Bachelor of Visual Arts

at Otago Polytechnic - Dunedin Campus New Zealand

The Graduate Diploma in Tertiary Education is a stimulating, flexibly-delivered programme that is tailored directly to your teaching context.

A variety of contemporary educational media, digital tools and experience-based learning approaches will be used to help you develop as a 21st Century educator; that is, a critically-reflective, dual-professional bringing expertise from your trade or profession to vocational education.

The program provides you with the opportunity to further develop your undergraduate experience of the history and contemporary conventions of your field. Gain a variety of transferable skills and become an effective team worker who can take risks and think laterally to solve problems. Better understanding and advanced learning, including research skills in studio and theory, will present you with higher level employment prospects in education, or the arts industry and management sectors. Alternatively, you may become a practising artist in various disciplines and media.

This degree will teach you how to become a creative maker, thinker and active agent in a local, national and global context. A qualification in the Visual Arts will allow you to find employment in a diverse range of professions such as practising artist, curator, art educator or researcher. A variety of roles within the digital and film industries would also be possible.

Gain technical, academic and personal skills which will be transferable to a wide variety of fields including education, design, management and marketing. This qualification provides a perfect bridge into further learning as you select from a range of subjects initially and then move into full specialisation, focusing your talents in your chosen field.

Then this is the qualification for you! You will learn how to effectively implement processes that actively support and enhance the visitor experience and will evaluate local, national and international tourism operating environments.
An educational field trip to an iconic New Zealand tourism destination is included. You will have the chance to engage in tourism activities first hand to build your experience of the industry. This will help to build your knowledge and connect the theory you have learned with practice.

This qualification will help you extend and deepen your knowledge of the underpinning base theories and procedures used in the practice environment, in a wider and more encompassing scope than within our Postgraduate Certificate program.You will also gain a greater understanding of the roles of those who are working with you.

You will have completed an applied project, which allows you to address your practice from multiple perspectives and to position your practice within a wider industry context.This qualification prepares you for further postgraduate study or a career in advanced sport or exercise.

There is also an increasing demand for those professionals to hold higher level qualifications. Applicants for these roles are therefore at a considerable advantage with a postgraduate qualification and there is a strong emphasis within this program on application of knowledge and development capabilities in business management or business information systems.

Flexibility within this qualification will also enable aspirations to be matched/targeted to specific employment opportunities.  

Learners will extend and deepen their knowledge and understanding of current management capabilities and issues in a range of applied settings through experiential learning strategies and reflective practice.

Artists create the beautiful, interesting and challenging things that make our environments unique and make a vital contribution to contemporary life.

If you already hold a degree but would like to develop your fine art skills, this program offers the opportunity to carry out an intensive personalised course of study. The skills gained through an art qualification are highly valued in a huge variety of industries including education, design, management and marketing. You may become practising artists in various disciplines and media, or consider a diverse and exciting range of careers including an Illustrator, Art Therapist, Researcher, Artists' Agent, Photojournalist or Colour Consultant.

This program is taught in a multi-disciplinary environment which means that your design projects may be more discipline focused e.g. fashion, communication, visual arts, product, spatial design, or explore projects than span and connect disciplines such as interaction design, fashion communication, accessories, food design, multimedia projects, event and experience design to name a few.

During this hands-on degree, you'll learn to tell stories through still and moving image, text and interactive media. You'll develop industry-ready skills and use project-based learning to apply them to community- and client-driven projects that have a focus on positive social and environmental change.

Specialise in:

• Graphic design and typography
• Illustration, animation and character design
• UX for game design
• Visual design for games
• 3D modelling and world building
• Game narratives and interactive fiction
• Web design and mobile app design
• Film and photography, or
• Social media content design and strategy.

This program has an emphasis on exploration and experimentation. You will develop individual projects which study ceramics as a medium with its own formal language, skills and history, within a broader context of fine arts and crafts.  

Successful completion of this program could lead to you becoming a successful practising artist, with the ability to understand and use your creativity to contribute significantly to your community.