Ceramics At Cardiff School Of Art And Design

Ceramics at Cardiff School of Art and Design represents BA, MA and PhD in Ceramics at Cardiff Metropolitan University: please also join the FB discussion Group: BA Ceramics Cardiff School of Art & Design UWIC

CSAD has the largest ceramics centre in Europe, with a global reputation for its programmes and courses that attracts students, practitioners and academics from all over the world. Ceramics at CSAD has a long-standing and uninterrupted reputation for excellence, based on an approach that is dynamic and progressive.

Ceramics at CSAD is not confined to any category of art, design or making. It has always taken risks and risen to creative challenges born of critical engagement and enquiry. Its work has brought together a traditional ceramic processes with new and emerging technologies. The vibrancy of the subject is stems from the fostering of a community of ceramicists operating at BA, Masters and Doctoral levels.

Ceramics works closely with the other areas in CSAD, enabling a fusion of both ideas and practices that enriches and challenges. Engagement with textiles, fine art, product design, illustration, making, graphics and architecture, employing a range of critical approaches and theoretical positions, is releasing a phenomenal creative energy across the School.

The academic team are also practicing ceramicists, with research and creative interests that help shape the programmes. Their research includes: technical aspects of creative practice specifically use of levigated slips and surface combustion techniques, utilizing processes exploited by Greek and Roman cultures; application of new and emergent technologies in ceramic practice; ‘presence’ and ‘stillness’ in the figure; contemporary studio ceramics and its recent history; relationships between ceramics and sculpture; the role of drawing in the development of ideas; making visible the activity of creative thinking; and the expressive capacity of surface on the human form in art. In the 2008 RAE exercise, research in Ceramics at CSAD was judged to be world leading.

Students at all levels of study work in specially designed studios, within a community of practicing artists and designers, where discussions between students in different years, on different levels of award and in different subjects are promoted and encouraged.

They have access to well-equipped workshops, across the School, and are supported by technician demonstrators highly skilled in their crafts and processes. Students practice through enquiry-based learning, informed by well-developed theoretical and historical positions. We expect self-motivation and autonomy, as the basis for originality and risk taking. We support and promote the absence of boundaries, as the basis for real innovation.