Advance your performance-making skills in this year-long module. Through project-based explorations of how theatre can inspire audiences and the wider society, you will learn to think beyond the stage.

To begin this module, you will undertake skills-based workshops on aspects of socially engaged theatre making, resulting in a group practical ‘pitch’ for a proposed performance project. As you progress, you will be allocated to a project group based on shared interests, working together to engage with specific demographic groups in the local area and produce a piece of theatre that showcases the viewpoints of an under-represented community.

Collaborating to devise an original performance in a style and genre of your choosing, you could create a staged theatre production or an alternative form of performance such as site-specific theatre, audio performance or an applied theatre workshop.

On this module you will expand your professional skills. Through iterative activities, conducted with the support of both tutor and peers, you will advance a piece of writing through sequential editing stages.

You'll develop practical and emotional strategies for managing revision. There will be a strong emphasis on the development of collaborative and project management skills. The work will be underpinned and contextualized by both theoretical discussions of the art of writing and by exploring examples from the publishing industry.

How does our lived experience translate into poetry? And how does poetry crystallize or transform experience through language and form? These and many other questions are explored in this module as you will read as well as write poetry; for the writing of poetry is dependent not only your experience but also your abilities as a reader and interpreter of poems.

You will study the base structures of poetry – from the line-ending to more complex forms like sonnets and sestinas; and you will be encouraged to seek out new reading as a result of class discussion.

Learn to write drama for the theatre and audio, and develop your awareness of the processes by which a written script makes its way to live performance and recorded production.

You will be taught through weekly seminars/workshops in which you will explore the effects that different staging/recording approaches and performance strategies have on your scripts.

Over the course of the module, you will develop your own writing styles and gain an awareness of the professional requirements of playwriting for the stage and for radio and podcasts.

Exploring the adaption of literature to film and other media, this module focuses on the adaptation of literary texts to such forms as theatre, graphic novel, film, television, song, and game.

You will be invited to reflect on adaptation as a powerful and complex cultural process, one that interprets literature as well as adapts it.

Throughout the module you will normally complete either a critical essay on adaptation OR a creative project (plus short essay) that enables you to produce your own work of adaptation. This may take many forms -- written, (audio) visual, musical, digital, or three-dimensional and/or take the form of a game, production or performance, etc.

Explore how ideas can be developed into real-world projects with lasting value. Through hands-on collaboration and problem-solving, you will develop innovative projects, learn how to bring ideas to life and explore ways to sustain them.

Whether you are working in a team or individually, you will be encouraged to experiment with different approaches to making a difference in artistic, cultural, social and community spaces.

Our everyday lives are saturated by images of all kinds. This module will introduce you to some key ‘ways of seeing’ our world of images. We will explore questions such as:

• How are images made, who gets to produce them and, importantly, from whose point of view?
• How do pictures circulate?
• How do viewers read and interpret images?
• Who gets to look and through whose eyes?
• How do these processes and practices relate to power?

We’ll consider these questions in relation to a range of media texts, from photographs and advertisements to television and film.

Take the opportunity to explore a specific area of theatre practice from both practical and theoretical perspectives as you dive into this exciting module.

In part 2 of this module, you will select one of two specialist topics to study. Topics will vary each year; however, these might be:

• Text-based acting
• Playwriting
• Applied theatre
• Underrepresented theatre histories
• Political theatre

Beginning with a series of practical workshops and the development of small group performance projects, you will go on to share your practical work with other groups and critically reflect on your projects in theoretically informed lectures and seminar discussions.

By the end of this module (part 1 and part 2) you will have studied two specialist topics across the year.

Develop key techniques for writing fiction and hone the skills you need to write short stories and/or novels.

Through workshops, discussions, set reading from a range of contemporary writers and generative writing prompts, you’ll develop confidence in creating character, worldbuilding, establishing narrative voice, experimenting with point of view and constructing engaging structures and plot.

You will draw on a range of techniques according to your own interests. In your reflective essay you will consider the various ways short fiction and the novel uniquely deploy these techniques.

This module will allow you to spend the year working in a graduate-level placement role in the industry or sector that interests you most. Throughout the year, you will build an awareness of what is required in the professional workplace whilst developing a range of transferable skills.

During the module you will reflect on and critically analyse: your own career readiness, the ongoing development of your self-awareness in terms of skills and professional knowledge, and your understanding of current workplace practices and professional etiquette.

Our Careers and Placements Team will support you during your placement with online contact and learning resources.

In this multi-genre writing workshop you will develop your writing toward professional levels. Taught through a mix of lectures and tutor-led workshops, the focus is on the development of your own portfolio.

This portfolio could take any form and be devoted to any genre (poetry, prose, drama, screenplay etc). The lectures will include expert guidance from our author-tutors on how to develop your writing professionally and towards publication.

Develop a fully realised theatrical production in a style and genre of your choice, as your reach the pinnacle of your practical theatre making studies.

Guided by staff with professional theatre-making skills, your work will be supported by advanced skills-based workshops in the areas of theatre you choose to pursue (e.g., acting, directing, scenography, etc). Through engaging in exploratory studio-based work, you will collaborate in groups to develop a coherent and theatrically compelling production concept, with a staff mentor who will provide feedback and guidance on a weekly basis.

Supported by professional technicians and staff, you will undertake independent project development and rehearsal sessions in our dedicated studio spaces, as you produce a show to be performed as part of the end-of-year degree festival.

Many cutting-edge forms of creative writing work beyond written text. This module will develop your understanding of popular contemporary writing and writing industries with an advanced study of two key forms that incorporate visual elements and elements of narrative design – specifically: graphic novels and games.

You will explore the possibilities of narrative design, including its visual and interactive elements, and this will allow you to engage both critically and creatively with a branch of writing largely associated with the digital domain.

Working in small groups, you will develop your own ideas, and through workshopping and playtesting, reflect on the narrative and design decisions you have made.

How might we engage with the implications of environmental transformation locally, nationally and globally? Where do we have agency and capacity to intervene?

This module brings together a range of perspectives—historical, political, philosophical and cultural—to explore the nature and severity of the effects of the climate crisis on our world.

What happens when radically different forms of art meet? How do these fused forms change our understanding of the world? We will draw on material from different periods and continents, to explore works of art where, for example, film meets history, poetry meets philosophy, fine art meets sociology, religion meets fiction, and theatre meets politics.

In this module you will work in a combination of prose and creative non-fiction to explore how personal experience can fuel both fiction and creative nonfiction and how authorial voice is created in dialogue with the self. You will learn to critically interrogate the ethics of speaking on behalf of ourselves and of others.

The reading list is refreshed annually in response to developments in the field, as is appropriate for an advanced course. An indicative reading list might raise questions of consent in the personal essay, or questions of responsibility when writing for young people and how coming-of-age is handled by adult writers.

As you enter level 6 with a grounded understanding of traditional and emerging forms of creative writing, this advanced module offers you the space to examine and practice experimental and radical contemporary forms that challenge what writing can mean, for the moment and beyond the moment it is written.

Specifically, this module will be focusing on contemporary short forms – including (but not limited to) lyric poetry, the vignette and flash fiction. You will explore the way that form responds to the moment – both a moment in time and the moment we are living in – and how these forms respond to questions of identity, politics, the body, mental health, disability, the climate crisis and more.

In this practical module you will conceptualise, design, and prototype innovative festival experiences that respond to emerging cultural, societal, technological, and environmental trends. Working in a team, you will develop festival concepts that explore innovations in audience engagement, sustainability, accessibility and digital innovation. In collaboration, you will undertake phases of concept development that may include:

• Researching and ideating a future-facing festival concept
• Design and branding
• Creation of visual identities and marketing materials
• Audience development strategies
• Understanding market audiences through use of data
• Technological integration
• Experimenting with innovative digital technologies
• Interactive installations
• Sustainability and accessibility
• Developing sustainable festive models with a focus on inclusivity

You will produce a festival proposal that will be pitched to industry professionals, who will provide feedback. The final project will be presented at the School of Arts Festival/Degree show, and your work will also make a contribution to the design and delivery of the event.