Combined Arts: Creativity BA(Hons)

The first year of Combined Arts: Creativity degree focuses on development of core skills that you’ll need as you progress through the degree.

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, research methods, sustainability, communication and organisation, and is the solid foundation on which you’ll develop and refine those skills and with that, your own creative practice. 

Visualise and Innovate: Creative Problem Solving

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

The Art of Problem-Based Learning 

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

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. 

Transformations: Imagining Community Spaces 

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. Reflecting your thinking, your response to this challenge of transforming a community space will begin to demonstrate your emerging creative practice.  

Places and Spaces: Community, Identity and Change 

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 example 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.  

Creativity Unbound: Perspectives and Voices on Nature and Place

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; enabling 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 Creative Cultural Sphere

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, which may include: 

Behavioural Outcomes: You will consider how creative practitioners can shape positive health-related goals and behavioural outcomes. 

Theory-based Influences: Exploring evidence-based theories focusing on inclusivity and other social factors and their impact(s) on health and wellbeing, 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. 

The second year of BA(Hons) Combined Arts: Creativity builds on your journey and learnings, and continues the focus on developing a first-rate personal creative skillset.  

The year ahead covers advanced creative practice, analytical skills and collaborative working, as well as more advanced 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. 

Refined Directions: Initiate, Innovate and Resolve 

This module uses its PBL cases to frame the ways that visual communication is used and applied in the real world, which will enable you to develop self-initiated learning goals which explore your own skill sets as a visual communicator while you develop your own independent creative practice. 

You will apply innovative problem-solving strategies to real-world challenges from the cases, where you will refine your responses through experimenting with different communication processes, techniques and technologies to allow you to demonstrate in-depth understanding of both audiences and context.   

Collaboration 

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-focused, 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).   

Multimodality for Storytelling 

The module will use its PBL cases to scaffold your learning around existing theoretical frameworks for storytelling and applied knowledge in the field of writing practice, using an understanding of other professional and artistic contexts, in order to refine and develop writing and storytelling skills.   

This will grow your innovative and disruptive multimodal practice supported by a range of technical writing skills and engagement with different platforms, which may include pitch and presentation skills, and use relevant research methodologies in order to further develop your critical thinking transferable skills.  

The module has a focus on communicating ethically-informed innovative story-driven ideas based on professional standards, to develop an adaptive, creative and multimodal approach to your own work - challenging you to compose meaning in your own practice. 

Future Skills

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 your skills for an external context.  

The Entrepreneurial Creative

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.  

Final Major Project

This final undergraduate level module of the course serves 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.  

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 professional-standard work.