Study profile
Common Ground is a programme for all first-year bachelor students at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK), irrespective of department. It takes place every Wednesday, and you work alongside students from different disciplines: making together, examining how the making is done, and discovering the different ways a creative practice can be built. You collaborate on projects and discover your role within a group.
It is a year of sustained practice in collaboration, through collective projects, theoretical grounding in community-oriented art and design practices, student-led research, and a public presentation at the end of each semester.
Common Ground is a compulsory component for every first-year bachelor student, with allocated credits and assessments. Assessment is pass/fail.
Common Ground is part of Commons
Commons is the shared component of the bachelor curriculum: a two-year trajectory, followed by every student in the academy, in which the boundaries between disciplines become a subject of study rather than a given condition. Photographers work alongside textile designers, fine artists alongside interaction designers. Your own department and your own discipline remain the centre of your education, but Commons is where you learn to situate them among others.
Commons is a required component of the bachelor programme in both the first and the second year. It is not an elective.
Why we teach this
Contemporary artistic practice is rarely a solitary undertaking. Our graduates enter collectives, commissions, institutions and interdisciplinary teams, where the capacity to work generously and precisely with others determines as much as individual talent does. Commons offers a space in which to develop that capacity deliberately, among peers whose methods, vocabularies and assumptions differ from your own.
Practical info
All Commons classes take place on Wednesdays. Alongside the contact hours, you are expected to work independently on your assignments and your own projects.
Common Ground 6 EC · Common Domain 10 EC · both pass/fail
Attendance of 80% is required in order to enter the assessments.
Questions?
Contact
For questions about Common Ground you can write to commons@kabk.nl.