B.A Honours ILLUSTRATION AND VISUAL COMMUNICATION WITH FOUNDATION

Our degree courses with Foundation year offer the opportunity to prepare you for advanced study before you progress onto a full honours degree at the University of Westminster. Whether you do not feel ready for degree-level study, don’t have the right qualifications, want to change your subject specialism or return to study after an absence from education, we aim to encourage a broad range of students to undertake our Foundation year in order to progress onto their full honours degree with us.

Our foundation year in Art and Design is designed to provide you with an introduction to our range of subject areas, and to prepare you for the discipline of your choice. It will give you the opportunity to explore new ideas, opening up new perspectives on the key debates within the field. It begins in the first semester with the development of fundamental Art and Design skills, as well as practical exploration across all of the disciplines in our Art and Design foundation programme. In the second semester, you are encouraged to specialise in your own discipline and are supported at this stage by tutors from your host course. You will also benefit from workshops in our high-end facilities, and from working with leading academics who will encourage you to become a confident and creative thinker. Your practical development is accompanied by modules in both semesters on foundational academic skills – skills that will be essential as you progress to your chosen full degree.

On successful completion of the foundation year, you will be able to move on to study for the Illustration and Visual Communication BA Honours degree for a further three years. 

Our Illustration and Visual Communication BA offers a flexible and multimedia approach to the study and practice of contemporary illustration and visual communication arts.

The ethos of the course is to nurture individual creativity, through a programme of study and practice that encourages an open and speculative approach through visual inquiry and diagnostic experimentation across a wide range of image media practices and contexts.

This breadth of approach is designed to support creative agility and flexibility, enabling you to be mobile in your future employment with key skills in visual communication, inventiveness and being able to reify imaginative thought into new and surprising visual forms and images.

Our course is located on the leafy campus of Harrow, which serves as the hub for many of the creative courses at Westminster. You will have ample studio space in which to make ambitious work as well as dedicated facilities for drawing, print-making, digital arts (VR, AR and effects), lens-based media, performance and installation, photography, animation, 3D, ceramics and craftwork.

The course has a strong professional focus as well as a creative one, providing opportunities for work experience, internships and the development of professional skills through the Creative Enterprise Centre at Harrow.

Successful alumni contribute to the teaching programme along with our dedicated course team of professional practitioners. With membership of the Association of Illustrators and Design & Art Direction, we are further able to offer students a range of professional and industry-led initiatives including participation in the New Blood festival at Truman Brewery as part of D&AD.