The CCA offers one program so far, the One Hour Masters. Each Masters consists of a one hour teaching and learning session, blending in lectures, screenings, practical workshops and conversations. Participants assume both a learning and teaching position, because teaching should be a learning experience too. Rather than a teacher-student hierarchy, we aim to experiment with a more horizontal system, seeing learning as a collective process taking place between peers.
Each Masters is centred on a different subject and organized differently.
So far the Common College of Art has hosted 5 One Hour Masters. 3 in London, UK. 2 in Toronto, Canada.
If you'd like to be kept in the loop about Future One Hour Masters, leave your email with us and we'll be in touch :)
Thank you!
Upcoming Cohorts
Past Cohorts
Graduating Class of October 10 2025
Build-A-God
Toronto
This was the little blurb we'd put together to present the fifth One Hour Masters to the world. I archive it here for all the Gods forgotten and yet to be forgotten to seethe at:
Do you want God to be proud of you?
Do you worry about one day having to convince God that you spent the gift of time on this earth well?
And this God, that you've made in your own image, can you bear to look at them without flinching? They who know what you love, fear and aspire to?
Come and build a God with us at the Common College of Art's second one hour masters in Toronto on October 10th, 2025 from 6-8 PM.
You can build out the God you carry with you everyday or an entirely new one.
What kind of God do you think they'll be?
The God that sits in your chest and carefully mends your tattered heart? The God that lives in the feeling after you've just binged a really good show. The God that makes you brush your teeth in the morning and who you push away everyday when they remind you to floss at night? Is it the God that eats your shame so that you don't carry it for the rest of your life? Is it the God that holds you when the earth itself seems like it wants to let you go? Or the one that casts you into the void themselves?
At the end of the session, you will be invited to give a sermon to those assembled in front of the God that you've created (collaged together).
COME AND BUILD A GOD WITH US!
INGREDIENTS PROVIDED!
BRING FRIENDS!
Graduating Class of July 25 2025
Teach Something
Toronto
This was the little blurb we'd put together to present the fourth One Hour Masters to the world. I archive it here for as close to eternity as I can manage:
IMAGINE AN ART SCHOOL!
IMAGINE ITS TEACHERS.
WHAT IF YOU WERE ONE OF THEM?
WHAT DO YOU TEACH?
WHAT IS GOOD ART? HOW DO YOU MAKE A GOOD CUP OF COFFEE? HOW DO YOU DRINK A GOOD CUP OF COFFEE? WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE? HOW DO YOU PRETEND THE PHONE IS CUTTING OUT WHEN YOU DON’T WANT TO TALK TO SOMEONE? HOW DO YOU HEAL A BROKEN HEART? HOW DO YOU BREAK A HEART? WHAT IS BAD ART? HOW DO YOU FEEL LESS ALONE? HOW TO READ A CLOCK? HOW TO TIE YOUR SHOELACES? HOW TO TIE SOMEONE ELSE’S SHOELACES WHEN THEY AREN’T LOOKING? WHAT IS ART?
COME JOIN THE COMMON COLLEGE OF ART AT THE LOVELY ONE TASK STUDIO ON JULY 25 FROM 6-8 PM FOR THE FIRST ONE-HOUR MASTERS OF 2025!
YOUR MASTERS THESIS (the zine you make at the workshop) WILL BE PUBLISHED! (put up on our website) AND YOU WILL BE A PUBLISHED ARTIST/RESEARCHER/ACADEMIC! (whatever any of those words mean).
TEACH SOMETHING!
LEARN SOMETHING!
BRING FRIENDS!
Graduating Class July 26 2024
Making An Art School
London
The Third One Hour Masters was also the last One Hour Masters to take place at the Royal College of Art. It happened alongside our final exhibition. It took place outside and the focus was on drafting a few rules and guidelines for making an art school.
Over the hour, we doodled with the focus of coming up with rules for how an art school should look and behave.
It was bittersweet, this last session, knowing that we had finally become comfortable discussing how we wanted our space to look and behave whilst knowing that we would be leaving it in a matter of weeks.
Graduating Class July 15 2024
Tea & Type
London
The Second One Hour Masters took place at The Tiny Press. The theme of this hour was gossip.
Over tea and biscuits, students gathered in the small letterpress studio and crowded around typewriters to SPILL THE TEA, where they write out little pieces of gossip, real and imagined. The gossip would then be passed around anonymously where other people would add to it.
It became a creative writing exercise where racy confessions and scandals turned into little snippets of poetry. When people weren't typing, they talked and pet Tiny, the studio mascot. It was a lovely afternoon.
The session ended with everyone printing out a lovely poster to take home.
Shivani Sridhar, Graphic Designer Extraordinaire
Shivani and Izzy Argent
Letter-Pressed Posters
Tiny the Dog
Graduating Class June 17 2024
IMAGINE AN ART SCHOOL;
London
The First One Hour Masters was an experiment. To see if this format would work. It involved a screening of the film MANIFESTO (2020), a mockumentary directed by Ane Hjort Guttu. After the screening, participants sat around a table and doodled for an hour on large, letter-pressed posters with the phrase IMAGINE AN ART SCHOOL; on them.
Graduates of this cohort received a small degree with the poem Wild Geese by Mary Oliver printed on it.
A poster with the 10 rules by Corita Kent from the Immaculate Heart College Art Department was hung up on one wall.
There was music, conversation and popcorn to go around.
Isn't this how an art school is supposed to feel?
Watching Manifesto (2020) by Ane Hjort Guttu
Andrew Sviridov, Illustrator, Journalist, Mercenary for Hire
Co-Founder of the CCA Salome Mercier
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
