Erasmus+ Programme

The National Academy of Art focuses its efforts on expanding the scope and quality of its international activities in line with the EU requirements for building a modern European Education Area.

 

The Academy carries out international activities based on preliminary signed agreements. Inter-institutional bilateral agreements are signed with potential partners with a similar academic profile in the field of art and design, with similar structure of faculties and departments and compatibility of programs and curricula, with an emphasis on high quality of education and facilities. When choosing a partner, The NAA takes into account the contribution of the respective higher education institutions in the development of art and design, innovation in teaching methods, curriculum content, cultural diversity and national traditions in the visual arts, the historic roots and the general similarities and differences in cultural development. The NAA also adheres to the principle of geographical balance. At this stage, The Academy has met all the requirements of the Bologna Declaration.

The NAA has bilateral agreements under Erasmus+ with art institutions in the countries of North, Central and Southern Europe – Austria, Belgium, UK, Germany, Estonia, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Cyprus, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Finland, France, Czech Republic, Croatia, The Netherlands, Portugal, Norway, Slovakia, as well as in the Balkan countries - Greece, Romania, Serbia and Turkey. 

 

Our goal is the long-term partnerships which we have built on mutual understanding and trust to be translated into an increase in the quality and volume of student and staff mobility, in the promotion of professional, intercultural and social skills of our students and lecturers, and adequate use of jointly created conditions for mutual enrichment and innovation of the learning process, as well as updating the training programs tailored to the requirements of the European labor market in the field of visual art. In this task we will use the main instrument for further development of the European Education Area - student and staff mobility. The lecturers of The Academy will be encouraged to participate in mobility that contributes to promoting educational opportunities, deepening the partnership between the institutions, as well as serving as an engine for creating joint MA programs, and which becomes an incentive for student mobility in both directions. The NAA will make a special effort to stimulate the mobility of master’s students, which will contribute to the successful establishment of joint master’s courses with partnering higher education institutions. 

 

Building partnerships with companies in the field of design, marketing, advertising, publishing, manufacturing; museums and galleries will provide opportunities for traineeships. The agreements for traineeships reflect in the best way the content of the curriculum, adapted to the conditions proposed by the employer.

 

Information on activities and funding opportunities under the Erasmus+ Programme will be provided to bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral students through different channels of information, and the high-quality of the mobility will be maintained with the help of the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System and by following the fundamental principles of the Programme.

 

International activities of the NAA

 

We cooperate with higher education institutions in Europe and the world. The Academy has signed inter-institutional agreements with countries from all over the world: Armenia, Georgia, Israel, Kazakhstan, China, Mexico, Russia, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Montenegro, South Korea, etc.

Under the institutional agreements for international cooperation there an exchange of students - BA, MA and PhD students, and staff; joint training and thesis supervision of graduate students; students’/lecturers’ exhibitions, exchange of information on news and trends in the field of art and design, participation in international events and conferences to discuss current topics related to education - traditions, present and future of art education, training programs and good practices, exchange of expertise, as well as trends and tendencies in the development of modern art. The exchange of student exhibitions is a way of assessing to what extent the students have mastered what they have been studying, and the workshops help the students to master new skills and techniques.

 

The inclusion of participants from Non-EU countries provides new and exciting opportunities for our lecturers and students to carry out mobility in third countries.The Academy will continue to direct the exchange of students and staff members under the international cooperation agreements of the Erasmus+ Programme, while respecting the strict quality criteria laid down in the bilateral agreements and the fundamental principles of the European Charter for Higher Education.The Academy has successfully participated in the Erasmus Programme together with other EU countries and will continue to apply for each European project that will stimulate the development of its educational level.

 

The National Academy of Art participates in numerous international academic and student projects, some of which are initiated and hosted by it:

-international workshops, exhibitions, student competitions, annual exhibitions of BA and MA graduates that are shown abroad. The purpose of these exhibitions is to draw the attention of European cultural and educational institutions and the general public to the high achievements of the National Academy of Art in the field of art education;

- international projects such as the annual Summer Academy in Ahtopol - International Symposium of Sculpture of Wood with the participation of lecturers and students from EU and Non-EU countries, with the support of the municipality of Ahtopol. The realized sculptures designed by the lecturers with the participation of students becomes part of the art gallery and museum exhibition in the creative base of The NAA in Ahtopol and the results are kept on CDs, on the webpage and in the yearbooks of The NAA;

- participation in international biennials and art festivals, organized and hosted by the Academy such as the Student Biennial - Drawing and Digital Art Festival as well as the international project TRANSFORM – student exhibition and scientific conference on art education and world trends in the visual art development, co-organized by the Academy, with the participation of 9 other institutions for art education in Southeast Europe (Turkey, Greece, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina). TRANSFORM is planned as a long-term project, hosted on a rotation principle. With its activities the project builds a strong platform for cooperation between the partner institutions. The NAA hosted the second edition in 2011. A catalog was issued and the scientific reports were included in the art publication of the NAA.

Information for all international events is published on the website of The Academy. 

 

The main objective of The Academy is to create professional artists with established authorial position and behavior. The structure and essence of the subjects taught at The Academy is determined to a large extend by the dynamics of visual arts and the continuing differentiation of their shapes and variety. In recent years, the learning process has been updated with a number of program and structural changes as a result of which the students are offered an extremely wide range of high qualification training programs, tailored to the requirements of the European labor market. Diversity in training is based on a combination of basic, special and general education subjects, corresponding to the specifics and the objectives of each course/specialty with the possibility of personal experiments and solutions. The combination of traditional and innovative methods of the educational process has been characteristic of almost all stages of the history of our Academy.

The start of the modernization of the education framework was also given thanks to the EU financial support under the Operational Programme Human Resources Development with the building of a platform of electronic supplementary distance learning as part of the educational process in the Аcademy, and in order to improve systems management an automated university information system is introduced.

 

In this context, The Academy will continue its efforts to enrich the learning opportunities through the main instrument for modernization and internationalization of the education - student and staff mobility by complying with the criteria of quality and principles of the Erasmus Charter of Higher Education. The results of student and staff mobility will facilitate the harmonization of the education in bachelor's and master's degree with other similar educational institutions in the EU/Non-EU countries, which will help to build double/multiple degree courses at a later stage - joint MA degrees between three or more educational institutions. By creating partnerships with European companies, businesses, museums and galleries, we will encourage creativity, innovation and will increase the degree of transparency and compatibility between higher education and professional qualifications in Europe. Efforts will be made to find sponsors to fund student and academic projects.

 

The expected results are - increased attractiveness of education and number of highly qualified graduates - bachelors and masters, who can successfully integrate their expertise and skills on the European labor market. 

 

The Academy is committed to strengthen its high quality standards in every aspect. Thus, as an institution, we can play our part in contributing to knowledge development, better employment opportunities and greater social cohesion in the united European Area.