Photography with Foundation Year

The world of arts and media is changing at a phenomenal rate, and there has never been a better time to explore your creativity and the ways in which you can apply it to the world around you.

This Foundation Year provides the perfect opportunity for you to explore the key principles of art, design and media. The course is designed to help you develop your creative skills, it gives you a chance to build a larger portfolio, and provides a good transition period to familiarise yourself with the School of Arts, Media and Creative Technology and life as a student at Salford. You will then be in a strong position to progress onto your chosen degree pathway.

This is a shared Foundation Year across Art, Design and Media disciplines, and will give you a collaborative environment to explore ideas, take creative risks and become confident independent learners. You will be joining a thriving and creative community.

You will:

• develop your creative skills and academic confidence

• familiarise yourself with student life

• prepare to study on one of our degree programmes

This course is not open to international students.

The Foundation Year will provide you with a dynamic, exciting and collaborative environment in which you will become a confident self-learner, with the underpinning skills and knowledge to apply in your studies. You will be taught with students interested in progressing to different art, design and media programmes, and study modules that will help you increase your knowledge and understanding of basic art and design as well as other aspects of creative thinking.

Our strong connections within Greater Manchester’s thriving creative sector mean you will also hear from practitioners working in the industry right now about their practice and journey into the world or art and design.

In the first term you will study modules that introduce the key concepts, skills and knowledge of art and design. Modules will help you to develop your study skills such as note-taking and structuring reports. In the second semester, you will further develop your creative practice and be introduced to the creative industries.

The assignments are flexible enough to allow you to interpret and tailor your submissions to your preferred area of study. Tutors will help and support you, in creating a portfolio of work to progress onto the BA (Hons) Photography here at the University of Salford. You will be integrated slowly into the degree course with opportunities to meet tutors from the BA and by using our shared collaborative facilities within our vibrant New Adelphi building.

This programme prepares you to study on the three-year University undergraduate programme, meaning the duration of your degree is four years in total. The foundation year is not a standalone qualification.

Following the Foundation Year, the three years of BA (Hons) Photography:

By providing you with a solid foundation in photographic theory and practice, this course will offer you the opportunity to take risks, explore ideas and realise your creative potential. The course aims to create flexible, resourceful and creative photographers with well-developed transferable skills, that can be applied to a broad range of commercial, commerce and art based careers.

You will work with industry-standard equipment and studios to support you from image capture through to exhibition. You will learn to apply a range of practical contemporary photographic and digital skills in order to explore the creative and intellectual potential of existing, experimental and digital photographic techniques and their application within the creative arts and media industries.

Some of the career routes that photography graduates go on to include, archivists, art directors, curators, digital artists, exhibiting photographers, freelancers, picture researchers, printers, retouchers, studio managers, teachers, videographers. You will also have the potential to move across into related careers in marketing, branding, technical support and PR.