Integrated Master’s Combined Arts MA (Online)

Perfect for storytellers, makers, and imaginative thinkers.

Ideal for visual problem-solvers and creative strategists.

The first year of the Integrated Master’s Combined Arts focuses on development of core skills that you’ll need throughout your studies. These will be developed as you progress through the programme.  

You will be introduced to problem-based learning, how it works and the benefits to you as a learner, and you will build your confidence in managing your own self-directed study under the guidance of your tutors.  

This first year covers themes such as study skills, sustainability, communication and organisation, and is the solid foundation on which you’ll build advanced skills and with that, your own creative practice. 

The Art of Problem-Based Learning (shared on both courses) 

This module will take you through each step of how problem-based learning works.   

As the module unfolds, each week you’ll build on your knowledge and acquire a set of skills which you will use to approach the whole Combined Arts course. 

The module ends with a student-driven analysis assessment, focusing on a sample problem-based learning case to ensure that those skills are sharp and ready to help you succeed throughout the programme.   

This entry module is a solid foundation for learners from any previous background. 

Places and Spaces: Community, Identity and Change (shared on both courses) 

You will use your emerging creative practice to communicate ideas and present them to a diverse audience of stakeholders as you respond to real-world challenges.     

The problem-based learning examples cases of this module encompass nine thematic areas of sustainability:  

1. Future Thinking   
2. Interrelationships & Interdependence   
3. Recognising Relevance & Authenticity   
4. Regenerative Systems   
5. Solving the Climate & Ecological Crises   
6. Social Equality & Justice   
7. Citizenship   
8. Circularity   
9. Personal/Human Health, Wellbeing & Happiness   

You will select appropriate and effective visual communication methods which will help you identify and plan how you will respond to sustainability through the lens of your developing creative practice, during a time of climate emergency.   

You are encouraged to develop a holistic view of sustainable practices across this module, having the space to explore the sustainability-linked benefits and drawbacks of creative practice in relation to personal, ethical and environmental consciousness to communicate ideas.  

Visualise and Innovate: Creative Problem-Solving (unique to the Creativity course) 

This module focuses on illustration as an industry practice in the development of creative thinking, concepts and ideas. Idea visualisation is practiced as part of a problem-solving methodology which responds to human, social, economic and environmental real-world challenges. These ideas are translated into physical outputs and solutions.  

The problem-based learning example cases on this module will explore process, experimentation and engagement with different illustration and visual language techniques, through which you will apply your emerging creative practice within the context of a real-world brief, which contains complexities, engages with diversity and factors in change.  

Fundamentally, your emerging creative practice will begin to address the ethical and ideological contexts of a real-world brief, utilising suitable technologies.   

Transformations: Imagining Community Spaces (unique to the Creativity course) 

Different research methodologies and sources will inspire your imagination and ideas and enable you to develop proposals for the transformation of an existing local space to meet the diverse needs of the community. 

You will be engaging critically with diverse materials and ideas you have sourced to articulate creative design concepts and implement detailed planning. These will reflect your thinking and emerging creative practice in your response to the challenge of transforming a community space.  

Bold Transformations: Extraordinary Approaches to Real-World Challenges (unique to the Design Fundamentals course) 

You will adopt a bold, curious and experimental approach to a problem-based case study as a visual communicator.  

You will apply the Bauhaus technique of play to generate new ideas through a range of materials, techniques and technologies as you consider both ethical and ideological concerns. 

In so doing you will communicate information, ideas, statistics and emotions in contextually relevant formats.  

The second year of this Combined Arts Integrated Master's builds on the first and continues the focus on building a first-rate personal creative skillset.  

The year ahead covers advanced creative practice, analytical skills and collaborative working, as well as themes of inclusivity and wellbeing in creative practice to give you a resilient future in the creative industries. This year becomes the creative space to engage with more advanced skills and refine your research, ethical and analytical skills that will underpin your developing creative practice.  

Collaboration (shared on both courses) 

In this module, you will experience working in a collaborative team, reflective of industry practice. You will work in online teams with other students across disciplines such as visual communication, business and illustration, all working towards complex solutions to industry focussed, real-life problems.   

The module is delivered in two parts. In the first part you will learn about collaboration: what it is, how to collaborate effectively, and which soft skills you will be able to develop (Reflection, Participation, Engagement, Reciprocity, Mediation, Motivation, Awareness, Innovation, Knowledge). In this time, you will have access to weekly theory-based lectures and webinars, plus learning material to help you prepare for teamwork, including taking part in creative skills exchange sessions. 

In the second part of this module, you will work within your emerging area of interest in a transdisciplinary way. You will be assigned to a group and given a set ‘challenge’ in the form of a question. As a group you will then work together to propose a solution to the problem, culminating in a final output of your choice (a presentation, recorded performance, poster, website or blog).

The Creative Cultural Sphere (shared on both courses) 

This module provides a problem-based learning platform to help you develop a working knowledge of the key factors that influence wellbeing and your responsibility as a creative practitioner to approach your practice and communication in this context. 

In this module, you will challenge dominant cultural mindsets though analysis of content, engagement with diverse information sources and personal reflection on the influence these have on wellbeing.   

The module explores several interconnected themes through real-world case studies, such as: 

• Behavioural Outcomes, you will consider how creative practitoners can shape positive health-related goals and behavioural outcomes. 
• Theory-based Influences, including learning strategies built on evidence-based theories focussing on inclusivity and other social factors and their impact(s) on health and wellbeing. 

As part of this, you will also develop Risk Literacy, including skill development in assessing and recognising risk-related behaviours, emphasising health-enhancing attitudes and informed decision-making. Implicit within inclusive creative practice is Positive Validation, where positive role modelling offers the potential to promote positive health intentions, including awareness of social pressures and various conscious and unconscious biases that can impact wellbeing. You’ll reflect on your own lived experiences through Experience-based Learning that promotes both cognitive and emotional development, facilitated through creative expression, as a means of processing and utilising your learning. 

Throughout this module, you’ll apply ethical and cultural lenses to deepen your understanding and inform your creative output as an expression of that journey. 

The Entrepreneurial Creative  (shared on both courses) 

This module uses the problem-based learning approach to help you scaffold and develop your own business plan to set goals for a sustainable career.  

On this module, you will learn some of the basics of running a business and develop essential entrepreneurial skills such as financial planning, negotiation through effective communication, building a personal brand, self-promotion, the basics of effective networking, and safely and ethically using social media.  

Throughout the problem-based learning examples in this module, you will investigate your own personal learning goals linked with key business skills relevant to your own specialist creative interests as a practitioner.  

Future Skills (shared on both courses) 

Over the course of this module, you will develop your skills and entrepreneurial mindset.  

You will learn skills and gain knowledge that are equally applicable to setting up your own business, establishing yourself as a freelancer or for use as an employee in an established business or organisation.  

Throughout this module you will further develop your goals, values and attributes and explore the future career options available to you. You will be immersed in practical learning and consolidate this learning through reflection and the ability to translate their skills for an external context.  

Final Major Project (shared on both courses) 

This final undergraduate level module of the Integrated Master’s serves two functions: as a springboard into the final year of study, and as a point of reflection in your personal distance travelled as a creative practitioner through years one and two of the course.  

Your Final Major Project module is therefore intended to give you the creative space to prepare a professional output that showcases your skills and accumulated knowledge, building on your previous learnings and linked with your chosen route (Creativity or Design Fundamentals).   

The project will begin with proposing, researching, and pitching your ideas for the project, including any ethical considerations, receiving formative feedback from tutors and then starting the creative process in full.  

The wide scope of this project aims to help you articulate how you stand out as a creative practitioner and give you a space to demonstrate your abilities to self-direct and manage a substantial piece of work of a professional standard, as well as give space for you to reflect critically on your own development as a creative through the project work.  

Creativity Unbound: Perspectives and Voices on Nature and Place (unique to the Creativity course) 

This module uses its problem-based learning examples to explore boundaries, and encourages you to cross literary, physical and thematic boundaries in a bold and adventurous way.   

As you continue to develop your voice and perspective in a range of literary genres through the problem-based learning examples, you will communicate messages around the climate crises and demonstrate your empathy for the environment, other places, nature and non-human forms.   

Responding to a real-world challenge in relation to our natural environment you will demonstrate your creative practice, within a professional context. You will build your professional practice through a process of continuing reflection; which will enable you to organise complex ideas.    

Applying a problem-based methodology, your writing in various forms will convey your empathy for place and the natural environment through different communication skills, suitable for diverse audiences.   

The third and final year (Level 7) of the Combined Arts Integrated Master’s has an increased focus on refining and developing your personal research practice using problem-based learning examples, to help drive learning and skill development, in line with a master’s level programme.  

As the problems get more complex, you will stretch your skills to meet that complexity, and in doing so, grow into a unique citizen-graduate. 

Research Skills as the Foundation of Success (shared on both courses) 

This module will ground your creative practice in the context of supported exposure to a range of research skills. 

This will enable you to explore a breadth of advanced research, enquiry, analysis and communication skills to further develop your personal design practice towards your master’s level final project. 

Practice Research by Researching Practice (unique to the Creativity course) 

This module gives you the opportunity to apply your accumulated research skills from the course, scaffolded by the problem-based learning examples, and gives you a creative space to realise a substantial and highly individual practice-based research project. 

This will start to frame how you respond to the social, political, economic and environmental conditions of our contemporary world.  The subject of the final assessment of this module is a multimedia-based essay where you get to show off your ability to enhance knowledge and critically reflect. 

Sustainable Strategies (shared on both courses) 

In this module, you will investigate a variety of creative strategies involved in the production, resolution and publication of contemporary creative practice work, and reflect upon the ways in which the dissemination and contexts of your practice informs the making of work.  

You will explore sustainability education from an interdisciplinary perspective in the making and presentation of your creative output(s) for this module, and are encouraged to explore new methods, processes and creative strategies as appropriate to your practice and personal research interests.  

Crucially, you will also consider your creative practice in relation to economic, social and environmental sustainability, as well as circular and regenerative systems. Through course content and learning activities, you will devise strategies and workflows that question sustainability, both ethically and practically, seeking to demonstrate a deeper understanding of the impacts associated with creative practice.  

The Multifaceted Art of Storytelling (shared on both courses)

This module adopts a problem-based learning approach to examine the relationship between creativity and storytelling in its various forms. It uses examples to explore how creative practice and research methodologies can be jointly applied to storytelling in narrative form; building iteratively on idea distillation, reformat, curation and/or remodelling of ‘stories’ (in various contexts) for new purpose and/or need.  

This module sits at the centre of your practice and theory and allows the creative space for you to explore this interconnection through problem-based learning challenges, and a consideration of opportunities facing contemporary creative practitioners and the role they play in bringing about change.  

The examples will focus on human-centred stories that provoke engagement with socially driven questions that require rigorous analysis, and then communication for comprehension, asking how different cultural perspectives might drive new creative thinking.  

The assessment on this module takes the form of a creative practice-based research journal as an iterative developmental record through which the summative assessment evaluates your individual learning journey.  

Researching Design and Studio Culture (unique to the Design Fundamentals course) 

This module uses problem-based learning to investigate the fundamentals of managing the day-to-day aspects of a studio culture and to reflect on innovative ways to work at distance and in collaboration with partners around the world. 

The first stage of learning problem-based learning is a business-focused investigation of key core knowledge, planning, leadership and legal frameworks that underpin a studio culture or creative initiative, allowing you to reflect on your own creative design practice, encouraging reflection and rehearsal of professional skills. 

With design being largely a collaborative activity, this module will encourage you to consider innovative approaches, tools and methodologies to improve studio practice which may include examining cross-cultural or interdisciplinary approaches to design working. 

The Design Phase Compendium (unique to the Design Fundamentals course) 

This module uses problem-based learning to explore the design phases involved in creating a digital product or service in collaboration with others. This will involve investigating discrete design phases including ideation, concepting, prototyping, and demonstration via an agile methodology, but with a clear emphasis on critically evaluating the multidisciplinary methods used in this style of working.

The problem-based learning examples will take the design steps from an initial concept through to a working demonstration, developing your throughout the module. The process will also build the expertise needed to help you pitch your ideas in a variety of contexts.  Areas Issues such as artificial intelligence and intellectual property management will be included in the problem-based learning examples and PBL cases, alongside topics such as branding, production costs, market alignment, and how to reach an audience. 

Final Major Project (shared on both courses) 

This final module of the course provides you with the opportunity to produce a critically, professionally and ethically informed research project.   

You will build on your increasing skills and knowledge, using feedback from the course team. You will also leverage your peer networks within your course cohort and offer each other feedback and support through the module.   

Depending on the nature of your creative practice and research interest, the Final Major Project may take a variety of forms, and we encourage students to explore this.  

The final submission for assessment on this module will be a portfolio containing:   

• Your creative project work, and/or documentation thereof (including any output or artefacts),   
• A succinct statement of intent (based off the proposal template), and   
• A Critical Review of Practice which will provide an in-depth critical context for your project.