Course summary
Our MFA programme aims to strengthen your motivation, self-reflection and ambition as an emerging artist. We do this by subjecting art-making to intense critical scrutiny.
- We place a strong emphasis on student-centred learning in studio crits and personal tutorials. Tuition is directed by your art-making, its key concerns, and your leading ideas taken together.
- The programme promotes communication across a wide international cohort of artists, as well as across an open range of media. From this, artists learn how their work and ideas are understood from different social, artistic and intellectual contexts.
- While on the MFA you will continually engage with what it means to practise as an artist today, and the position taken by an art-practice in relation to art's complex history and its currency in wider social and cultural processes.
- We place great emphasis on how artists look to impact and challenge prevailing expectations of art, and whether their work does so.
- The structure and tuition of the programme are not divided by media. Our students engage with diverse media according to the needs of their practice, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, installation, performance, socially engaged practice, art writing, textiles, digital media, sound and video.
- This degree has been described as one of the most influential MFA programmes in the world.
Modules
The programme is divided into two parts: Year One Can be taken either full-time for one year (until late July) or part-time for two years (until late July in both years). This year seeks to establish the core concerns and ambitions of your art. Year Two Can be taken either full-time for one year (until late August) or part-time for two years (until late July, and then until late August in the final year). This stage of the programme enables you to address your ambitions for your art with an awareness of how it is situated. Applicants who have already been awarded 120 credits from another suitably related postgraduate study may be able to apply for direct entry into Year Two of the programme on either a full or part-time basis. You may also take advantage of an exit point at the end of Year One of the programme and graduate with a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art. (The Postgraduate Diploma is not to be confused with the Goldsmiths Graduate Diploma in Art, which is a different programme.) Our two-stage programme is designed to subject the making of artwork, the ideas and concepts involved, and the works of art themselves, to artistic and critical scrutiny. This will include individually directed research to review, consolidate and strengthen your individual position as an artist. We place a strong emphasis on student-centred learning – especially on your individual response to the divergent views you will experience in relation to your practice. Among other qualities, you are expected to: Contribute actively to tutorial and crit discussions Welcome and encourage sustained and challenging analysis of your practice by tutors and fellow students Understand that the production of contemporary art takes place in a demanding and testing environment Take an independent path in developing your practice and its concerns Learning on the programme is primarily achieved through an appropriate combination of self-initiated and directed work in studio practice and Critical Studies. Individual tutorials, crits, workshops and art practice areas support this work. Please note that due to staff research commitments not all of these modules may be avalable every year.
Assessment method
The three examination elements for both Year One and Year Two are: Collection of Tutorial Reports, Exhibition, and Critical Studies Essay. All three elements must be passed to successfully complete each part of the programme. Each element of examination has both progression and final points of assessment.
Entry requirements
Applicants for Year One full-time and part-time (home only) Diploma stage: you must have or be expect to be awarded an undergraduate degree of at least second class standard (or equivalent) plus experience as an artist. Applicants for entry directly onto Year Two full-time and Year Three part-time (home only) of the programme routes: you must already be in possession of 120 grade credits from another suitably related postgraduate study to apply for direct entry into Year Two of the programme on either a full or part-time basis. Requirement for part-time study You need to have your own studio space in which to work over the four years of the programme. You may also be considered for the MFA Fine Art programme if you are not a graduate or if your undergraduate degree is in an unrelated field, but you have relevant experience and can show that you have the ability to work at postgraduate level. If English isn’t your first language, you will need an IELTS score (or equivalent English language qualification) of 7.0 with a 7.0 in writing and no element lower than 6.5 to study this programme.
Fees and funding
Tuition fees
No fee information has been provided for this course
Tuition fee status depends on a number of criteria and varies according to where in the UK you will study. For further guidance on the criteria for home or overseas tuition fees, please refer to the UKCISA website .
Additional fee information
Sponsorship information
AHRC
Provider information
Goldsmiths, University of London
New Cross
Lewisham
SE14 6NW