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BA (Hons) Fine Art with Integrated Foundation Year

This fine art degree allows you to explore practices such as painting, printmaking, photography, film, sculpture, and performance. The course helps fine artists develop essential skills for the world of work, offering self-development, exploration, and support in building professional practices. It focuses on boosting confidence, promoting your art, and understanding its societal impact.

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A Fine Art student painting a colourful mural on a wall
UCAS codeW105
Duration4 years
Fee (UK)£9,790
LocationOn campus

Overview

Building on Sunderland's rich art history, we combine innovation and modern teaching to give our graduates a competitive edge. Our team of professional artists will guide you in exploring various practices, including painting, printmaking, photography, film, sculpture, and performance.

This course helps fine artists develop essential skills for the world of work, offering self-development, exploration, and support in building professional practices. It focuses on boosting confidence, promoting your art, and understanding its societal impact.

You’ll gain transferable skills for diverse career paths, including teaching, artist residencies, curating, public arts, and roles as a creative practitioner or fine artist. Many creative workers are self-employed and follow flexible, portfolio careers, so the course also includes sessions on self-employment and a ‘Creative Lives’ lecture programme with case studies.

Integrated Foundation Year

This course is available with an Integrated Foundation Year, an extra year of your degree. This route offers a supportive way of transitioning into university study. It may be suitable for you if you:

  • Have valuable work or life experience but no formal qualifications
  • Are returning to education after a break
  • Want to change direction or explore a new career path
  • Have just missed the entry requirements for the three-year course.

We’re enhancing our Integrated Foundation Year to give you an even stronger start to your degree. The updated modules will align more with your chosen subject area. This will help you build the knowledge, confidence, and skills you need for your studies. We'll share full details soon and can't wait to tell you more.

Please note, this route isn’t available to international students.

Course structure

Many of our courses include a range of modules you can choose from. Some options may only be available if you’ve already studied specific modules. If you’re not sure what you need before picking a module, your course leader can help.

Undergraduate module credits should total 120 credits per academic year. If optional modules are available, choose an amount that totals 120 credits.

How you'll learn

The BA (Hons) Fine Art course combines lectures, seminars, workshops, tutorials, and studio practice, and you’ll be allocated your own studio space from day one. The first year focuses on exploration, testing technical and artistic skills, culminating with your first exhibition.

In the second year, you’ll collaborate with students across other disciplines, linking your artistic practice with live experiences, and think about how you want to work and where your art can take you. You’ll undertake a project with a live outcome that could be a group exhibition, a community workshop, or project with a local school.

The final year is dedicated to your professional practice, preparing you for your Final Degree Show, graduation, and beyond, with a focus on promoting yourself to employers.

Assessment methods vary between modules and can include studio presentations, written projects, and exhibitions.

Entry requirements

Fees and finance

UK£9,790

Undergraduate fees are set according to rules from Government in line with forecast inflation. If you're a Home fee-paying student, the fee for your first year of study for 2026/27 will be £9,790. You'll pay tuition fees for every year of study. Fees may increase every year based on the Retail Price Index.

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See all course tuition fees.

Full-time UK/Irish/EU settled/EU pre-settled students may be eligible for financial support. This would cover your fees for the full four years. UK and EU settled students may also be eligible to receive a maintenance loan.

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UK students

Disclaimer

We want to make sure you have clear and accurate information about our courses. Our website always shows the latest updates. If you’ve applied and you're offered a place, we’ll contact you in writing if anything important changes.

For more information, view our programme specifications. These include course content, learning outcomes, and the skills you'll gain.