City Lit’s Centre for Advanced Practice is where you can find advanced courses from across all subject areas in Visual Arts. In many cases, this means well established courses of a year or longer, with outstanding reputations for preparing students for study at Bachelors or Masters level. Equally, their quality and depth makes them a viable alternative, for many learners, to the conventional Higher Education route into careers as creative practitioners.
To continue to support learners from a range of backgrounds, with diverse requirements, we have several newly developed courses – with more appearing soon – that build on our long-standing fine art and contemporary craft provision, and bring traditional practices up to date, to ensure learners have the relevant skills for the contemporary creative industries. This is supported through increasing connections with external organisations and practitioners in many courses, for example through real-world project briefs, public exhibitions, and visits from industry professionals.
In the last couple of years, we have introduced new titles in contemporary media and communications-based creative practices, and new courses running across a range of patterns and modes (weekly, monthly, studio-based, online or blended), to ensure that our advanced provision remains accessible and manageable alongside learners’ existing commitments. Alongside these developments, we are progressively refreshing many of our well-established courses, with an increased emphasis on critical discourse, and contemporary cultural debate, in keeping with the advanced level of study and focus on increased confidence, independence and professionalism that are the common characteristics of all our advanced courses.
In addition to our expanding range of advanced long courses, a growing range of advanced one-day workshops is available, aimed at providing knowledge and insight required to support specific aspects of professional practice. These can be taken individually, according to need or interest, or as complementary components of your own pick-and-mix modular course. In common with our long courses, these will provide you with the skills, knowledge and confidence you need to take your advanced creative practice forward.
We host exhibitions throughout the year at City Lit Gallery where our students showcase their amazing work.
- Art and Ideas: Identity and the selfCourse start date: Thu 9 Jan 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Ian TucknottThis course is for students and creative practitioners interested in identity as a creative and conceptual theme. Explore and discuss ideas, theories and work by significant artists and writers to enhance and inspire the development of creative work.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information. - Advanced printmaking: personal project developmentCourse start date: Thu 16 Jan 2025 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Rolina Elsje Blok, David Holah, Monika KitaUnlock your creative potential in the Advanced Printmaking Personal Project Development course! This engaging programme invites you to extend your printmaking practice while developing a substantial personal project. Over the length of the course you will explore advanced printmaking techniques, refine your artistic voice, and prepare for a professional exhibition of your work.Full fee £1,339.00 Senior fee £1,071.00 Concession £937.00 - City Lit pre-foundation courseCourse start date: Fri 17 Jan 2025 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Simon English, Ute Kreyman, Marcus RichardsThis exciting and intensive course is a chance to develop key creative skills, methods and thinking in art and design, across 2D, 3D, life drawing and critical studies, to prepare you for entry to our UAL-validated, Level 3 Foundation Diploma in Art & Design.Full fee £899.00 Senior fee £719.00 Concession £629.00 - City Lit fine art studioCourse start date: Sat 18 Jan 2025 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
An opportunity for students on years 1 and 2 of the City Lit fine art course for increased access to studio time, for further development of their work in progress, and to work alongside students from all 3 years of the course, on alternate Saturdays throughout the term.Full fee £539.00 Senior fee £431.00 Concession £377.00 - Art and design portfolio projectsCourse start date: Mon 27 Jan 2025 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Rod JudkinsDevelop and realise your creative language in art and design through the development of a personal project. Through workshops and small projects you will be able to build a portfolio of work in 2D and 3D related to your own personal theme or interest.Full fee £429.00 Senior fee £343.00 Concession £279.00 - Advance your life drawing
Course start date: Wed 29 Jan 2025 (and 1 other date)Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Andrea VoiseyA weekly, concentrated life-drawing session for learners studying on any of City Lit's advanced visual arts courses.Full fee £449.00 Senior fee £359.00 Concession £314.00 - Is meaning inevitable? Intention, action and interpretationCourse start date: Fri 7 Feb 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Lily MarkiewiczDoes every creative act have meaning? Is there a statement – conscious or unconscious – inherent in everything we do as artists? Should we interpret or analyse what we see, what we do, what we’ve done? In this one-day workshop, we will examine a range of specific works, considering the question of whether and how meaning has been embedded (intentionally or otherwise) and can be identified and interpreted. This will, to some degree, touch on how individuals and societies make and ascribe meaning, perhaps as an attempt to process and come to terms with, for example, otherwise seemingly arbitrary events like a natural catastrophe or suffering. We will discuss and workshop these themes in the larger group, draw on examples presented, and the experiences of the members in the group. Other questions that may be considered include: discerning meaning as an attempt to find order in chaos, and whether or what we might lose by attempting to impose meaning, by attempting to explain within the confines of critical analysis, that which may, in fact, be critical to the character or intention of a work of art.Full fee £79.00 Senior fee £79.00 Concession £79.00 - Digital fundamentals: imaging for print and 2DCourse start date: Fri 14 Feb 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Rolina Elsje BlokAs artists and designers, we generally tend to observe a number of fundamental 'rules' when working with digital media for print-based or other forms of 2D output. These relate to steps or settings for proceses such as scanning, saving, resolution, image or data format, colour modes, compression... To a certain extent, much of this is received knowledge, and we don't necessarily know why we follow these rules. Knowing what they are based on, and why, is, however, fundamental to technical proficiency, and expertise, and knowing what these principles are based on allows us not only to produce work to professional standard, but also to exploit them to their full creative potential. This workshop will be of value to any visual artist who uses digital technology in their creative practice, from painters and printmakers to photographers and graphic designers. Coverage includes: principles and concepts underpinning digital imaging for print/static delivery: pixel/vector; resolution, scalability, application; acquisition, modes, formats and real-world constraints; file sizes/compression/data integrity; relation to physical output (size, resolution, process).Full fee £79.00 Senior fee £79.00 Concession £79.00 - Art and Ideas: What is visual language?Course start date: Thu 20 Feb 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Ian TucknottThis course is for students and creative practitioners interested in visual language as a creative and conceptual theme. Explore and discuss ideas, theories and work by significant artists and writers to enhance and inspire the development of creative work and build an understanding of your own visual language.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £189.00 Senior fee £151.00 Concession £132.00 - Advanced visual communications: where is the truth? Course start date: Tue 29 Apr 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Andrew McCartenThis advanced course examines the representation of truth and the manipulation of meaning through text and image, an issue with critical importance for the current times, from a number of perspectives. Working across a range of media and techniques employed in creative design and visual communications, we will examine examples in print, broadcast and on-line media.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £349.00 Senior fee £279.00 Concession £244.00 - Children's book illustration: advanced projectsCourse start date: Wed 30 Apr 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Tim EllisAn intensive highly focused follow up course to develop design, drawing, imagination, characterisation and narrative skills. Ideal if you’re planning to prepare a portfolio for presentation to publishers or wishing to further develop your skills and imagination. - What did narrative ever do for you?Course start date: Fri 2 May 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Lily MarkiewiczLearn about the structure and function of narrative, and find out how it relates to your creative practice. In this workshop we will consider film, animation, moving image or other time-based practices, primarily, in which there is a clear and accessible connection to the unfolding of meaning over a linear (or non-linear) sequence, but we may also discuss examples across potentially any creative discipline, and other forms of expression. We will look at principles of narrative and narrative structures in film, the ‘conventions’ of storytelling across a range of examples, and how these have been used or subverted within the form. Storytelling is fundamental to human civilisation: across all cultures, narrative plays a central role in our understanding of our place in the world, and addressing profound questions about our existence. Children learn through stories; cultures cohere through shared narratives. We will consider the role of narrative as a fundamentally important pillar in underpinning societies, belief systems, and values, and why an awareness of these relationships is increasingly important in these ‘unprecedented’ times.Full fee £79.00 Senior fee £79.00 Concession £79.00 - The archive: resource and practiceCourse start date: Fri 6 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Rolina Elsje BlokThe archive is an invaluable resource for artists and designers, without some version of which it is virtually impossible to engage in practice in any systematic way. Whether it takes the form of sketchbooks, photographs, found items and clippings, internet bookmarks, or any combination of these and other items, the archive is a tool for organising, examining and reflecting. In this professional practice module, we will look at how to create and access physical and online archives, and how to use them in both research and practice, creating and organising personal archives. Many artists use the archive as a form of art practice: we will examine this, and how it differs from other forms of archiving. We will look at multiple approaches to storing information, organising it for accessibility, and working with the tools and perspectives of the archivist or curator, as appropriate to one’s individual practice. - Advanced visual communications: social impact by visual designCourse start date: Tue 24 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: George StickneyCan visual design create enough impact to change society? What effect do posters and campaigns have in changing people’s minds on various subjects? This course is for those with some experience in making graphic images who want to explore campaigning in graphic design and media.Full fee £349.00 Senior fee £279.00 Concession £244.00 - Collaborative creative projectsCourse start date: Fri 27 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Rolina Elsje BlokRecent advances in technology and communications provide creative practitioners and communities with opportunities that, in historical terms, are unique. We have never before had the capacity to react to events and engage with issues that, in some cases for the very same reasons, can no longer be confined, in terms of their impact, to the location in which they occur. Consider, for instance, climate change, Coronavirus, the BLM movement and the global reaction to inequality and injustice. Artists and designers have at their disposal, through these same resources, and the full range of traditional media, the capacity to respond to these developments, and to effect change. With this, inevitably, comes the imperative of social responsibility. This workshop looks at how creative individuals engage with notions of collaborative practice (both via online/distributed models and through physical media/interactions) in the production or propagation of ideas, movements, memes or artefacts, including with those one has possibly never met, and perhaps does not even know. Besides collaboration in making, we consider the potential of social/viral media as a disruptor or organisational tool, (for example in events, happenings, flash-mobs, and organised protests or movements such as Anonymous, Occupy, XR, BLM and others).Full fee £79.00 Senior fee £79.00 Concession £79.00
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