Faculty of Creative Arts
Graduate Profile
Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA)
2014
Introduction
The Graduate Profile is a statement of the generic and specific attributes and skills of graduates of
the programme including the body of knowledge attained (CUAP Functions and Procedures, 20132014). The framework for graduate outcomes in the Graduate Profile may vary depending on the
award, however attention should be paid to the development in graduates of lifelong learning skills.
A Graduate Profile may contain the personal attributes, interactive attributes and specific
programme attributes which should ideally be displayed by graduates.
Bachelor of Fine Arts
The Bachelor of Fine Arts programme at the University of Canterbury provides a studio-based
education in the practice and theory of contemporary art. This enables students to develop their
capacity for creative practice and to gain an understanding of the contextual and critical thought on
which it is based. The Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury includes courses from
the Art History and Theory programme and other undergraduate programmes, providing students
with a broader liberal arts education. Above all, a fine arts education encourages students to be selfreflective, critically responsive, and innovative contributors to the world in which they live.
Dispositions, Skills and Graduate Attributes
Studying for a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the University of Canterbury:
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Develops students’ critical thinking and potential for creativity;
Provides a foundational understanding of the visual arts across the breadth of the various
fine arts disciplines;
Provides students with in-depth discipline-based knowledge;
Encourages students to develop an individual art practice through sustained engagement
with a particular creative process, involving research, experimentation, innovation,
synthesis, analysis, and presentation;
Fosters students’ capacity to critically engage with established opinions and views, while
developing the capacity to value and exercise intellectual and artistic independence; and
Enables graduates of the programme to interject an original voice into the ongoing cultural
conversation that is the visual arts.
Graduates will have extended their ability for creative expression and thought through a core fine
arts discipline and within their chosen discipline they will:
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Have engaged in research and experimentation;
Have engaged in the exploration and incubation of a developing body of work’s research
material;
Have developed a nascent practitioner’s potential experimental strategies through:
o A growing understanding and synthesis of a project’s organizing ideas;
o Knowledge of and consideration for a creative undertaking’s cultural context and
that context’s shaping influence;
o The development of appropriate processes and constituting procedures with an
expanding cognizance of a work’s potential audience;
Have had experience in analysing outcomes with a view to clarity of purpose, and from that
clarity of purpose developing a relevant critical thesis as an accompanying textual exegesis
of the work itself;
Have had experience in innovation by inventing new combinations, novel variations, and fresh
themes or strategies arising from practice in the chosen field of fine arts endeavour.
This Graduate Profile is reviewed annually and was last reviewed in 2014.
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