Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (GAFA)

Mission Statement

Guided by the needs of society, GAFA is highly integrated with national and international trends in technology, industry and humanities of common concern, bridging professional barriers, optimizing the teaching structure, establishing a close industry-university-research mechanism, and building “GAFA Innovation Platform for Art and Science Integration”, which covers contents, institutions and personnel for design education. We aim to gather academic and industrial elites, break disciplinary boundaries, and focus on social and economic hot issues, thereby integrating talent training, scientific research, artistic creations and social services.
 

International Role

GAFA has forged close ties with more than 50 fine arts colleges from countries and regions around the globe, including the Great Britain, France, Russia, Canada, the United States, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and Taiwan of China. Its sister universities include the Glasgow School of Art, I.E. Repin St.-Petersburg State Academic Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, V.I. Surikov Moscow State Academic Art Institute, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp of Belgium, Zurich University of the Arts, L’École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs – Paris, University of Toronto, Chiba University, Tokyo University of the Arts, National Taipei University of the Arts. It has been a common practice for GAFA to arrange for excellent teachers and students to study, exchange or conduct academic research in other countries or regions, set up exchange programs and cooperative training programs with overseas sister universities, launch international workshops and lectures, high-level art and design exhibitions, and high-level international academic seminars, and invite renowned overseas experts and scholars to hold lectures and academic conferences. GAFA also vigorously promotes education for international students, advances cooperation in running schools with high-level international universities in an orderly fashion, and actively expands the opening of higher education to the outside world to enhance the internationalization of its education programs. Based on its academic and disciplinary advantages, GAFA plays an active role in the cultural exchange programs between China and other countries. By presenting its academic research achievements and the excellent works of its faculty members and students to the outside world, GAFA is dedicated to telling China story well and having the country’s voice heard.

National Role

As the only institution of higher art in Guangdong Province and even in South China, GAFA is determined to develop high-caliber talents and boost academic research and artistic creation at a higher starting point through new initiatives. To make this happen, it will leverage the strengths of Guangdong Province as the pioneer, pilot and experimental field of the reform and opening up policy and those of the Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) in historical, geographical, economic, cultural and intellectual resources. In this way, GAFA will better serve social development in the new era, play an active role in implementing national strategies like GBA development and work towards a more promising future driven by the country’s Belt and Road” initiative.

Following the principle of “integrating art with science, science with education, and industry with education”, it proactively serves regional economic and cultural development. In recent years, GAFA has undertaken more than 600 creation and design projects from governments, enterprises and public institutions, creating a significant number of impressive artworks, including Shenzhen’s city sculpture Pioneering Bull, Zhuhai’s city sculpture Zhuhai Fisherwoman, the statue of Mao Zedong in Youth on the Orange Island in Changsha, the design of Guangdong Provincial Government’s gifts in the commemoration of Hong Kong and Macao’s return to the motherland, the design and engineering of the Guangdong Hall of the Great Hall of the People, the PLA Naval Museum, China Pavilion of World Expo in Japan, as well as the Urbanian Pavilion and Shanxi Pavilion of World Expo Shanghai, Maritime Silk Road Museum, China Ceramics and Glass Museum, the Changjiang Civilization Museum, etc.; and the design of Bing Dwen Dwen, the mascot of the 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games, and city logo of Guangzhou. All these efforts have rendered strong support for cultural communication and industrial transformation and upgrading of the region and beyond.
Collaborating with partner universities or associations, GAFA has held a series of academic conferences and exhibitions to promote communications. Also, we held design competitions by collaborating with industries such as XPeng Motors and Vivo. We have been actively carrying out "curriculum cooperation", "project cooperation", "graduation design cooperation" and other diversified and comprehensive industry-academia-research cooperation with well-known domestic and foreign enterprises such as Tencent, GAC, Honda, and Toyota. We have trained a large number of excellent designers and provided intellectual support for the development of Chinese brands and industry.

Main Focus

For a long time, design education in GAFA has built the earliest innovative model of industry-academia-research teaching in Chinese art colleges and universities by linking classrooms, enterprises and society through project-based teaching on the basis of the industrial advantages of Guangdong Province and the location advantages of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

For graduate students and postgraduate students, we focus on developing the following knowledge, abilities and qualities：
1. Basic knowledge 
2. Professional knowledge
3. Cognitive ability
4. Creative ability
5. Communication and collaboration ability