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Concordia  /  Essays  /  Prompt 1

Concordia: Letter of intent (Fine Arts)

Length varies by program; most departments expect roughly 500 words or one page. Always check your program page and stay well under the stated limit.

Fine Arts programs (Studio Art, Film Production, Design, Creative Writing, Photography, and others) require a letter of intent submitted alongside a portfolio. It explains who you are as a maker and why this specific studio program fits your work.
What it’s really asking

Concordia's Fine Arts faculty want to know what you make, what drives that work, and why this particular program is the right place to develop it. The letter is read next to your portfolio, so it should explain and frame the pieces you are submitting.

Why they ask it

Studio programs admit small cohorts that faculty will teach closely for years. They are choosing people with a point of view and the seriousness to grow, not just students with neat technique. The letter is where your portfolio gains a voice and an intention.

Three ways in
Explain your strongest piece

Pick the one piece in your portfolio you care about most and explain what you were trying to do and where it fell short or surprised you.

Name a real influence

Name a specific influence (an artist, a film, a movement, a problem) and show how it actually shows up in your work, not just that you admire it.

Tie the program to what is next

Connect a concrete feature of the program (a studio area, a method, a faculty strength, the Montreal art scene) to what you want to make next.

✕  Weak opening

“Ever since I was a child, I have been passionate about art and expressing my creativity in all its forms.”

✓  Strong opening

“The three photographs in my portfolio all started with the same problem: how do you shoot a place that no longer exists?”

✦ Annotated example · Film Production letter of intent. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →
The first short I ever finished was ninety seconds of my grandmother peeling apples. I had borrowed a camera to film a school project on "a family tradition," but I kept the camera rolling after the assignment was done, and what I got back was better than anything I had planned: her hands, the spiral of peel never breaking, the radio murmuring in Portuguese behind her. I learned that the most honest footage usually arrives after you think you have stopped working.1Since then I have made eleven short films, most of them documentary, all of them about people who do quiet, repetitive work: a night-shift baker, a man who repairs accordions, a crossing guard three weeks from retirement. I am drawn to subjects that reward patience, and to a camera that watches instead of interrupts. My editing has gotten slower and braver. I used to cut on every gesture; now I let a shot breathe until the viewer notices what I noticed.2I am applying to Film Production at Concordia specifically because of how the program treats production as a shared, hands-on apprenticeship rather than a solo pursuit. The rotation through camera, sound, editing, and directing, and the emphasis on crewing on classmates' projects, is exactly the kind of training I cannot give myself with a borrowed camera and a laptop. 3I want to be the person holding the boom on someone else's film and learning why their director made a choice I would not have. I have read about the Mel Hoppenheim approach of building from documentary and experimental roots, and that is the soil my work already grows in.4My portfolio includes three of those shorts and a short cycle of black-and-white photographs of the accordion repairman's workshop. They are not polished beyond their means. I have shot on a cracked secondhand lens and recorded sound on a phone clipped inside a sock, and I think the films are honest about those limits. 5What I want from Concordia is not a louder voice but a more precise one: the technical fluency to make my images match the attention I already bring to the people in front of the lens. I plan to keep making documentaries about overlooked labour, and eventually to teach others to point a camera at the apple peel and wait. I am ready to be a beginner again, this time with a crew, a darkroom, and people who will argue with my cuts. That argument is exactly what I am coming for.6
  1. 1Opens with a concrete, specific making-moment rather than a statement of passion. Fine Arts letters reward evidence of how you actually work, and this scene shows a sensibility forming.
  2. 2Names a clear aesthetic point of view (observational, patient) and tracks growth in craft. Concordia rewards a developed creative perspective over generic enthusiasm.
  3. 3Demonstrates genuine, researched fit with the specific program's structure. Vague praise ("great reputation") is replaced by concrete features of this curriculum.
  4. 4Connects the school's identifiable tradition to the applicant's existing body of work, showing the fit runs in both directions.
  5. 5Frames the portfolio with candor about constraints, which reads as confidence rather than apology and sets up what the program would add.
  6. 6Closes by naming concrete future intentions and a humble, collaborative posture, which matches what a studio program looks for in a maker.
Stuck? Start here
  • Which single piece in my portfolio best shows how I think, and what was I actually trying to do in it?
  • What specific influence (artist, film, problem, place) genuinely shaped my work, and where can a reader see it?
  • What can this exact program (a studio area, a method, the city) give me that a generic art school could not?
Before you submit
  • Does my letter explicitly refer to and explain work that is in my portfolio?
  • Have I named at least one concrete feature of this specific program and tied it to what I want to make?
  • Is it free of generic phrases like 'passionate about art' and well under the length limit?

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