Looking back on my experience of the CAT course, it’s clear that my research skills and confidence in discussing the information has improved greatly. In my opinion, I feel like my later work, particularly my assignments, show an ability to research wider themes and concepts which help me to form a more critical analysis.
Research is an integral part of all learning and is a skill I have and will keep improving throughout studying with the OCA. The ability to utilise different resources – both primary and secondary allows you to gain a better understanding of the subject, whilst allowing you to refer to wider themes, concepts and theories.
I always ensure I dedicate a large amount of time to the research I put into my work, perhaps too much time sometimes but without this research, I wouldn’t feel as confident in commenting on a subject as complex as the creative arts. Often I found it beneficial to create a mind map, outlining my initial thoughts and the areas I wanted to research further. Doing this helped me to collect my thoughts before collecting both primary and secondary research.
Visual research and investigations are just as important as the theoretical, especially in such a visual course like Creative Arts Today. I find that they prompt more contemplation because the information isn’t necessarily as obvious to it causes you to think about the subject on a deeper level. Often it may represent various concepts and themes already mentioned in other research but seeing it visually can help you to understand better or consider it from different perspectives. I think this is particularly important in a creative course because there often any wrong or right answers in art – it’s subjective and can mean something very different for each person.
You can then research the potential themes, symbolism and concepts further to develop your knowledge and gain a better understanding of context. This may be about a movement, other artists/designers, characteristics of someone’s work etc.
To begin with, I found it challenging to ensure that my points were backed up by a reference in any assignments. Although I’d done extensive research, I perhaps hadn’t organised it enough and written down the sources in which I found the information clearly. There are stages to research and the organisation of it is vital to ensuring you are able to build a well thought out essay.
Upon reflection of the work I’ve explored and analysed during this course, there are definitely some themes and concepts that are more common. Place and Time were obviously running themes but in addition, I found that concepts such as life and death could also be linked to many of the works I looked at.
Therefore, theoretical research is important and can help you to understand why an artist, writer, photographer or designer may have made a certain choice. However, it is the visual research that what develops your own opinions and connection to the work.