Technical Resources

Being creative is about more than just ideas. You need to have the facilities and tools to create and realise your ideas effectively. At Plymouth College of Art we have state-of-the-art resources available across all subject areas to help you make art happen. From specialist workshops, media labs and studios equipped with industry-standard equipment to highly trained technical staff and academic practitioners to support you, you will have the opportunity to design, make, craft and create across traditional and digital technologies.
Here’s a taste of some of the specialist environments and resources open to all students:

Studio 11 – Fine Art Studio

Studio 11 is the College's newest cutting-edge facility for Fine Art students and practitioners. This facility will enable students to study within a large, open-plan environment, breeding creativity by offering extensive workshop and exhibition space along with installation areas and top quality IT facilities. With mobile partitions, innovative moveable storage units and image projections for the studio walls, Studio 11 is a flexible, exciting and inspiring addition to the College’s facilities.

Fashion and Textiles

In Fashion you will have access to a variety of industrial standard machinery, including computerised flatbed sewing machines and CAM/CAD computer systems to enable the realisation of creative ideas to commercial standards. Our textile studio incorporates resources such as sewing, knitting and dyeing, and links closely with printmaking and techniques such as devoire, discharge, procion, flocking, and 3D foil printing.

Printmaking

The printmaking studios have facilities for intaglio, mono print, relief and screen printing processes. These include two light exposure units, drying cabinets, etching press and Columbian press and fabric printing facilities.

Media and Photography

The Equipment Resource Area is extensive, containing numerous items of photographic equipment – both digital and traditional. The resources support a number of specialisms, including underwater photography, film, digital video, chroma key and animation. There are extensive broadcast quality video and audio edit suites, darkrooms to support black and white, and E6 and processing and developing and a frontier press for industry standard image out put. There are two photographic studios with lighting rigs to facilitate studio photography, one with an infinity cove. The state-of-the-art Studio Theatre is equipped with AV resources, lighting and a chroma key curtain.

Ceramics

The ceramics workshop contains a variety of fuel-fired kilns, including facilities for Raku and gas reduction firings as well as specialist areas for clay preparation, plaster mould making, throwing, slip-casting, hand building and glazing.

Metals

The metals workshops provide a broad range of facilities for work in the areas of large-scale architectural metals, small-scale metals and jewellery. Resources include forging, welding, hydraulic press, lathes, power hammer, plasma cutting, anodising, acid etching, lost wax casting and enamelling.

Glass

The glass workshops are well equipped to support a broad range of glass making activities. These include hot glass, glass blowing and casting along with a kiln glass area for fusing, slumping and casting, a lamp working area and a finishing room for cutting, grinding, polishing and sandblasting.

Print Finishing

Creations, our Print Finishing Suite, offers students the option of mounting and finishing their work themselves with the correct tools and equipment, or working with the Creations staff on more complex presentation techniques mounting onto mediums such as card, mount board, MDF and laminate finishes for an impressive professional result.

Digital Imaging

The College houses a drop-in Digital Imaging Suite which facilitates creative manipulation of work via a bank of colour calibrated Macs, a hi-tech flatbed and negative scanning equipment.