Open College of the Arts

Open College of the Arts

Established	1987
Type	Independent, charity
Chief executive	Gareth Dent
Chair	(Very Reverend) Peter Bradley
Founder	Michael Young
Location	Redbrook Business Park Wilthorpe Road Barnsley South Yorkshire S75 1JN England
Staff	120 tutors
Affiliations	University for the Creative Arts
Website	www.oca.ac.uk

The Open College of the Arts (OCA) is an open learning independent arts college, with a Head Office in Barnsley in South Yorkshire, England. Founded in 1987 by Michael Young, it is a registered charity.

Courses

The OCA offers BA honours degrees in the following areas:

• Creative Arts
• Drawing
• Fine Art
• Moving Image
• Music
• Graphic Design
• Illustration
• Painting
• Photography
• Textiles
• Creative Writing
• Visual Communications

An award winning MA in Fine Art was launched in 2011. Degrees are accredited by the University for the Creative Arts.

The OCA has an open-door academic policy for its level 1 courses. Each student is assigned one of the college's 115 specialist tutors, who are arts practitioners and have experience teaching in higher education. The tutors' responsibilities are limited to marking and providing feedback on student assignments.

Courses offered by the OCA are frequently updated or rewritten and new courses are added from time to time. Recent introductions are graphic design, illustration, digital film production and visual culture and there are new courses in photography and printmaking, adding to existing courses in these areas. Students and tutors all work from home and there is a well attended programme of study visits.

Management

As a charity the OCA is overseen by a board of trustees chaired by the Very Reverend Peter Bradley, Dean of Sheffield and Chair of the Cathedral’s Archer Project Charitable Trust.

External links

• Official website
• College Blog
• University for Creative Arts page