Research and training

Throughout the various educational systems, Ensad relies on three main areas of research:

  • territories of life,
  • traditional gesture/innovative gesture,
  • image/imaginary.

Study days

Each year, Ensad Limoges organizes two to three study day sessions calling on researchers and specialists to speak on questions and in fields dealing with art, aesthetics, philosophy and techniques, or still literary and intellectual movements. These study days constitute one-off and thematic teaching modules allowing the student to confront the thinking and methods of researchers and university-type specialists, practitioners or theorists.

Intended for Ensad students and young researchers in the human sciences, they are however open to the public and free.

Among the themes of the study days in 2022-2023 are:

  • “Trace: Write / Draw” (Patrice Blouin),
  • “Kaolin” (Delphine Gigoux-Martin)
  • “The art of gardens” in connection with the Chromoculture project (Arnaud Dubois).

Research and Creation Workshops (ARCs)

The Research and Creation Workshops are part of the student's individualized course and concern years 3 (optional), 4 and 5 (compulsory). ARCs are interdisciplinary teaching bodies bringing together at least two teachers based on a defined research theme.

The educational objective of these workshops is to prepare students for the practice of research in art and design, emphasizing the methodological, contextual, conceptual and practical specificity of such research.

The ARCs represent 80 hours of workshop practice over the year, but require double conceptual research. They are initiated according to different methods and with the support of a relay teacher who liaises with the ARCs' reference teachers and continues until the DNSEP. Choosing an ARC commits the student for the full year.

The dissertation, an initiation to research

The dissertation is a privileged moment of work on the student's personal practice. In the 3rd year, the student questions the place of writing in his practice with the production of an edition at the end of the 1st cycle. This document allows him to write texts on his plastic work or on professional experiences. Beyond learning the different tools related to publishing, students project their plastic thinking into the exercise of writing. This work raises the question of the writing tool: how, for a student in a higher art school, to take hold of it, to work on it, to best convey what a reflection on a plastic proposition is, or even find a specific plastic, literary, cinematographic or sound form to reflect it. The dissertation project must be presented at the end of the 3rd year (L3).

At the start of the 4th year, each student works with a thesis director, school teacher, practitioner and theorist. These individual times are enriched by seminars in which students are brought together in small groups and present the evolution of their research to two or three teachers who are not their directors, which allows another perspective and sometimes a step back. necessary for their work. Based on research carried out throughout the 4th year, layout, design and graphics work is carried out. It allows the student to think about the plastic and editorial restitution of this work.

Classes in graphic design, art history and publishing are given throughout the course and allow the affirmation of artistic positions regarding publishing.

The presence of a bibliography is obligatory, reading being essential, but it can be accompanied by other sources such as interviews, plastic work, field investigation; so many different research methods to which students are introduced.

This individual research work that the dissertation represents is supplemented by various devices developed with a view to nourishing theoretical and plastic reflections and constituting a second part of the initiation to research.

Master CCIC

Master Contemporary Creation and Cultural Industries
Ensad partnership – University of Limoges.

The Contemporary Creation and Cultural Industries master's degree was born from an unprecedented convergence. It brings together artists, designers, art theorists and media culture specialists. The training places at the heart of its project the understanding of the mechanisms specific to contemporary creation in the media regime, from the conception of works to their circulation.

The master's degree lasts 2 years. To be able to apply, you must have a Bac+3 level diploma.
Recommended Bachelor's degrees: Arts (DNSEP or DNA of Art Schools), Letters, Languages, Social Sciences, Humanities.

Applications will be evaluated according to the student's objectives and skills, the nature and level of studies followed, motivation and coherence of the professional project.

Photo: ARC Colors of uncertainty, planting a garden of coloring plants
Photo: ARC Colors of uncertainty, planting a garden of coloring plants
Photo: ARC Colors of uncertainty, planting a garden of coloring plants
Photo: ARC Colors of uncertainty, planting a garden of coloring plants