Foundation Diploma in Art, Design and Media Practice Fd

Develop your core skills and critical thinking. Experience all of the different art and design disciplines. Use the skills and confidence you acquire to progress onto an honours degree of your choice.

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Overview

The Foundation Diploma is an exciting, one-year course that prepares you for degree level study in the creative arts. You'll experience the full range of art and design disciplines alongside supportive staff, many of whom work within the creative industries.

You will be encouraged to learn through experimentation and risk taking, developing new ways of working and confidence to establish your own ideas. Sunderland has a well-established reputation for innovative art and design projects, with many of these involving social learning and encouraging peer support.

Foundation Diploma in Art and Design is ‘outstanding’
An Ofsted inspection in March 2019 rated this course as ‘outstanding’ and of a ‘consistently excellent standard’. Teaching, learning and assessment outcomes, personal development, behaviour and welfare were all complimented.

Why us?

Learn in university level facilities, working on projects with and alongside creative practitioners
Visiting artists and designers add to the range of experiences you can learn from
Recognised for teaching excellence (awarded Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence by the Advance HE 2018)
Successful completion of the course leads to an automatic place on an honours Art and Design degree at Sunderland
According to Ofsted "students benefit from excellent facilities and equipment and produce work that exceeds the expected level for their programme and engage in realistic and commercially applicable projects"

Also from Ofsted: "Students engage in realistic and commercially-applicable projects, providing them with collaborative work and high-profile opportunities to broaden their understanding of the breadth of opportunities in the creative industries"
There are many opportunities to show your work, including the end of year exhibition
The Foundation course is free for those aged 18 at the start of the course, with bursary support also available to all qualifying students

Our student work

Join our creative community: @SunderlandCreative #WeAreCreative

Course structure

The Foundation Diploma is delivered in two stages: The Exploratory Stage and the Confirmatory Stage.

Throughout the year you will be taught in studio-based sessions, supported by a programme of lectures, seminars, workshops and tutorials.

Visiting artists and designers often complement this exciting course. Recent workshops have been delivered in collaboration with the designer Jimmy Turrell as well as fashion illustrator Sue Dray, and Dave Cooper, former Head of Menswear at Alexander McQueen. Guest lectures have included Lewis Jones from the Turner Prize winning Assemble and the Granby Workshop.

Innovative projects also include those run by our own staff and students as part of Foundation Press.

Stage 1 – Exploratory Stage

Through a wide range of creative activities, you will develop your practical and conceptual skills. Alongside this, individual guidance is given from an experienced range of staff on the options best suited to your work and future ambitions. The Exploratory Stage ‘rotation’ projects include:

Fine Art (including Painting, Sculpture, Performance, Multimedia)
Visual Communication (including Graphics, Illustration and Animation)
Fashion Design and Promotion (including Fashion, Textiles, Costume)
Photography, Video and Digital Imaging (including all lens and time based works)
3D Artist Designer Maker (including Glass and Ceramics, Applied Arts, 3D, Architecture, Interior)

You'll choose an area you'd like to pursue at degree level. Through a number of exciting and challenging projects, you'll develop confidence in the creative process.

Alongside this, you'll receive support in the skills needed to extend and present your work professionally, including digital skills and portfolio presentation.

There are many opportunities to broaden your practice further in live projects, events and exhibitions. Study visits also often help to inspire your own studies.

Stage 2 – Confirmatory Stage

Working with your tutors, you'll develop a self-directed project in your chosen pathway. They will encourage you to develop a distinctive, individual practice in readiness for degree level study and careers in the creative industries.

You'll build on all of the experimentation and experiences throughout the year. We are particularly proud of the individual and distinctive nature of the work produced by our Foundation students. The Final Major Project usually culminates in a public exhibition alongside the degree shows. Using skills developed throughout the year, students also produce a publication of their work.

This final project of the year is assessed to give your grade, encouraging experimentation at all of the earlier stages of the course. The outcomes from last year's students can be seen online at Sunderland Creatives.

More about Foundation Diploma in Art, Design and Media Practice at Sunderland

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Our facilities include:
- Workshops for wood, metal and printmaking
- Large studio spaces
- Project spaces
- Digital studios with video, sound editing and screening facilities
- Several suites of Apple Macs
- Large format digital printing
- Arts and design library
- Digital sewing and embroidery facilities
- Cameras and darkrooms
- Photography studios
- Risograph printing
- Glass and ceramic kilns
- Hot glass workshop
- Two cold working studios for glass (sandblasting, cutting, grinding and polishing)
- Architectural glass studio
- Students also have access to facilities within FabLab on campus, which includes laser cutters, routers, milling machines, vinyl cutters and 3D printers
Art and Design facilities
FabLab Sunderland offers a diverse range of specialist digital design and fabrication equipment. Based at the Hope Street Xchange in Sunderland city centre, it is a creative space where anyone can make (almost) anything. Our students gain free access to FabLab's machines which include:
- Epilog laser cutter
- ShopBot CNC router
- The Roland Modela MDX-20 milling machine
- Roland Vinyl cutter GS-24
- Dimension 1200es Series 3D Printer – ABS plastic (large capacity 3D printer)
- Ultimaker 2 (small scale 3D printer)
- Ulitmaker 2 Extended (medium scale 3D printer)
FabLab
Fine Art Studio 360
Fine Art Workspace 360
Graphic Design Studio 360
The University Library is your gateway to information resources and services both on and off campus. We’ve got thousands of print books, e-books, exhibition catalogues and journals, giving you reliable and up-to-date academic and industry articles. A single search box enables searching across print and digital resources, and you’ll have tailored digital resources and support for students in Art and Design.

Access to many study places, including quiet and silent zones, PCs and Macs, group work hubs, online module reading lists and study skills support, all in our quality learning environments. You’ll have full use of two libraries, both with extensive opening hours, and ‘Live Chat’ enables you to access library support and help from anywhere 24/7.

We’re much more than a library; the University Library and Study Skills team are on hand to guide you throughout your studies on and off campus from embedded skills sessions, digital skills support to 1-2-1 and drop-in advice on research and academic skills.
Library Services - arts and design
National Glass Centre Hot Glass Studio 360
Photography Darkroom 360
Photography Studio 360
Printmaking Workshop 360
Map and directions

Facilities

The course is based within the lively Priestman Building in the centre of town. Priestman is home to a wide range of art and design resources all available alongside the Foundation studios.

Entry requirements

We don’t currently display entry requirements for United States. Please contact the Student Admin team on studentadmin@sunderland.ac.uk or 0191 515 3154.

If you have studied for a GCSE which has a numerical grade then you will need to achieve a grade 4 or above.

If English is not your first language, please see our English language requirements. Applicants must be at least 18 years of age on 31st December on year of entry.

Portfolio requirements

We are interested in your creative potential – please prepare a portfolio of the work you have created so far. We would like to see:

A variety of work – we want to see a range of approaches
Anything that may be relevant to your future work
Creative work from in, or outside of your studies
Links to any time-based work if possible
Various forms of investigation, including your sketchbook
Developmental works, not just final outcomes

If you can document this work and create a .pdf of up to 15 pages (you can use Powerpoint or similar packages to create this – Instagram art accounts could also work), we'll use this at interview or in a portfolio review, both of which are offered to all of our applicants.

Is your qualification not displaying here? For international qualifications, search our full list of international entry requirements for this course.

Fees and finance

This course is free for school-leavers aged 18 at the start of the course and is the ideal preparation for the full range of creative degrees.

If you will be 19 or above at the start of the year, you may want to consider our Integrated Foundation Degrees. These courses help prepare students for higher-level study on our creative degrees here at Sunderland.

You may be eligible for a government bursary. Please see more information about the 16-19 bursary and the Advanced Learner Loan on the gov.uk website.

Please note that this course is not available to international students.

This information was correct at the time of publication.

A painting of a bird's eye view of three koi carp fish swimming together in a circle

Career ready

This Foundation Diploma gives you a full year to explore different creative areas and you are guaranteed a place at Sunderland if you complete the course successfully. Students from the Foundation Diploma at Sunderland have gained offers from the most competitive art and design courses in the country.

Further your study

The large majority of our students progress from our foundation year to an honours degree. Having successfully passed the course, you can progress directly onto any of the following courses at Sunderland:

Real-world experience

We recently won a national award for teaching excellence (the Advance HE Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence 2018). This acknowledged the Foundation Press project where students work on innovative, live projects alongside practising artists and designers.

Through these enjoyable, social experiences, you will gain confidence in applying your skills in real-world contexts.

Meet the students

The course allows you complete freedom to explore the discipline fully, cultivating originality.

Adam McDade
This past year allowed me to broaden my perspective and really find out what I want to do.

Amy Jobe
I’ve loved doing the course, it’s really given me that freedom to work the way I wanted.

Ryan Whitfield

Meet the team

Related courses

Contact

Contact the Student Helpline for further information about studying at the University of Sunderland:

0191 515 3000

student.helpline@sunderland.ac.uk

Foundation Diploma in Art, Design and Media Practice programme specification

Page last updated: 14 April 2021

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