VISU1011: Engaging Audiences Through Image and Word

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• The module aims to equip students with the understanding and skills required to be effective communicators with a variety of audiences through the creative and effective use of images and words.

• The module will introduce students to the identification and analysis of the various audiences each of which comes with a particular set of skills and needs that need to be addressed through different media and types of writing.
• Using examples from a variety of forms of cultural production (in any particular year, this may include examples from photography, screenwriting, games, or visual art), students will be introduced to the particular requirements of specific media environments, and develop and their ability to reflect on and deploy these in an appropriate way).

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• On completion of this module students should:
• Understand the many different publication outlets (in the broadest sense) through which art and film writing is disseminated.
• Understand the different audiences and readerships to which different kinds of publication are directed, and the specific skills and needs that each kind of audience brings to their engagement with art and film writing.
• Have theoretical and practical/ experiential knowledge of the considerations involved in writing appropriately and effectively for a wide variety of media, including of the relationship between image and text.
• Be able to critically evaluate the communicative effectiveness of their own and other artefacts.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Subject-specific Skills:
• On completion of this module students will have developed:
• The ability to identify the target audience for different forms of art writing.
• On the basis of the above, to grasp the considerations that need to be factored in when writing for such audiences.
• In light of the above, the ability to write effectively for a variety of media aimed at a variety of audiences.
• To design a range of specimen publications that combine image and text in an effective and appropriate way.

Key Skills:

• On completion of this module students will have developed:
• the ability to engage in critical self-reflection
• collaborative working
• independent research
• organisation
• time management
• presentation
• IT skills

• Teaching is by means of a weekly interactive seminar, allowing students to develop skills in presentation and verbal argument, as well as to develop the analytic skills required in the summative assessment.
• Assessment itself reflects the diversity of art writing in practice, and consequently allows students significant leeway to develop the structure of their portfolio. The expectation is that the portfolio will include texts of different kinds and different lengths, aimed at different audiences and presented in different media.
• The self-evaluation assignment will take the form of an individual commentary on the project written for a tutor-defined audience, explaining how individual work and/or collaboration shaped the portfolio, as well as the considerations and research that informed the production and presentation of the project.
• Formative assessment for this module will include a combination of self-assessed, peer-assessed and tutor-assessed exercises during the year.

Formative assessment for this module will include a combination of self-assessed, peer-assessed and tutor-assessed exercises during the year.

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