The BA (Hons) in Visual Arts programme at the Academy of Visual Arts is a professional degree that focuses on intensive practice-led work in the visual arts supported by a programme in General Education. It emphasises creativity, versatility, and intelligent articulation, thus enabling its graduates to enter professional, studio-based careers in such fields as studio arts, design, and/or craft after earning the degree.

The programme consists of a set of required courses and a number of elective courses to be taken from two concentrations: Studio and Media Arts, and Craft and Design. It provides students with solid foundations in their personal choice of areas including drawing, painting, Chinese arts, media arts, graphic arts, sculpture, glass, ceramics, object design, experience design, and is supported by required courses in art history and theory, visual and material culture.

The underlying philosophy of the programme is rooted in the idea of the ever-shifting climate of creative production in the context of society. Studio teaching is conducted through a combination of workshops, and individual and group tutorials, and is founded on the belief that art and design practice is fundamentally a social phenomenon. The aim of the staff and students is to participate in social interaction and discussion through visual arts.

In accordance with the institutional philosophy of the AVA the aims of the BA (Hons) in Visual Arts programme are:

The BA (Hons) in Visual Arts-programme consists of Major Courses that are put together to provide specific education in the Visual Arts, and General Education courses intended to broaden the students’ horizon beyond the limitations of only one programme-area in order to achieve a holistic education of the student.

The Major Courses are distinguished into a set of Required Courses and a number of Elective Courses, which the students may choose from the courses offered within the programme within the limits set by these regulations.

In general the BA (Hons) in Visual Arts programme (4-year) requires all its students to attend six Required Courses (Level I and II) during their first two years at the AVA that provide all students with a comprehensive introduction into the practice of visual arts as well as art history and theory.

To expand the knowledge and skills of the students in their second year, they may choose a selection of Elective Courses (Level II) based on their personal interests. In their third year the students are expected to develop more depth in three subject areas by choosing advanced courses (Level III) from “clusters”, to which the Level II courses they have taken before are pre-requisite. In Year IV of their studies the students then may practise their skills in a required interdisciplinary research project (Level IV), before they will showcase their achievement of the graduate attributes in the Honours Project.

Within this outlined structure the BA (Hons) in Visual Arts programme is offered in two concentrations differentiated as Studio and Media Arts, and Craft and Design.

Studio and Media Arts
A concentration in Studio and Media Arts allows the student to focus his endeavours in traditional studio arts and/or contemporary media arts, aiming to generate meaning through aesthetic and/or intellectual concepts, beyond a merely functional approach. It indicates the student’s ability to work in areas related to the fine arts—as a practising artist—to teach related areas or take on some administrative positions from the area.

Craft and Design
Craft and design both have the physical work-result at the centre of their disciplines. Be it a hand-made artefact or a mass-produced industry product, the essence of the result is in its physicality. Because of this, concepts of functionality, usability, sustainability, but also consideration of production processes, market-demand and/or general benefits play an increasingly important role to the visual artist. Completion of this concentration indicates the student’s ability to work as designer or artisan, to teach in this area, and/or to take on administrative positions related to the area.