MA in Integrative Design, Fine Arts, Visual Communication and Iconic Research, or Art and Design Education

Application deadline: March 15, 2020 / April 30, 2020

The FHNW Academy of Art and Design offers four distinct MA programmes: Integrative Design, Fine Arts, Visual Communication and Iconic Research, and Art and Design Education. Based on your design experience or your previously articulated artistic statements, you broaden your skills and knowledge in a creative interplay between experiment, research, theory, and critical reflection. Supported by a professional environment with an open conceptual framework, you learn to translate creative ideas into relevant aesthetic articulations on an advanced level. The courses of the Master programmes take two years to complete. Graduates are awarded the internationally acknowledged title of Master of Arts. 

All courses offered by the FHNW Academy of Art and Design are held at the Campus of the Arts in Basel. Together with neighbouring institutions such as the House of Electronic Arts (HeK), Kunsthaus Baselland, Schaulager, the Basel Poster Collection, the Media Competence Centre iart, as well as the Herzog & de Meuron Archives, the FHNW Academy of Art and Design forms a creative cluster and provides an ideal study environment.

Integrative Design
Our angle: the challenges of today’s complex lifeworld cannot be adequately met through a single discipline approach, which is why we rely on the idea of integrative design. In an ongoing exchange with mentors and external specialists, you translate aspects of research, economics, technology, and culture into future design positions. You get the opportunity to further develop your special fields of knowledge, interests, and skills in an interdisciplinary and inspiring learning environment. Your MA degree qualifies you to work in professional, cross-disciplinary networks and apply your skills in design agencies, in art and creative ventures, or set up your own business in a field of your own choice.

Fine Arts
Our unique programme addresses the questions of nature, gender and ethnicity as the true substances which nourish today’s artistic practice. The programme stresses the values with which we wish to build the foundation for a new role for art and artists in our societies and communities: equality, justice, grace, commitment, love, care, engagement, honesty, mutuality… These values are performed in all aspects of the programme, in its content and in the way we communicate with each other. Work is presented regularly to peers in plenary sessions. In seminars with artists and scientists, scholars, and activists we examine and debate how a different relation with nature could be envisioned, how a different practice of equality could be implemented. Our amazing technical facilities and teams are also a part of the programme—they will interact with you on all levels of your work, from discussing ideas to addressing the needed skills.

Visual Communication and Iconic Research
One significant effect of today’s digitized communication is the ease of creating and disseminating images for communication. Unlike language, which has been the subject of reflection since antiquity, images have not had the benefit of a comparable field of reflection in the past. As the practice of visual communication finds itself at the centre of the described flood of images, it is crucial to engage in interdisciplinary projects in order to broaden the understanding of how images generate meaning in social exchange. Following this line of thought, the MA programme merges practice-led design processes with aspects of iconic and media theory. The combination of practical processes of image creation and a theoretical reflection on images and media, enables students to engage in practice-led inquiries of iconic and media research. 

Art and Design Education
In our new Learning Lab Arts and Design, students link up their own art, design, and communication projects with current academic discourse, theoretical reflection, and practical experience. They expand on and deepen their acquired skills in the fields of art and design education and artistic research. In the course of their studies, the students get the opportunity to broaden their knowledge on art, design and education, and learn what teaching and communicating art is all about. They apply their acquired skills and knowledge to develop their own art, design, and education projects at schools and in cultural institutions. A MA degree in Art Education entitles you to teach at upper secondary schools (level II), to and to engage in research-oriented, advanced work.

The application deadline is March 15, 2020 (April 30, 2020–Visual Communication and Iconic Research), with the programme starting in September 2020.