Certificate in Art and Design Fundamental

at Centennial College - Story Arts Centre Campus Canada

Centennial College's Fine Arts Studio program is an intensive two-year offering with emphasis on physically creating art through drawing, painting and sculpting.

By getting your hands dirty (literally), you learn the latest skills and techniques, find your own creative voice and be prepared to launch your career as an artist. You spend more time in the studio in two years at Centennial College than other schools offer in four!

In addition to the creative process, this arts diploma program offers one of Ontario's most comprehensive professional practice curriculum's. You'll graduate well-prepared to thrive as a self-employed artist in the professional arts community.

In this Fine Arts Studio program, you:

• Develop advanced technical, conceptual and professional skills required to engage the contemporary arts community.
• Work independently both in and out of the studio environment.
• Receive lots of one-on-one attention.
• Begin to nurture a lifetime of growth as a professional visual artist and storyteller.
• Have a progressive learning experience led by a collaborative team of teachers.
• Be encouraged to develop personal direction and approach to build your own unique voice and style in visual storytelling.
• The Fine Arts Studio program is for you if you are serious about practicing as a professional. As a candidate, you should have meaningful prior experience, either through education, a lifetime personal commitment, and/or the professional equivalent.

Please note: This program requires you to have and use a mobile computing device that meets or exceeds the recommended hardware and software requirements. 

Program Highlights

• The Fine Arts program frequently receives awards from both the Dean and the President for student satisfaction.
• A focus on traditional media, with selective integration of digital processes, gives you the skills necessary to thrive as a professional in the contemporary art world.
• You learn all about the business of being an artist, including getting shows and commissions, applying for grants, marketing yourself and building your career.
• In-school galleries allow for the opportunity to exhibit your work.
• You are exposed to professional exhibition opportunities, where the sales are real. Public exposure is also offered through rental programs.
• Attention is paid to individual creative growth in a studio environment.
• Enthusiastic faculty members are all accomplished professional artists and teach by drawing from their personal experiences.
• The Story Arts Centre is close to the heart of the city and gallery communities, but offers a welcoming non-institutional environment.

Whether your dream is to capture that definitive portrait, have your photos grace the pages of a leading fashion magazine or take photos for the world’s leading brands, our two-year Photography program will help you achieve your goals. 

In this hands-on photography diploma program, you will be capturing images from day one and learning the technology, techniques and business theory you need for a lasting career as a professional photographer. 

This photography program prepares you for the aesthetic and technical demands that come with working in studio or on location to produce captivating images that tell a story. Over two years, you will progressively build the skills needed to compete in the commercial photography industry and learn what it takes to grow your brand and create stunning images for a variety of clients. Upon completion of the Photography program, students will have the skills to operate their own photography business or find employment in related occupations such as fine art printing, advertising, publishing, graphic design and gallery and studio management.

Additionally, through your participation in the Story Arts Image Xchange, a real-world stock agency and incubator for emerging photographers and creative content creators, and the many scenarios where you can collaborate with students and faculty in our other programs, you will have had many opportunities to get your work published. You will also have the opportunity to put your skills to work in a professional setting during a seven-week field placement.

Program Highlights:-

• Attend classes at the Story Arts Centre, Centennial’s School of Communications Media, Arts and Design located close to downtown Toronto, which provides unlimited photographic opportunities.
• Opportunities to showcase your work in our Corridor Gallery and other galleries around the city.
• As School of Communications, Media, Arts and Design student, you will have many opportunities to collaborate with students in other programs .
• Participate in STORYWORKS, a unique and valuable course where you will work for real clients during your studies.

In Centennial College's three-year Journalism program, you gain the skills you need to navigate and succeed in a changing industry. By going from the classroom to the newsroom, you come to understand the multifaceted and fast-paced journalism industry, which focuses on interesting people, places and things.

In this advanced diploma program you:

• Cover a variety of topics while developing the critical foundation skills you need for the industry.
• Apply your newsroom skills to an award-winning community newspaper, a news website and radio-television news, all of which makes you versatile and industry-ready as soon as you graduate.
• Develop new multiplatform skills for the evolving world of news reporting.
• From covering breaking news to exploring human interest stories, as a journalist you will be responsible for reporting events, interviewing newsmakers and examining the issues of our times.

Please note: This program requires you to have and use a mobile computing device that meets or exceeds the recommended hardware and software requirements. 

Program Highlights

• You experience one-on-one interaction with faculty members in an ultra-modern, professional newsroom.
• The Story Arts Centre campus, where the Journalism program is facilitated, offers you access to publishing, broadcast and Internet facilities.
• Hands-on, real-world experience is available through award-winning community media, including the East York Observer newspaper, Freshly Pressed magazine, the Toronto Observer news website, radio and television newscasts available online.
• With a stellar faculty, whose combined credits include NBC News, CBC News, CTV News, OMNI, The Toronto Star, Toronto Sun, National Post, Globe and Mail and more, your journalism training is relevant, demanding and highly effective.
• You connect with excellent faculty, mentors and guest speakers and get to partake in exclusive field trips.
• Through the field trips and your field placement, you have the opportunity to make exclusive news media connections.

Centennial College's Dance – Performance program, the ultimate stepping stone to becoming a professional dancer, helps you dance your way to a fulfilling career.

Facilitated by the School of Communications, Media, Arts and Design, the dynamic Dance Performance program is on the cutting edge of what's new, innovative, current and popular in today's dance culture. This college diploma program focuses on helping you to develop a high standard of performance and technical dance skills in:

•  Commercial dance
•  Hip-hop
•  Ballet
•  Jazz
•  Contemporary
•  Cultural
•  World trends
•  Indigenous North American dance forms
•  Acrobatics
•  Singing
•  Choreography
•  Pas de deux

In addition to learning technical dance skills, you take courses that nurture and enrich the mind-body connection and enhance the ability for storytelling. Throughout the two years you spend in the Dance – Performance program, you also learn and develop the skills and tools needed to cope with issues such as self and body image, stress, rejection, nutrition and better understand anatomy and injury prevention.

With a learning environment that reflects today's industry, you graduate with a professional resume, photos and dance show-reel. You will also possess a strong entrepreneurial spirit, a professional attitude and instruction ability within the training and performance environment.

Please note: This program requires you to have and use a mobile computing device that meets or exceeds the recommended hardware and software requirements.

Program Highlights

• You acquire performance skills at professional, artistic and technical levels.
• A field placement in the final semester provides a valuable opportunity to work in the industry.
• Both the field placement and the Dance Performance program's industry connections allow you to network, learn and work with industry professionals who are in demand worldwide.
• At the Story Arts Centre, you collaborate with students in photography, film, television, music, art and theatre programs.
• The Dance Performance program's practical, hands-on and entrepreneurial approach prepares you for sustainable dance-related careers directly upon graduation.

Arts Education and Community Engagement is a two-semester Graduate Certificate program designed to ladder students into careers in arts education and community arts.

Students will learn how to design arts educational programming that is pedagogically sound and that meets the needs of diverse communities.  Students will apply best practices of community arts work and will be trained to facilitate arts-based social justice initiatives. Students will also learn about a variety of careers in arts education and community development through research, mentorship, and field placements.  Graduates of this program will be equipped to manage a professional career in arts and learning, and to incorporate community-engaged arts work into their existing creative practice. 

By modelling innovative pedagogy, this program teaches students to innovate for themselves. By partnering with leading arts organizations, this program facilitates connections and opportunities within the sector. By emphasizing global citizenship, social justice, and cultural competency, this program helps students locate these concerns at the heart of their creative and educational practice.

Program Highlights:-

• Learn to plan and implement arts education and community programming that responds to the needs of a group of learners, in multiple settings, and in collaboration with other artists or organizations.
• Participate in a seven-week field placement where you will directly support the programming of a partnering organization or artist in a supervised community environment.
• Attend classes close to downtown near the creative, cultural heart of Toronto at our Story Arts Centre campus and in the Performing Arts Commons at Daniels Spectrum.
• Opportunities to collaborate with the other students in photography, film and television, music, art, theatre and dance programs at the Story Arts Centre
• Unique opportunity to network, learn and work with industry professionals

Game Development & Design is a three-year advanced diploma program that aims to develop expert game designers who are able to create and develop their own titles. The program prepares students to become both technically literate and able to advance the conceptual and cultural potential of games.

The program concentrates on the practical applications of the game production process from the artistic, managerial, and technical sides. Students will be introduced to 2D and 3D design processes, foundations of computer programming, as well as how to communicate effectively with teams of artists and programmers to design, prototype and iterate their own fully playable 2D and 3D games. Students will also learn the professional and personal skills needed for success in the industry.

The Lifestyle Media program is a one-of-a-kind graduate certificate offering designed to train specialized media professionals who are at the hub of lifestyle media.
In this media program's courses, you'll effectively collaborate with real-world industry partners, clients and audiences to produce quality content for web, social media and traditional media platforms. You'll also gain the skills necessary to work entrepreneurially using contemporary digital media platforms and technologies to market yourself as an independent brand.
Lifestyle communicators are subject-matter experts who are able to take their passion and depth of knowledge to reach behind-the-scenes and share these worlds with audiences that want to both learn and be entertained. Successful lifestyle communicators influence trends and tastes and can become trusted sources of reliable information.

Program Highlights

• The interdisciplinary Lifestyle Media curriculum will include writing, visual communications, social media and entrepreneurship.
• You'll gain the ability to develop sector-specific expertise in areas such as fashion, beauty, food and health.
• There will be a strong focus on social media and web production, including analytics and measurement.
• You'll participate in an industry field placement in an area of your interest.

The Animation - 3D program at Centennial College runs for 16 consecutive months and, in that time, prepares you to successfully launch a career in digital animation.

Created in 1996, this animation program takes place at the School of Communications, Media, Arts and Design. Its intensive approach has become internationally recognized, on top of kick-starting the careers of hundreds of talented digital artists.

The 3D Animation program focuses on production-style training and offers a unique project-based learning experience that is applauded within the animation, visual effects and game industries. You'll develop skills for careers in animation, film, television, broadcast design and games.

Program Highlights

• The Animation - 3D program gives you 24-hour access to computer labs and workstations.
• Subjects covered also include life drawing, acting for animation and storyboard training.
• Class sizes are small, at a maximum of 21 students per class, giving you the opportunity to work closely alongside industry professionals who collectively have amassed more than 1,000 hours of instruction.
• Training is enhanced by industry-leading guest speakers, participatory workshops and company studio tours.
• You are assisted in producing demo reels that showcase your abilities to potential employers.
• This School of Communication, Media, Arts and Design program boasts an industry field placement. While this opportunity is unpaid, it lasts eight weeks and offers valuable on-the-job training and industry contacts. You will be provided with a list of Toronto studios accepting interns. When seeking industry field placement opportunities, you will be required to make direct contact with animation studios.
• An active alumni network allows you to build your own list of industry contacts.

The Public Relations – Corporate Communications program takes just two semesters to complete and is one of the most highly regarded Public Relations (PR) programs in Toronto.
The courses in this Public Relations Graduate Certificate program, which is based at the Story Arts Centre campus, reflect the thinking that no two days in PR are alike. The industry experts who teach the courses ensure you:

• Learn to research, write, plan, edit, design and implement everything from strategic communications plans and employee newsletters to gala dinners for hundreds of people.
• Gain an understanding of how communications strategies influence employee attitudes, shift stakeholders' opinions and tell an organization's story to the media.
• Connect with the PR industry.

You may want to consider this School of Communications, Media, Arts and Design program if you have previously completed post-secondary education, possess strong writing skills and have the ability to manage various projects at the same time.

Please note: This program requires you to have and use a mobile computing device (i.e. laptop, tablet) that meets or exceeds the recommended hardware requirements.

Program Highlights:-

• This Public Relations program's curriculum highlights learning by doing while emphasizing employability skills and landing a job.
• The offering leads the way in social media and PR content.
• Because the program is facilitated from Centennial College's Story Arts Centre in Toronto, you are close to the heart of Toronto's PR industry.
• You complete a full-time, eight-week field placement in the industry.
• Student membership in one of the following associations is included in your tuition and fees: The Canadian Public Relations Society (CPRS) or the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC).

Contemporary Journalism is a three-semester graduate certificate program that will explore new tools, trends and directions in journalism while maintaining an emphasis on sourced, credible and verifiable storytelling. You'll learn in an interactive environment with courses covering news reporting, writing, editing and visual storytelling while also exploring social media, mobile and emerging technologies (virtual reality), and delving into multimedia storytelling and data journalism. 

In a digital world, the smartphone is increasingly the newsroom for journalists and the living room for the audience. The Contemporary Journalism program will emphasize the use of mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets, to source, produce and share credible multimedia journalism.
The program will culminate with entrepreneurial and professional practice elements, including a seven-week field placement, during which you'll demonstrate and refine your skills in today’s rapidly evolving media environment. 

Program Highlights

• Develop new multiplatform, digital and social media skills for the evolving world of reporting and sharing;
• Learn to write, produce and share stories in an energetic, dynamic and hands-on environment, led by a faculty of seasoned professionals and educators drawn from all sectors of the industry;
• Gain entrepreneurial skills along with personal branding abilities to help you stand out in the industry;
• Collaborate with the other students enrolled in programs such as photography, public relations, film and television, music, art, theatre and interactive media management;
• Participate in client-focused projects.