Graduate Diploma in Visual Arts

at Otago Polytechnic - Dunedin Campus New Zealand

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.

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.

The Graduate Diploma in Tertiary Education is a stimulating, flexibly-delivered programme that is tailored directly to your teaching context.

A variety of contemporary educational media, digital tools and experience-based learning approaches will be used to help you develop as a 21st Century educator; that is, a critically-reflective, dual-professional bringing expertise from your trade or profession to vocational education.

This program provides the ideal solution. New Zealand's future is being designed by people like you! Play your part by designing new products, innovating ideas, tackling social issues and creating commercial success. As the global population increases so does the demand for clever and practical designers to find solutions to material problems. Designers work in a broad range of creative areas and your skills will be highly valued by a variety of companies. A design qualification will open the doors to an endless array of opportunities.

This program has industry experiences at its centre with case studies and workplace-based or focused assignments. The practical learning doesn’t stop there as you’ll also complete an internship during your third year. This internship will place you within a real-world business where you’ll need to complete a research project as part of your time with the organisation.

Through this hands-on learning experience, you’ll develop the understanding and skills to work in a range of management environments at operational and strategic levels – not to mention the great industry and business connections you’ll also make!

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.

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.

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.

The program provides you with the opportunity to further develop your undergraduate experience of the history and contemporary conventions of your field. Gain a variety of transferable skills and become an effective team worker who can take risks and think laterally to solve problems. Better understanding and advanced learning, including research skills in studio and theory, will present you with higher level employment prospects in education, or the arts industry and management sectors. Alternatively, you may become a practising artist in various disciplines and media.

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.