School of Fine Art

This brilliant time of year in NCAD is the result of our students’ research, planning, skills, and their commitment to walk through the door of a series of decisions. Unlike most other knowledge domains, art requires that this learning is undertaken in the sight and site of peers. I’m thinking this is asked of very few others in their learning, and what a powerful and particular piece of communication and ‘publicness’ this is.

The School of Fine Art is full of students who choose to learn in this way and NCAD evolves as a very significant hub of art learning in these islands as we continue to prosper and innovate. Internationally, our benchmarking and relationship building continues to support us. In Beijing and Chongqing, we learn that the first Chinese character spelling Ireland means love, and perhaps the emergent thinking of the shared Island of all our futures is a love Island working through how we live well. The reanimation of student study visits is a powerful part of this, with significant ongoing Erasmus engagement. A consistent body of differently experienced visitors keeps us all keen.

Innovation at undergraduate level continues to platform critical creative thinking and action for the challenges ahead with the continuing growth of Studio +, whilst our departments pedagogically innovate in relation to computer commanded manipulation aligning digital facility with other models of how we know.

At postgraduate level, the thematic testing of art work supported by the Creative Futures Academy (CFA) combined with an agile, future facing freshness, has attracted new cohorts of students. Art knowing combined with other knowledge domains in health, social action, and ecology, for example, supports diverse and overlapping learning experiences on site and in the room. We are building new postgraduate offers to named pathways of interest that will dynamically further advance our research community of staff and students.

I would like to thank our partners, supporters, and staff- academic, administrative, and operational- and I would especially like to say really well done to our students for being with things all the way.

Welcome to our work everyone.

Professor Philip Napier
Head of the School of Fine Art