Arts & Wellbeing

The recognised areas of benefit for arts and wellbeing initiatives are significant in breadth, ranging from mental health, trauma, special educational needs, addiction, dementia, as well as to ideas linked to more generalised civic wellbeing.

Such initiatives have been accompanied by a significant growth in employment opportunities, ranging from specialist art/music/movement therapists through to senior appointments in national, regional, and local government, health, and educational organisations.

This course will provide you with the knowledge and understanding of the practices and histories of arts and wellbeing interventions; as well as equipping you with the knowledge and critical understanding of the role and function of creativity for wellbeing.

It will equip you with the necessary skills for project management of arts and wellbeing interventions and the processes by which they can be created, realised, managed, distributed and documented to benefit many sectors of society – the elderly; the disabled; children in poverty; people in recovery from substance abuse and so on.

This course will also provide students with the relevant digital and technical skills needed to develop sophisticated approaches to arts and wellbeing interventions.

Most regions and cities in the UK invest in arts and wellbeing strategic priorities, and there is a clear need for professionals to drive these developments forward for the wellbeing of all our citizens. This is echoed nowhere more powerfully than in the Arts Council of England's most recent strategic initiative - Arts, Culture and Wellbeing – which describes how ‘making and experiencing arts and culture transforms quality of life for individuals and communities. Liverpool City Council and the Merseyside Region take the idea of Arts and Wellbeing very seriously, with significant investment in initiatives such as Routes to Wellbeing and Connecting our Communities.

Contemporary Craft

*Subject to validation

The BA Contemporary Craft Major is centered around the practice of designing and making combined with the exploration of materials. 

In the material workshops we celebrate tactility, materiality and haptic technologies, seeking less conventional notions of craft through material exploration and project design. Creating and making gives us the confidence to take risks, the ability to solve problems and builds a sense of identity. Alongside developing individually focused work the course will seek to explore key research emerging within society, exploring challenging issues including climate change, mental health diversity. The course will be theoretically underpinned by a series of lectures and seminars to inform research and practice. A strong focus on employability and real-world scenarios will enable contemporary craft graduates to move confidently into diverse fields of practice and work opportunities. Graduates will be confident in forging links with local industries and harnessing the creative energy of the North West. Professional expertise, digital exploration and contextual studies support the creative practice to provide a rich and exciting major.  

Creative Industries Business Management BA

The lecture series for this course will follow two interdependent, integrated streams. One will develop students’ historical, theoretical and critical awareness of the relationship between arts, cultural entrepreneurship and business management from a variety of viewpoints – film, music, dance, theatre, festival, gallery etc. The other series will be more professionally focused exploring the changing environment with respect to business methods (finance, planning and the law), and marketing and branding strategies within the creative industries.

The practical seminars and workshops for the course will focus around important case studies to highlight different business models within the creative industries from SMEs to national organisations as well as allowing an opportunity to explore important, innovative approaches to marketing and communications strategies within the sector.

The programme will increasingly introduce professionalised; work placement elements from the second part of Level I. So that by the programme’s end, students will have gathered experience of working with external professional creative industries organisations.

We expect graduates of this degree to become the creative entrepreneurs of the future, contributing to Britain’s world-leading reputation for delivering high quality arts and entertainment.

Digital Creativity

This course will educate students towards creating work that bridges the gap between traditional creative practices and their modern technologically facilitated counterparts from gaming, to graphic design to music and dance. It responds to the continuing appropriation of emerging digital technologies by artists with the aim of discovering new approaches for creative expression, often referred to under the umbrella term ‘Creative Convergence’. The course responds to the teaching and research interests of staff within the subjects of Music, Performance and Visual Arts, as well as colleagues in the areas related to Computer Science. You will learn how to use a variety of technologies and realise assessed projects; these may include motion capture, haptic feedback, interaction design, data sonification & visualisation, animation & sound design, and coding/scripting in relevant languages strictly for creative output. The practical seminars will act as laboratories to experiment with these technologies and enhance your skillsets, working towards a signature practice that primes them for the digital creative sector. The lectures provide a theoretical basis for you to critically position your work, further developed through student-led discussions in tutorials. The lecture content also informs the seminars, ensuring you are able to perceive the practical application of these ideas. In your first year of study, you will be introduced to the key practitioners and practices who demonstrate the ways digital technologies enrich the creative potential of traditional art forms.

Digital Creative is a fast-growing area of employment regionally, nationally and globally from games, installations, through to large-scale performance events, concerts and shows. Career prospects are diverse and significant and, consequently, graduates of Interactive and Immersive Performance will work across a range of important career pathways.

The variety of course combinations for this course affords a greater potential for different career trajectories. Within the creative industries, students will be well-placed to seek employment as freelance creative technologists, production designers and immersive experience designers.

Music Production (Single Honours)

Liverpool is a vibrant city, tapping into the momentum and energy of a diverse creative scene, which stems from a long history as an international port city known for its music. Our course adopts a creative approach to music production that considers equipment to be a means to artistic ends, an aspect of modern musicianship that is essential for any self-sufficient practitioner. 

Music Production gives you the opportunity to explore the creative, technical, and theoretical aspects of one of the most rapidly changing creative landscapes. The course will expose you to aspects of the music business and industry, as well as its many historical and theoretical concepts. It provides you the opportunity to develop lasting, transferable skill sets that empower you to develop a resilient and sustainable approach to your future practice.

Stage Design and Scenography

Are you passionate about theatre and performance but are more interested in working behind the scenes? Then this is the course for you.

On this course you will be trained to design and make immersive worlds for different audiences. It’s about exploring drama and performance through the interactions between bodies, environments and creative technologies. How can light function as an actor? How can a set be built by sound alone? How can we subtly direct our audiences without them knowing? What are the ethical challenges of creating a performance solely for one person? As worldbuilders, you will learn about the different approaches to designing and creating your own immersive performance environments, supported by technical training that will prepare you for the creative sector.

Your three years begins with an introduction to immersive performance practices and scenographic design before you journey into the exciting challenges of audience participation and interaction. Moving outside of the campus, the city of Liverpool itself will become a site for performance, echoing the work of immersive practitioners such as Punchdrunk, dreamthinkspeak and Shunt. Your final year will involve a push into new and experimental performance technologies, presenting performance projects in virtual worlds and the development of escape rooms and other ludic practices. This will culminate in you selecting either to complete a placement within an arts organisation or to take the lead as project manager of a major performance project of your own devising. This final year will also require you to complete an independent research project on a topic of your own choice.

To apply for one of our courses, please visit the UCAS website. If you require any further information about any of our new courses for 2024/25 entry, please email the School of Creative and Performing Arts: schoolcpa@hope.ac.uk