This year serves as an introduction to the arts. Instruction and studio introduce students to the principles of visual representation and basics of figure and form in drawing. Students are encouraged to explore ideas in progressively larger creative assignments.

A summer internship at a museum or gallery, with a focus on curation and art business, towards the process of professionalisation. Students take on a summer internship at a museum / gallery in or outside India. They may choose to work in art curation, in the presentation of the art to viewers (as a guide or writer), in the media teams at the institution or in another similar role. The key learning outcomes are insights into the professional world of art today, and an experience of how art forms careers. Students experience first hand how visitors and buyers react to art, the variety of reasons they seek out art, and how art affects them. They also learn under leaders with years of experience in the field how one selects arts, how one draws connections between the contemporary and historical and how one talks about creators and their creations.

The first semester of the final year is spent gaining expertise and professionalism at a studio apprenticeship with an artist. Students spend a semester working with an artist of their choice anywhere in the world. Their artist may have a specialised media or be a mixed media artist. The student is expected to assist in all ways — be that in art production, communication, planning, networking, sourcing or other. The key objective is that students gain a full experience of what it means to have a career in fine art, the additional skills and resources they will have to acquire, the material and resource networks they will have to build, and most importantly, the artistic process.