Please note that the former Arts University College at Bournemouth (AUCB)
became the Arts University Bournemouth (AUB) on 13th December 2012.
All references in this document to AUCB, the University College or the Arts University College should be taken to refer to AUB, the University or the Arts University.
Annual Report 2010 – 2011
Contents
Chairman’s Introduction
Principal’s Review
24
- Honours and Achievements
- 6
- 2011 Honorary Fellows –
- 6
Past Honorary Fellows – 10
2010/2012 Student Award Winners – 12
Finance
18
This Annual Report provides the AUCB financial accounts for the year 2010-2011 and highlights some of the University College’s key initiatives and achievements during this period. As part of our continued commitment to sustainability, management of resources and focus on providing the highest quality student provision, it is produced on recycled paper and is a summary report only – further details of the AUCB’s activities may be found on our website aucb.ac.uk
Chairman’s Introduction
The academic year 2010-11 was challenging for all Higher Education institutions as the government’s planned changes to HE funding were announced and began to be implemented. The headline movement away from grant funding to student fees provided through the Student Loan Company was well signposted, but with all such structural change the devil was in the detail, and there was a great deal of detail, much of it altering as we progressed through the academic year. Sadly the unique position of specialist institutions often appeared to be considered after the event, as with the late realisation that recruitment by ‘A’ level results is not a criteria by which we select our students. The University College has always sought talent through interview and portfolio review and is committed to maintaining its high standards and to identifying student talent wherever it is to be found.Therefore a system which allows Universities to recruit unlimited numbers of AAB grade students whilst capping numbers for all others has little application to us or other specialist institutions. As the head of a conservatoire succinctly put it, for them it didn’t matter whether their students had A grades in History, French and Maths but rather what grade piano they had! Fortunately the government listened to the representations of the specialist institutions and allowed us to opt out of the system, but there still remains no clear signpost from government on how specialist institutions such as our own can grow in the future, even where such growth can be self-funded.This is unfortunate as our courses in art, design, media and performance support the nationally important and growing creative industries.
Nicholas Durbridge Chairman
The debate about the level of student fees naturally was a key focus for the governing body.We set our annual fee at £8,600, slightly lower than the top level set by many universities, but at a level which recognises the higher costs involved in studio-based education, especially involving areas of high technology. It will enable us to continue to create annual surpluses that we can re-invest back into our campus, facilities, and students.
All of these changes have been the subject of great discussion at every level of the University College. A lot of hard work by staff members, Heads of School, Deans and the Deputy Principal and Principal has gone into making our institution ready for the introduction of the full fee regime in 2012-2013. I would like to pay tribute to our staff and to all that the University College has achieved in such challenging circumstances. As I write this introduction, student applications for our courses in 2012-2013 have held up well against an overall national decline in applications.
I remain confident therefore in the long term sustainability of The Arts University College at Bournemouth and that it will continue to rise to any future challenges in Higher Education.
2 — 3
Principal’s Review
The academic session 2010-11 was eventful for the HE Sector. We received‘Students at the Heart of the HE System’, the Government White Paper which incorporates many of the changes proposed in the earlier‘Review of Funding for Higher Education’ and led by Lord Browne. Taken together these have set in train a shift from direct grant investment in HE institutions to a funding model predicated largely on student fees. In these matters it has been important for the University College to be abreast of national developments and to incorporate the best analysis of current proposals within our strategic planning for the period ahead. If we consider current Government proposals alongside the HEFCE funding initiatives they comprise a force for change unequalled in higher education since the Robbins’ Report of the early 1960’s.
Professor Stuart Bartholomew Principal
The moves towards a more market driven system of HE will be challenging for all universities and colleges. Students faced with unprecedented levels of graduate debt will expect more from the institutions in which they study. AUCB has made significant progress over the last year in privileging the student experience and squeezing the maximum from our resources to enhance the teaching and learning environment. We have also continued to build upon an established network of commercial links to provide graduates with opportunities for professional progression to the creative industries. The destination and employment data administered by the Higher Education Statistical Agency recorded a 96.7% progression to employment by AUCB graduates and placing us in the top decile of all higher education institutions for employment success.
The University College specialises in higher education in arts, design, media and performance. We are justly proud of our record in preparing students for professional lives in the creative industries as we are for the contributions our academic community makes to teaching, learning and scholarship.
Our success in the delivery of the subjects we offer will depend upon our sustainability. The continued development of AUCB in the emerging HE marketplace will demand the application of sound business decisions in support and promotion of our academic offer. AUCB is adopting good practices of institutional performance, monitoring and financial strategy to ensure regular, robust assessments of sustainability. These are informed by relevant strategic Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are appropriate to our distinct mission. We are confident that we have the adaptive capacity to respond to the opportunities and threats of the period ahead. In this regard, we are not complacent about our future in the HE sector, but are continuing to plan strategically for effective engagement with it and in the service of arts, design, media and performance.
4 — 5
2010/2011 Honours & Achievements 2011 Honorary Fellows
Caryn Franklin
Caryn Franklin has worked in fashion for 29 years as a writer, presenter, producer and director. Formally a fashion editor and later co-editor of i-D magazine for six years, she is best known for presenting the BBC’s Clothes Show for 12 years and BBC’s Style Challenge for three years. She has regularly appeared on GMTV, LKToday andThis Morning as well as hosting her own programmes:Well Woman and Agony for Granada,The Frock and RollYears for Carlton and UKTV’s remake ofThe Clothes Show.
The University College makes the award of Honorary Fellowship to persons who have made a significant contribution to the field of art, design, media or performance in a professional capacity or an educational role.
Bob and Roberta Smith
Caryn has produced and presented four documentaries: Vivienne Westwood, PhilipTreacy, FashionTargets Breast Cancer and Matthew Williamson for ITV. She has written for a variety of magazines including i-D,Time Out, Marie Claire, SundayTimes, Elle and Cosmopolitan and has produced four books including ‘Fashion UK’ (Conran Octopus) and ‘The Breast Health Handbook,’ which was a bestseller. She has written for magazines and papers like Elle, Independent, SundayTimes, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Grazia and continues to be a broadcast fashion commentator contributing to programmes including BBC Breakfast News, Radio 4, LBC and many others.
Patrick Brill (better known by his pseudonym Bob and Roberta Smith) is a contemporary British artist. Born in 1963, he graduated from the University of Reading and was awarded a scholarship atThe British School at Rome whilst still an undergraduate. He followed this with an MA from Goldsmiths College, London.
Bob and Roberta Smith’s work involves performance; large installations made with personalised signs on scrap materials and wall based paintings on wooden panels. His DIY approach appropriates the languages of folk, punk and the alternative protest movements to personalise political sloganeering. His work cannot be reduced to one genre. Often it takes the shape of hobbies - music, cooking or DIY - which is then combined with a subversive humour. By such means Bob and Roberta Smith attempts to demolish established values and respected authorities and, like much humour, it is to do with humiliation.
As well as lecturing and consulting for a variety of fashion brands, Caryn has co-chaired the award winning FashionTargets Breast Cancer campaign with Amanda Wakeley for 15 years and most recently has co-founded the award winning ‘All Walks Beyond the Catwalk’ with Erin O’Connor to promote a wider spectrum of beauty in fashion imagery through size, age and ethnicity. This has resulted in Lynne Featherstone, Government Minister for Equalities, inviting her to consult on the Lib Dem Body Confidence Campaign. Caryn has also instigated changes to the degree curriculum for students of fashion thorough her work at All Walks.
Smith challenges the orthodoxies we are taught at school and which he believes beats the creativity out of us. He believes in people making their own art, looking at the world around us which has been made by human beings, and he actively tries to encourage this. He focuses on the process of art which is so important to him.
Caryn Franklin celebrates all bodies, and her work (which includes fashion shows, studio shoots, video production and consultancy for clients like Marks and Spencer, BHS, Royal Mint, Platinum Guild, LloydsTSB, Next, Simply Be, Evans and Debenhams) has at its heart a desire to listen and work with realistic bodies and ages.This is undertaken by Brilliant Productions, a company she and her partner Jane Galpin (former Clothes Show producer) have run since 1999.
In 2009, the Board ofTrustees ofTate announced that the Prime Minister had appointed Bob and Roberta Smith and University College Alumnus WolfgangTillmans asTateTrustees. In the same year, a sculpture proposed by Bob and Roberta Smith was shortlisted for the fourth plinth inTrafalgar Square, London. In 2010 Bob and Roberta Smith, alongside Keith Sargent from immprint ltd, was asked to design the 48th Design & Art Direction (D&AD) Annual.
6 — 7
2010/2011 Honours & Achievements Platon
Chris Britton
Chris Britton founded Forkbeard Fantasy, a multi-media theatre company with his two brothers Simon andTim in the early 1970s. He saw the creative possibilities of forming a performance group – and he worked hard in order to realise his dream.
Born in London in 1968, Platon was raised in the Greek Isles by his English mother, an art historian, and Greek father, an architect, until the age of seven when his family returned to London. He attended St Martin’s School of Art, and after receiving his BA (Hons) Graphic Design, he was then awarded an MA in Photography and Fine Art at the Royal College of Art, where one of his professors and mentors was the late John Hind, the creative director of British Vogue.While still a student, he received BritishVogue’s best upand-coming Photographer award in 1992, along with the opportunity to contribute both fashion and portrait images to the magazine.
All three brothers shared a delight in bizarre and comical contraptions and with available friends they began putting on ad hoc events, living exhibitions and performances in any public place that would let them. Simon was the painter and maker of kinetic mechanical sculptures;Tim was the poet, writer and cartoonist; and Chris, being fascinated by experimental and physical theatre, devised constructions and gadgetry to perform within their theatre company. Simon, who is still strongly associated with the company, is now a painter and sculptor in his own right.Today Forkbeard Fantasy consists of Chris andTim, along with designer and maker Penny Saunders (who joined in 1979), performer and sound wizard Ed Jobling (1987), and film-maker and editor RobinThorburn (on & off since the ‘70s) who now make up the central artistic team, and Janice May (1995) who manages the company.
Now an Englishman in NewYork, Platon left London in 1998 after spending a few years working for George, the magazine about politics and media culture founded by the late John F. Kennedy, Jr. Recruited to shoot for its premiere issue, Platon maintained a long-term relationship with the magazine and Kennedy, and this significant and incomparable introduction to American culture and politics included one of Platon’s favourite early assignments: a cross-country trip in order to document the 20 most fascinating men in America. Since the early 1990s, Platon has continued to shoot portrait and documentary work for a range of international publications includingThe NewYorker,Time Magazine, Rolling Stone,The NewYorkTimes Magazine,Vanity Fair and Esquire. His advertising credits include campaigns for Credit Suisse Bank, Exxon Mobil, Diesel, the Wall Street Journal, Motorola and Nike. In 2007 Platon photographed Russian PremierVladimir Putin forTime Magazine’s Person OfTheYear cover.This image was awarded the coveted 1st prize at 2008 World Press Photo Contest. Platon is now a staff photographer atThe NewYorker, signing a multi-year contract in 2008. His first two-large scale photo essays forThe NewYorker entitled Service and Portraits of Power both won ASME awards in 2009 and 2010 respectively.
Very much out on a limb in the early days, Forkbeard soon found that they fitted most comfortably within the new wave of British experimental performance and performance art that had been burgeoning since the 1960s. It was a time of much mixing of media, kinetic and ‘living’ sculptures, performance art, poetry performance and squeaky-bonky jazz, all elements, art forms and media. But with mainstream theatre reluctant to accept any of it, many of the performances took place in galleries, pubs, music venues, festivals and shop windows.
Forkbeard continue to produce and present their highly individual brand of comic surrealism, creating performances, theatre shows, cartoons, automata, sculptures, installations and interactive exhibitions across the UK and abroad.They are one of the UK’s longest surviving independent performing arts companies and certainly the oldest with the same original members still writing, producing and performing in all the shows.The work combines theatre with special effects, mechanical sets and contraptions, outsize puppetry and automata, and their particular trademark – an interactive mix of film, animation and cartoon live on stage – a medium in which Forkbeard Fantasy have long been seen as the pioneers.
Platon has strong ties to photography at the Arts University College at Bournemouth, hosting lectures both in NewYork and at the University College, and offering summer internships to our students for the last six years.
Forkbeard Fantasy have strong ties to the School of Performance at the AUCB, giving creative workshops for our students. Chris will be accepting the Honorary Fellowship on behalf of the whole ForkbeardTeam.
8 — 9
Past Honorary Fellows
- 1998
- 2003
- Nick Knight, Photographer
- Basil Beattie, Artist
Suri Krishnamma, Filmmaker John Millward, Governor, Arts Institute at Bournemouth
Chris Briscoe, Creative Director Bruno Gaumetou, Animator Carol Lingwood, Costume Designer Flavia Swann, Design Historian Alison Wilding, Sculptor
1999
Gary Cook, Illustrator
2004
Jean Hunnisett, Costume Designer Ken Morse, Film Cameraman DaphneTeague, Fashion Designer and Governor, Arts Institute at Bournemouth
Huw Penallt Jones, Film Producer Cherrill Scheer, Furniture Designer Karl Weschke, Artist
2005
2000
Grenville Davey, Artist and Sculptor Lesley Morris, Designer and Academic
David Bradley, Governor, Arts Institute at Bournemouth Andy Earl, Photographer and Governor, Arts Institute at Bournemouth
2006
Frank Bowling, Artist Lewis Gilbert OBE,
Professor Simon Olding,
Museum Curator and Director Alan Plater, Scriptwriter Chris Windsor, Modelmaker
Film Producer and Director Mary Mullin, Design Specialist NigelTrow, Photographer, Author and Governor, Arts Institute at Bournemouth
2001
Michael Harvey,
2007
Typographer and Governor, Arts Institute at Bournemouth Ossie Morris OBE, Cinematographer WolfgangTillmans,
Jacques Azagury, Fashion Designer John Makepeace OBE, Cabinetmaker and Designer
Artist and Photographer
2008
2002
Nigel Beale, Chairman of Governors Professor Sir Peter Cook, Architect Stuart Craig, Production Designer
Clive Juster, Animation Production and Governor, Arts Institute at Bournemouth Ian McKeever, Artist
2009
Martyn Rowlands, Designer Paul Watson, Filmmaker and Governor, Arts Institute at Bournemouth
Roger Dean, Artist and Designer Linda Mattock, Costume Designer PhilipTownsend, Photographer
2010
Neill Gorton, Prosthetics Artist Professor Gunther Kress, Professor of Semiotics Greta Scacchi, Actress Michaël Dudok de Wit, Animator and Illustrator
10 — 11
Student Award Winners 2010-2012
Students, alumni and tutors from the University College are the recipients of many awards and accolades each year. Here are just a selection of this year’s winners.
Students from the 3rd year of the Film Production course won seven accolades at the Kodak Student Commercial Awards, including 1st and 2nd place in the Overall Winners Category for their short films Black and White; and Friends.
James Norman won Best Game and Gameplay at the GAME British AcademyVideo Games Awards 2010 for his work on Batman:Arkham Asylum.
Alison Beard won an Emmy award for her costume work on BBC1’s Return to Cranford.
Animated filmTrain ofThought, by Leo Bridle and Ben Thomas, was shortlisted for both a British Animation Award and a RoyalTelevision Society (RTS) Award in 2010. It also won first prize in the Experimental Animation category at the Animex International Awards, first prize in the Super-Short category at the Skepto International Film Festival and ‘Best
19 – 25 Animation’ at the BFI Future Film Festival, London.
Paul Gorman won the London Photographic Association (LPA) Landscape Competition.
Nina Johnson Hove won 3rd place in SHOTS Magazine’s Young Photographer’s Competition.
Johanna Wulff was shortlisted to appear on ITV daytime show ‘This Morning’ for the ‘This MorningViewer’s Award’ at London Graduate Fashion Week. One of her designs was selected to appear live on the ITV programme in a feature that highlighted the best of what is on offer at this event.
Animated film Lullaby, by Nick White and Emma Neesham, won a RTS StudentTelevision Award in both the regional and national categories.
Animated film Pure Funk, by Marc Adamson, Simon Ashbery, Hozen Britto and Noriko Umemura was shortlisted for the RTS StudentTelevision Awards 2011.
Andy Richmond, Oli Soden, Ben Cranel,Wen Wang, Claire Hughes and Callum Jefferies have had their projects selected for the ‘in-book’ prize at the D&AD Awards. In addition, SophiaTaglialavore, Sam Halpin and Richard Moody’s project has also gone forward to the final ‘Yellow Pencil’ nomination stage.
Sarah Brimley received the Judges Choice for Fashion Series at the Association of Photographers (AOP) Student Awards, for her graduation project.
Faith Mason’s images were chosen to front a major advertising campaign for Criminal, a House of Fraser clothing concession.
Tutor Paul Wenham-Clarke won one of the Association of Photographers’ (AOP) Gold Awards for Commissioned Documentary photography.
12 — 13
Design by Johanna Wulff
Landscape by Paul Gorman
James Norman
Criminal Clothing
by Faith Mason
14 — 15
A still from Friends
Lullaby, by
Nick White and Emma Neesham
- Big Issue
- Alison Beard
photograph by Paul Wenham-Clarke
16 — 17
Finance Introduction
The Consolidated Income and Expenditure Account together with the Balance Sheet continue to describe a robust financial position forThe Arts University College at Bournemouth in the financial year 2010-11.
In addition we have a duty to enhance and safeguard our funding so that we maximise resources for the student experience. Our Finance Strategy will achieve this through:
– Operating surpluses in all years sufficient to meet loan capital repayments;
– Continued efficient delivery in schools, support and overhead areas;
The Corporation is committed to the sustainability of the Institution and has adopted the following financial objectives to guide and regulate its strategic planning:
– Investment of cash reserves accumulated over previous years, with cash balances being maintained at a comfortable level but not by means of borrowing additional funds;
– Use of loan funding for major estates developments; – Maintaining investment in infrastructure and resources, including the estate to ensure efficient utilisation and fitness for purpose in all areas; and
– Achieve minimum operating surpluses on a historic cost basis of at least 4% of turnover;
– To maintain staff costs as a percentage of total costs at 55% or below;
– Maintain quick assets at 30% of total long term borrowings including bank overdraft facility;
– To generate positive cash flow from operating activities of at least c£1m in each year before capital investment;
– Optimise levels of debt and other long-term financial commitments
– with debt finance not to exceed 40% of income;
– To generate surpluses on the income and expenditure account at least equal to the repayment of loan capital;
– Development of commercial income streams, mainly through the Enterprise Pavilion.