School of Arts & Humanities

Introduction

Dean, School of Arts & Humanities – Ken Neil

The School as a collection of diverse Programmes is concerned to examine the means by which the arts are made, critiqued, displayed and engaged with; means that comprise the rich array of positions, methods, contexts and materials that artists, designers, curators and writers use and have used, as well as the subjects, ideas and issues that are attended to by our disciplines.

Whatever the Programme discipline, the students’ work on RCA2020 pays attention to the arts within the everyday, and to the everyday as a site of individual practice, but not to the exclusion of urgent topics of common contemporary relevance – relevance for the arts & humanities, and for our society as a whole.

In significant and enduring ways, the everyday comes into being through the arts, and, moreover, including in tumultuous times, our world is diagnosed and treated, urgently and gradually, by the arts. The arts help us make the world for us and help us make our way in that world, navigating the particularities of place, identity, and history, while seeking common foundations that might underpin art and humanity.

All students and staff across the School and College are to be commended for the vitality of their work in this exceptional year, and we all hope that all visitors enjoy the range of work on show and the diverse everydays that our students have brought alive for us.