The Visual Arts Department was initially a Unit within the Department of Architecture in the Faculty for the Built Environment, set up to offer a Foundation year in Design Studies to prospective Architecture students. After an extensive Faculty wide review, held between 2008-2011,a department dedicated solely to the visual arts was established.
Although the main remit of the Visual Arts Department is to prepare students for the courses offered by the Faculty for the Built Environment during the Foundation year, it also supports the Department of Architecture and Conservation by offering higher level courses based on skills acquired in the foundation year that further enhance creative competencies.
Over the years, the Department has developed a distinctive approach in optimising students’self-development on both intellectual and creative levels,whilst addressing the need for creative skills,compensating for the marginal role art education plays a marginal role in Malta’s mainstream education (Grech, 2017). The principal mode of delivery rotates around the 24/7 access to the Design Studio as a space that provides a functional blended learning experience that fuses theoretical knowledge and its subsequent practice-based application. The latter is of particular relevance since in the study carried out by Grech (2017), it was noted that 68% of the student cohort had no workshop hands-on experience prior to the commencement of the course.In this sense, the Department of Visual Art is a pioneer in preparing students with a consolidated set of skills in both traditional and digital methods.
This methodology instills a design/visual art research process modus operandi in students coming from a somewhat rigid syllabus-based post-secondary educational structure, thus empowering them with confidence and the research skills needed in the following academic years.
Students are given individual attention and their work is reviewed by a cohort of specialist practicing artist tutors with an international formation and presence, representing specific fields of the visual/fine art practice.In the Design Studio students learn from each other’s work and consequently develop self-evaluation, critical and presentation skills. Through these sessions, students are also encouraged to reflect on the newly acquired knowledge and requested to compile an extensive portfolio rooted in design and visual art fundamentals. The one-to-one tutorship, a strong point of this course, is a key component in aiding students’creative drawing skills.In this sense, further improvement in individual tutorship shall be addressed through the provision of well-equipped workshop facilities and studio spaces in the imminent future.