Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours)

at Otago Polytechnic - Dunedin Campus New Zealand

Artists create the beautiful, interesting and challenging things that make our environments unique and make a vital contribution to contemporary life.

If you already hold a degree but would like to develop your fine art skills, this program offers the opportunity to carry out an intensive personalised course of study. The skills gained through an art qualification are highly valued in a huge variety of industries including education, design, management and marketing. You may become practising artists in various disciplines and media, or consider a diverse and exciting range of careers including an Illustrator, Art Therapist, Researcher, Artists' Agent, Photojournalist or Colour Consultant.

Graduates of this Diploma could find employment as a Beauty Therapist, Spa Therapist, Skin Therapist, Electrologist, Resort Therapist working on a cruise liner or could work within beauty retail. Alternatively, you could establish and run your own beauty therapy business.     

During this program, you will learn how to apply advanced skincare techniques, advanced hair removal techniques and be introduced to spa body treatments.

This program is taught in a multi-disciplinary environment which means that your design projects may be more discipline focused e.g. fashion, communication, visual arts, product, spatial design, or explore projects than span and connect disciplines such as interaction design, fashion communication, accessories, food design, multimedia projects, event and experience design to name a few.

During this hands-on degree, you'll learn to tell stories through still and moving image, text and interactive media. You'll develop industry-ready skills and use project-based learning to apply them to community- and client-driven projects that have a focus on positive social and environmental change.

Specialise in:

• Graphic design and typography
• Illustration, animation and character design
• UX for game design
• Visual design for games
• 3D modelling and world building
• Game narratives and interactive fiction
• Web design and mobile app design
• Film and photography, or
• Social media content design and strategy.

Become a construction professional and help realize commercial and residential construction projects.

The New Zealand Diploma in Construction is recognized by employers and industrial, academic, and professional bodies - so when you graduate you'll be highly competent and industry-ready.
Quantity Surveyors and Construction Management professionals work with clients, architects, engineers, consultants, and local authorities to complete construction projects.

Construction Managers

Construction Management focus on planning and managing time, resources, quality and health and safety. They are less focused on financial management than quantity surveyors.

The Master of Fine Arts is an applied research degree benchmarked against national and international standards with a distinct emphasis on art-making and writing.The program is shaped by your proposal and can be completed in one discipline, or across several, and provides a qualification necessary for careers such as tertiary teaching, writing or critiquing, museum or gallery curatorship.

Practising artists will especially benefit from a focused, in-depth research project, culminating in a public exhibition and dissertation, reflecting your knowledge and competence in art practices and theories, and contemporary society and culture.

This degree will teach you how to become a creative maker, thinker and active agent in a local, national and global context. A qualification in the Visual Arts will allow you to find employment in a diverse range of professions such as practising artist, curator, art educator or researcher. A variety of roles within the digital and film industries would also be possible.

Gain technical, academic and personal skills which will be transferable to a wide variety of fields including education, design, management and marketing. This qualification provides a perfect bridge into further learning as you select from a range of subjects initially and then move into full specialisation, focusing your talents in your chosen field.

Become a construction professional and help realise commercial and residential construction projects.

The New Zealand Diploma in Construction is recognised by employers and industrial, academic and professional bodies - so when you graduate you'll be highly competent and industry ready.

Quantity Surveyors

Quantity Surveyors can budget, price, and financially administer construction projects. Typical roles include Consultants, Estimators, Contract Administrators, and Contract Managers. With experience, quantity surveying can lead into the fields of project management, commercial management, and dispute resolution.

This qualification is suitable for graduates who have a strong professional design background who want to extend and deepen their research skills and work on applied research projects which are self-generated or developed with industry or community partners.

Product Design is an exciting, ever-evolving profession focused on designing objects and systems to improve the way we live.

As a product designer you could work for corporations, manufacturers, consultancies and in the public sector, working to create specialised equipment with multidisciplinary teams that include doctors, researchers and engineers.

You'll graduate well-equipped for the workforce, with transferable skills in project management, communication, marketing and idea generation.