supported through individual and group tutorials and one-to-one technical support, alongside a series of programme specific and School-wide professional practice and alumni lectures. You will be supported in understanding the possibilities, complexities and impacts of your own work. You will be encouraged to contextualise your work within broad cultural landscapes to recognise and emphasise its potential and the complex ways in which your work may be received and understood. The production of your Portfolio of Practice and its delivery in the Presentation of Practice concludes the IRP.

AcrossRCA is a compulsory 30-credit unit which is delivered as part of all MA programmes.

Situated at the core of your RCA experience, this ambitious interdisciplinary College-wide unit supports you in responding to the challenges of complex, uncertain and changing physical and digital worlds. Developed in response to student feedback, AcrossRCA creates an exciting opportunity for you to collaborate meaningfully across programmes.

Challenging you to use your imagination and intellect to respond to urgent contemporary themes, this ambitious unit will provide you with the opportunity to:

• make connections across disciplines
• think critically about your creative practice
• develop creative networks within and beyond the College
• generate innovative responses to complex problems
• reflect on how to propose ideas for positive change in local and/or global contexts

AcrossRCA launches with a series of presentations and panel discussions from acclaimed speakers who will introduce the themes and act as inspirational starting points for your collaborative team response.

Delivered online and in-person across two terms, the unit has been designed to complement your disciplinary studies and to provide you with a platform to thrive beyond graduation.

The RCA Sculpture programme is supported by external partners including British Airways, BuildHollywood, Chanel, Colab Sculpture Garden/Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Gilbert Bayes Foundation, Harlow New Town Sculpture Residency, Koko Foundation, Kenneth Armitage Foundation and Prussia Cove.