Study Fine Art and Creative Writing at Lancaster to enhance and develop your creative and critical practices in an environment that explores new dialogues between creative writing and fine art practices.
Through a deeper understanding of fine art materials, processes and techniques, you will explore the relationships between fine art and creative writing in ways that enrich both disciplines. You will be taught by artists, novelists, and poets with national and international acclaim, realising your full potential in a dynamic and interdisciplinary environment.
Join our thriving creative community with events in the city’s Castle Quarter, multiple student-run literary journals, visiting authors, and opportunities to exhibit your art and present your writing live.
Why study Fine Art and Creative Writing at Lancaster?
- Take a highly distinctive course that combines fine art practice with the study of contemporary ideas and art movements
- Work with tutors who are practicing artists, writers and scholars, exhibiting and publishing their work across a range of media
- Enhance your writing through both text-based writing experiments and workshops focusing on your own writing – from novels to flash-fiction, poetry to graphic novels
- Explore the professional dimensions of Creative Writing, such as performing your work, editing, publishing, and marketing
- Get involved with our four student-run literary journals: Cake, Lux, Flash, and Errant and our partners, the city-based LitFest
How will I develop my skills in Fine Art at Lancaster?
Fine Art at Lancaster is about finding your voice and deciding what matters to you in today’s art landscape. With engaging seminars in art history and theory, we’ll support you in shaping your values and understanding the evolving role of art. As you develop these ideas in your own studio practice, discover how contemporary art can be bold, disruptive, and meaningful.
You will work with tutors who are practicing artists and scholars, working with video, 3D, machine learning, environment, temporality, new materialism, participation and socially engaged practices.
You will broaden your understanding of contemporary Fine Art via hands-on projects, technical demonstrations and skills-based workshops. Experiment with painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, video, digital art, and their many hybrids. Our purpose-built studios include a digital art lab, installation spaces, and fully equipped workshops.
Gaining experience of working to a brief is important. Recent Fine Art graduates have secured commissions with digital arts organisations such as FACT Liverpool and Future Everything, and rewarding roles at galleries such as Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Art Gene, and Home, and companies such as International Conservation Services, Science Museum National Collections Centre, Holocaust Centre North, ITV, United Colours of Benetton India, and The National Festival of Making.
How will I develop my writing?
Lancaster was one of the very first UK universities to teach Creative Writing. Today we continue to lead the way in the discipline with celebrated authors as tutors and students who go on to publish their work. Follow in the footsteps of writers such as Camille Ralphs, Andrew McMillan, Martha Sprackland, and Daisy Johnson, the youngest-ever author shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
In your own writing you will be able to explore traditional forms such as the short story, the novel, poetry as well as newer forms such as game writing, screenwriting, fantasy, and writing for young adults.
As you progress though the course, you will be able to choose modules from either subject, depending on your own interests.
How can I make professional connections at Lancaster University?
Your tutors are professional artists who are exhibiting, curating and writing across a range of art and ideas, including high profile residencies and commissions in museums, galleries and cultural industries worldwide. They have exhibited at the likes of the Henry Moore Institute, the Foreman Art Gallery Canada and Hong Kong Art Fair.
Our rich programme of events on campus, online, and in the city’s historic Castle Quarter further offers opportunities to gain experience and make professional contacts. You might try writing graphic novels and comics thanks to our connections with the Lakes International Comics Arts Festival or take up an internship opportunity in the Lake District with our partner, the Wordsworth Museum. We regularly host talks from successful authors and organise social events and, if you wish, you can gain professional experience through joining the teams that organise, market and host these events.
Exhibition opportunities throughout the course will help you develop the professional skills needed for a career in the arts whilst building lifelong connections with artists, writers, external partners, tutors and other students in the School of Art.
