Some notes on the "best" schools for fine art

kaelyn
Sat, 07 Aug 2010 09:43:19 +0000

I think most people living in art land would probably tell you that the best places to study fine art in the uk would be

The Slade Scool of Art, UCL
Chelsea College of Art, UAL
Central St Martin’s, UAL
Goldsmiths, UoL
(all in london)

Glasgow School of Art
(is in glasgow not london)

The Royal Academy
The Royal College of Art
(both in london but only offer post graduate programs)

If you ever decided to look up the CV’s of recent turner prize nominees
you’d find that a lot of them went to one of the above. There’s no way to
say whether british art schools, in general, are superior or inferior to American
art schools. They are generally a little different though.

Most british undergrad courses in fine art last about 3 years but students are usually required to do a separate and independent foundation degree beforehand which takes about one year. In total it end up being the same four years. They tend not to push the broad liberal education that american art schools claim to, i.e. the majority of your taught courses will be in art history/theory. Also the structure of the programs are generally looser, no credit distribution requirements etc and they encourage students to work independently much earlier on than their us counterparts. Graduate programs are usually one or two years with the exception of the royal academy which has a 3 year program.

I cant say more than that in general

The slade is extremely selective. They take about 4% of applicants a year and they have a larger academic component in their curricula than most british art schools. They offer two programs in fine art: a bfa in fine which is more practice oriented and last three years and the BA in fine art and art history/theory which is four years and is fairly similar to the BFA program but has a larger academic component slapped on to it. The slade surprisingly is less hardline conceptual than some of the other london art schools and is one of the few places in london still considered a “painting school”.

I’m not really sure if there is a big difference between Chelsea and St Martins. They are both part of University of The Arts London (UAL). Chelsea’s fine art program is more highly regarded the CSM’s, especially at the graduate level but i don’t know if there is any huge difference between their teaching styles academic environments etc. CSM however, is largely known for being a design school and it somehow happened that they got a good fine art department whereas chelsea is a fine art school that happens to have other departments.

Goldsmiths is notoriously hardline on it’s conceptual approach to teaching/art making even at the undergrad level. They produced a slew of famous british artists in the early nineties including damien hirst, sarah lucas, gary hume etc. I think they also have a larger academic component to their program than say chelsea or csm but i wouldn’t quote me on it.

I dont know much about Glasgow School of Art other than it’s supposed to be quite nice. They also have separate programs based around various media i.e you do your degree in painting, sculpture, photography etc which probably says a lot when compared to schools like csm, chelsea, goldsmiths etc just offer a program in fine art.

The RA and the RCA only offer postgrad programs. The RA is free if you get in and therefore impossibly selective and the RCA is the only grad program in London i think that organizes their courses with respect to media. The RCA is also definitely not as theoretically oriented as other grad programs like those at chelsea or goldsmiths.

that’s all i know for now