The structure of the Foundation Course

From my posts so far you might get the idea that the Foundation course just consisted of one off sessions but in fact these were just a small part of what was going on and were mainly done during the first term, before Christmas. Morning drawings were only for the first hour of the day, designed to get brains working and the rest of the day would be a return to whatever the main preoccupation was.

In the early days we had a lot more freedom as the course offered a Jacob Kramer College Certificate on completion and it didn’t have to conform to a BTEC or other examination format. This meant that we could make things up as we went along, each year trying out something new and looking for alternative ways to pack a lot of learning into a short period of time.

Some things however were constant. The beginning of the year would usually start with drawing, colour and then 3D. Ofter this (roughly 6 weeks in) would be a period of diagnostic work, consisting of projects designed to test out how students approached various problem solving and other activities. After Christmas there was usually a breakdown into separate areas, initially Fine Art, Fashion Textiles, Graphics and 3D. (When I started this was very informal, students working towards different disciplines often working alongside each other, if I can remember rightly we only started to break down into geographically separate discipline areas by about 1980, partly due to increasing numbers, but also because degree courses were indicating that portfolios needed to become more identifiable as fine art or design). Portfolios had to be ready for Easter in those days, so you had a lot more time as a student to develop your own work and establish an identity. The final term was focused on pushing individual work forward and as there were only two degree course choices and the ‘pool’ to apply for; many students were also still developing their portfolio for interview throughout the third term. (It was much harder to get a place on a degree programme then, courses often keeping half their places open for second stage interviews, as it was commonly felt that students would have a much more ‘mature’ portfolio by then and therefore less ‘risky’). The final show at the end of the year was always a big event and much time was spent organising and putting this up. The move towards an August start came with a change in degree application processes. The old ADAR (Art and Design Admissions Registry) was phased out and replaced by UCAS. The number of art and design courses that could be applied for started to multiply exponentially and by then all Foundation Courses had been validated under various examining bodies, usually BTEC.

This blog format is great for off the top of the head reminiscence but rubbish in terms of giving a structured and coherent overview of what happened, so I’m sorry if it is confusing. I shall gradually open out the differences as I remember them, but things do blur as time goes by and I never kept any records. However other people have and perhaps at some point some of the records might be added to these thoughts as more objective indicators of what actually went on.

Terry Hammill was course leader for several of those (for me) early years, (Peter Smailes was leader when I arrived, but he was always rather distant and I was never sure how much he was involved with structuring, others seemed to have strong views of their own and he just seemed to let them get on with it). Terry held the reins sometimes loosely and at other times quite tightly, looking for when we were losing it and making sure we addressed the totality and not just the bits we were interested in. There was a sense of camaraderie, a strong belief in what we were doing and a feeling that we were all valued for our contributions, even though some were more vocal than others in ‘knowing’ what it was all about. (There were times when clashes between personalities and approaches to pedagogy would get extremely vociferous and argumentative) It needed a calm head and logical mind to balance the subjective excitement and romantic tales with the need to cover the basics and ensure that at the end of the day the course did what it was supposed to do. Terry will have the paper records from those times and at some point they ought to be archived.