Craft & Material Practices BA (Hons)

Plymouth College of Art

**Our BA (Hons) Craft & Material Practices course will provide you with a specialist foundation in the making of objects using both traditional and modern techniques. A vibrant mix of designing and making gives you the chance to explore a diversity of materials including clay, textiles, fibers, wood, metals, glass, and new synthetic matter while developing a cohesive, forward-thinking and sustainable contemporary practice.** With almost 150,000 people employed in the UK’s craft industry, skilled crafts-people are putting the country on the map for original, forward-thinking contemporary design. The relationship between designing and making is ever-evolving, with experimentation and innovation seeing a new wave of makers take their craft profession in fresh and original directions, often looking to develop methods in which we can live harmoniously within natural and fabricated environments that support a healthy ecosystem. You’ll study specialist ceramics techniques such as throwing, slip casting, hand-building, coiling, glazing, and raku firing. Working with glass will include hot glass making, kiln-formed glass, coldworking and lampworking. Working with metals will see you casting, welding, and grinding. If you’re looking to specialise in wood-working, you’ll have the opportunity to learn woodturning, vacuum forming, CNC fabrication, laser cutting, and 3D printing. Through the use of traditional materials like clay, wood, textiles and glass, as well as explorations in smart and adaptive materials, you’ll develop new modes of creative authorship through experimentation, research and invention.Our spacious Materials Lab includes specialist facilities for ceramics, glass, metal and wood, encouraging you to explore traditional making alongside the rapid digital prototyping facilities in our Fab Lab, giving you the opportunity to reinvent craft for the 21st century. However learning isn’t limited to our design studios and workshops – you will meet some of the UK’s most inventive and entrepreneurial contemporary makers and thinkers through studio visits, demonstrations, and presentations. Our ambition is that your material practice develops in an international context, and you’ll be given the opportunity to visit a number of current events such as Sieraad in Amsterdam, Collect at the Saatchi Gallery, British Ceramics Biennial, the Contemporary Craft Festival and London Design Fair. You will also have access to our Making Futures biennial conference, offering you the chance to further realise your work among international makers. Recent contributors to the course include Steve Dixon, Pr Neil Brownsword, Caroline Broadhead, Dr Erin Dickson, Dr Wendy Gers, Sam Photic, Nuala Clooney, Mount Edgecumbe and Eden Project. Graduates can become: - Ceramicists- Glass artists- Prop designers,- Ornament/wearables designers- Sculptors- Architectural surface designers- Textile designers- Fine artists- Gallery and museum professionals