Arts and Design Education BA

You will acquire various media and techniques in art and design and use them in your teaching. The aim is to orient oneself in the academic field of Arts and Design Education and to be able to use the knowledge of art, design, educational and cultural studies for one’s own activities and to develop one’s skills in art and design. This is always combined with an approach to one’s own studio projects that is intensive, enjoyable, experimentally artistic and creative. You deal with aesthetic and artistic research, with approaches to transformative education; you test your skills in mediation situations and experiment with materials, working methods and hybrid, multimedia processes. And you learn how to incorporate working methods in art and design in teaching contexts in order to create lasting educational impulses, open spaces for reflection, and accompany transformative educational processes.

The compulsory portion of the study programme is split into the following module groups: Collective Practice; Artistic and Creative Practice; Education, Art and Teaching; Education, Art, Public Space; Artistic Research Methods; Education, Design Media Practice; Education, Transdisciplinarity, Relationships; Education, Art, Media Science; Education, Research, Transfer; Bachelor’s Thesis.
The elective portion offers a programme that alternates between the Arts and Design Education and Cocreate module groups. Each spring semester, the specialisation module groups give students a chance to focus on their own projects.
In the Collective Practice format, students from all three bachelor’s years work on joint solutions to an overarching issue and in doing so build up team spirit and social and teaching skills in addition to artistic and creative skills. In the compulsory modules for the individual programme years, you develop your own independent artistic position in various media and contexts. You learn to contextualise your own work, reflect on it and integrate it into learning situations, and thus tap into lasting educational inspiration, and spaces for reflection and contextualisation.
The comprehensive range of choices gives you the opportunity to delve into your own specialisation in art, design and an experimental and artistic education for a specific target group.
The elective area is complemented by the HGK Basel’s CoCreate programme, which is open to students from all semesters, as well as the partner programme of the FHNW’s trinational IBM programme.

The study programme is aimed at people who have completed a university-track or vocational secondary education (Gymnasium, Berufsmatur or Fachmatur) and want to introduce art and design working methods into teaching processes and society, and to develop themselves in artistic, creative, pedagogical and media-oriented processes and ways of acting and thinking.

With the bachelor’s degree, you develop a comprehensive set of skills. It is about artistic and design processes and strategies, research and teaching approaches, craftsmanship methods and new technologies, materials, media and theoretical and practical knowledge of art, design, culture and teaching.

In your bachelor’s degree, you will thus lay the foundations for using art and design as a kind of material for teaching art, with which you will not only be able to work yourself, but with which you will initiate and support transformative educational processes in different age groups.

The completion of the bachelor’s degree programme qualifies students to be admitted to the Master in Arts and Design Education, Teaching Diploma for Secondary Schools, to obtain a teaching diploma, and to directly pursue a career in the field of socioculture, off-spaces, open youth work or institutional education in museums.

With its central Campus.Workshops, the FHNW HGK Basel offers ideal conditions for combining a curiosity about craftsmanship, the learning of techniques, the use of various media and materials, and digital expertise. Students enrolled on the BA in Teaching in Art and Design benefit from round-the-clock access to a workspace. As a communal space, the studio is managed by the students themselves – supported by mentors and the degree programme management. Rounding out the amenities available at the IADE are video editing facilities as well as a media loan facility, a painting facility, extensive use of the sculpture workshop and rooms for various uses.

The amenities are available to students 365 days a year.

Educational requirements
Admission to the aptitude assessment for the bachelor’s degree in Arts and Design Education requires one of the following qualifications:

• a certified vocational baccalaureate
• a certified specialized baccalaureate
• a certified upper secondary school (level II) baccalaureate
• proof of an equivalent educational degree at an upper secondary school (level II) obtained otherwise (Swiss education system)
• an EDK-approved primary school teaching diploma

Language of tuition
The language of tuition is German (B2 or equivalent). Proof of language proficiency is required at the start of the degree programme.

Work experience or art foundation course

Attendance of a two-semester foundation course or work experience is recommended but not a prerequisite.

Completing a baccalaureate is regulated by the Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education (EDK). Prospective students without a baccalaureate can find out more on the EDK website.

To apply for a place at the HGK Basel, the required documents must be submitted by deadline 15.02.2026.
Please send the specific enquiries to email address.

• 01.11.2025
  Publication of the detailed information on the aptitude assessment
• 15.02.2026
  Registration deadline and deadline for submitting the required documents for the aptitude assessment.
• 14.09.2026
  Fall Semester begin 2026/27

Requirements regarding the portfolio presentation on admission day:
Portfolio: At least 12 different projects (mix of paintings, drawings, photos, videos, digital works, crafts, if feasible documentations of art educational projects). Put your workbook or portfolio together with an approach to studying Arts and Design Education. We are interested in a wide range of materials, techniques, ideas, projects, and educational works.
Label your workbook or portfolio on the outside in clearly visible and legible writing, indicating name, first name, and address.
When presenting your portfolio (duration ca. 10 minutes), make sure you show a broad selection of your work and only go into more detail of a few, carefully selected works.

Here you will find answers to FAQs about preparing and registering for a Bachelor’s (BA) or a Master’s (MA) degree programme at the HGK Basel FHNW.

Here you will find answers to organizational, administrative and legal questions all about studying -->