The Open College of the Arts works with the Prisoners’ Education Trust to enable students in prison to access our courses. It is an important part of our charitable purpose and student fees are met by a combination of OCA bursaries and grants from the Trust. As this work is largely invisible to other...
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Author Archive
‘Art can be a way in…’
Blog of the Week: southliving
Blog of the week this month is southliving written by China based OCA photography student Dewald Botha. And written is the operative word, one of the defining features of Dewald’s learning blog is the way that he sets out so clearly his thinking about his work – both in advance of shooting and then...
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Making it pay
While we were down interviewing Michael Freeman about the photography degree pathway we thought it would be interesting to ask him about what it needs to be a successful professional photographer. As all us can see the market is changing rapidly, but he doesn’t think this is necessarily grounds for pessimism. This is a...
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Gendering the gaze
There’s been a lot of activity recently in the OCA photography students’ flickr group under the heading ‘Male Domination of Photography‘ Questions being asked about why so many big name photographers are male, the make up of OCA students and tutors. Of course the representation of women has long been a subject of interest,...
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The Photography Degree Pathway
Since we have had the BA(Hons) Photography validated earlier this year, significantly larger numbers of students have been asking us how the courses fit together. We think this stuff is all in the Photography Handbook, but then we would, wouldn’t we? The other week we took the opportunity to ask Michael freeman to set...
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Blog of the Week: pain and the pastoral
For blog of the week this month we look to Gesa Helms’ pain and the pastoral. This is not so much a OCA learning log as an artist’s reflective notebook and it is fascinating for it. Rather than polished mini-articles we get snippets of thoughts and associations. Many of these thoughts turn to colour,...
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Democratisation?
June’s issue of the British Journal of Photography includes a feature on the use of DSLR’s in video production and argues that the development is leading to a democratisation of film making.
Now I am on seriously dangerous territory commenting on this issue. My track record is not good. In September 2008, when Canon announced...
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Exposure: voyeurism, surveillance and authenticity
Saturday morning saw me at the Tate Modern with a small group of OCA students to visit the exhibition Exposure: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera. It was a real pleasure to meet a group of students, get their perspectives on the work displayed and get a sense of their experience of studying with the...
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Blog of the week: Marmalade Cafe
Blog of the week this month is Marmalade Cafe written and photographed by Penny Watson. Penny enrolled on Art of Photography last year and was encouraged by her tutor to make an APEL application (Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning – where you assemble a portfolio of work and a personal statement). The application was...
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People Aware, People Unaware
One of the best course introductions we have made over the last couple of years is Photography 1: People and Place. We commissioned the course because our photography course leaders told us that the level 2 Social Documentary course was often too challenging for students who had perhaps avoided people photography in their level...
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