Students

by: Richard Taylor

Surmounting a-n's full course service and feeding you the student option

Welcome to the site that slots you in to the rest of a-n, giving you bite sized news feeds and topical highlights, accompanying your toils and travels through studentship to the finality of graduation!

Students' community is your site and is governed by the needs of you during full-time, part-time, post-graduate and mature studentship. By picking out relevant content from a-n's Knowledge bank, Jobs & opps and Publications sites in 'What's new: where are you?' elements of the site are covered monthly for you to start accessing more of what the online service provides and looks to offer.

The three main sites include subscriber content, there are offers every year for students to get free subscriptions that allow access to Knowledge bank, Jobs and opps  and Publications. Alternatively it might be worth subscribing as a full user, claiming free public liability insurance, discounted advertisement and a full archive of downloadable material (find out about what you get from the full subscription here).

Alternatively, if your institution has a JISC subscription you will be able to gain access to all the above areas by using their details: so get in touch with your tutors to find out if this is available. Otherwise, there is plenty more to see and do within the carnival of colour that is a-n.co.uk:

Services UNEDITED - THE BLUE - THE ORANGE - THE GREEN (whatever suits your mood)

The unedited sites on a-n are free to join in with when you're a registered user. Accessing a-n online is rather like choosing the colour of paint for different rooms in your house, accept it is less permanent and we are on hand to make it less time-consuming too.

Feeling BLUE? So do many others during the challenge of a creative degree: at a-n you are not alone! So get involved and share the load.
Degrees unedited is the user-generated site that allows students to keep up to date on each others practices and discourses: the site is fully engaging with the Degrees unedited blogs that get profiled throughout the rest of the site.

Degrees unedited also allows its users to upload student-authored reviews of exhibitions / events (an integrated programme for this is generated by the online editor, in Opportunities for review). It also lets students upload listings for interim shows, degree shows and much more.
Find out more about Degrees unedited here »
Go to Degrees unedited »

Plenty of others regulate their Vitamin-C: are you in the mood for ORANGE too?
Artists talking is an online social networking site designed to fully integrate practicing artists across the UK. The Project blogs are a great way to keep up to speed with a variety of interesting practices, residencies and exhibition projects: during studentship this is a rich resource for attaining perspective whilst developing your own practice. As an essential professional tool, the blogs are best for keeping in touch, widening your network and communicating beneficially.

Artists' talking holds a huge database of images that have previously been published by a-n. For students that need to stock up on documented research and reference material, this is a great resource: all the details of images are searchable making referencing easier!
Go to Artists talking: Image bank »
Go to Artists talking »

Go GREEN go Interface.
Interface relates to a tool, which allows two or more separate functioning bodies to communicate and confront at ease, allowing more space for perspective and learned experiences to be gained.

In a-n's case, these two bodies would be the production of art and that, which gives it critical applause, credit and valuable discourse. Predominantly, Interface allows registered users to generate their own profile from which to platform their own opinions through review of visited exhibitions and events.

For students, this makes great reading! And is an invaluable resource for ways in which to approach not only self-criticality but also perspectives on how to be constructive with the work and goings on of others in the Fine Art and Creative sectors. What's more is that all of the reviewers and writers are approachable, the uploaded content and profiles can be commented upon: creating an oddly immediate occurrence, the reviewer is subject for review.

The thoughts of a student are invaluable, as they begin to construct their foundational ideas and opinions: what you have to say as someone studying is more concentrated and invariable more honest too!
Find out more here »
Advisers & tutors' Jane Watt: on Interface »
Go to Interface »

CLOSE COMMUNITIES
Along with Students come the Tutors: and alongside Students' community is Advisers & tutors.

This partnering communities site on a-n looks at resources offered to and provided by professionals who work in advisory roles within the Fine Art and Creative sectors: so a lot of this content is also relevant to you as students. Look out for regular feeds on the Students' homepage and upcoming collaborations between user groups.
Go to Advisers & tutors »

First published: a-n.co.uk October 2009