BA Arts Degree

Workshop with Emmanuelle Castellan, 2019 (c) Myr Muratet / ésban

A three-year (6 semester) degree course of study

Our B.F.A. degree is a 6-semester program that entails the study and practice of many disciplines with a weekly schedule and the gradual development of personal work. During your first two years at ESBAN, you will learn the fundamentals of art with a balance between an initiation to artistic techniques and practices and theoretical coursework.

First Year

In First Year, you will start acquiring research skills through an initial research project, on the one hand, and documentary research, on the other. The First Year Program is focused on the discovery of new tools and means of expression in a wide range of disciplines such as drawing, photography, volume, painting, video, publishing, and digital images, along with coursework in more theoretical subjects such as art history, contemporary art, literature, image analysis, and English.
You will also participate in three annual workshops led by guest artists.

Second Year

In the first semester, you will discover new educational experiences at ESBAN in the innovative workshops directed by each of our professors. Through these week-long, immersive, practice-based transversal sessions you will produce artistic creations that enable you to discover each of the disciplines in depth while learning the basics about how to develop an art show alone. In the second semester, your schedule will allow you to work independently in your studio several half-days each week.  During these sessions, thanks to your participation in two of the three art studios proposed, you will become progressively autonomous while establishing the foundations of your own personal approach so as to prepare you for Third Year.
Finally, you will acquire knowledge of the professional world through meetings with professional artists and hands-on internships.

Third Year

During the Third Year, you will develop your own personal approach in a tutorial project completed under the guidance of ESBAN professors. You will also have the opportunity to cultivate your knowledge and skills in the Creativity Research Workshops led by our artist-professors. These CRWs include the organization of workshops with guest artists, conferences, hands-on workshops, and visits to artists’s studios and exhibitions.At the end of the year the 165 ECTS acquired since 1st year, along with the successful completion of the Licence ART exam create the conditions for obtaining the qualification.

A Transversal Educational Program

All five years at the ESBAN benefit from a transversal approach, which takes on many forms including talks by guest artists and art historians, visits of exhibitions, meetings with artists and professionals in the art sector, study trips, and workshops.

  • In our CRWs, professors introduce specialized material that goes beyond the common curriculum and gives students a glimpse of the issues that can be later developed in their advanced research seminars.
  • Our workshops are transversal educational experiences that focus on specific training around a problematic proposed by a guest artist invited by an ESBAN professor. They are often organized with another local art institutions such as the Musée du Vieux-Nîmes, Frac Occitanie-Montpellier, Gard Archives, Musée Régional d’Art Contemporain, or the Carré d’Art – Contemporary Art Museum in Nîmes.
  • Talks focusing on their artistic practices are generally given by artists within the scope of the workshops they lead at the ESBAN. Other talks are also held within our annual program. 
  • Every exhibition, at the ESBAN or at a museum, features multidisciplinary encounters with an educational objective. These encounters are open to all our students. Some are more oriented toward research (fourth- and fifth-year seminars), while others are intended to help students gain more experience in terms of how to organize a professional exhibition. Finally, exhibition visits and study trips are significant moments during which the question of exhibitions is explored on site as part of your hands-on educational experience at the ESBAN.