Master of Arts (Hons) in Worldbuilding

at Leeds Arts University United Kingdom

Our BA (Hons) Visual Communication course offers a truly multidisciplinary environment underpinned by design methods. Students on the course create work which both, reflects their own interests, and responds to the requirements of the contemporary creative industries.

We provide an opportunity to develop a personal and professional understanding of visual communication within a range of contexts including: studio-based practice, live projects, collaborative learning and work-related learning. Through a carefully structured three-year process, students will learn to become practitioners in visual communication or further study.

Learning and teaching is based on design problem-solving methods, which draw upon the academic and industry experience of the staff team. The teaching uses ideas and terms from film, television, graphic design, photography, illustration and event design.

External engagement through work-related learning is central to our approach, with all students having the opportunity to work on live projects and many engaging regularly with businesses and external partners. Our alumni work in a variety of fields including illustration, television, photography, graphic design, film, animation, visual merchandising, and teaching. Graduate employers include industry leaders in all areas of the creative sector. In addition many alumni are now established freelance practitioners working for clients across the UK and overseas.

Our MA in Digital Fashion offers a unique route for creatives interested in the digital future of fashion. It will enable through practice-led research and new sustainable methods of design and fabrication to reach a new frontier of fashion design.

Fashion is a dynamic field with trends currently pointing to significant innovations in digital design and production to facilitate the creation of multiple digital and physical products from both fashionable and functional briefs. The emergence of additive manufacturing as a new method for manufacturing, along with the increasing acceptance of smart and wearable tech, will allow students with technical abilities and/or understanding of traditional fashion design and pattern cutting skills to push their ideas into new terrain.

Students will use 3D programs, such as CLO 3D, which allows an intuitive method of design, as well as scanners and laser cutters in innovative ways throughout the modules. Graduates enjoy a wide range of employment prospects due to their transferable skills and most relevant digital skills for today’s modern fashion industry. The course supports individuals’ career aspirations and students can tailor their work towards their aim.

Our MA Worldbuilding brings together practitioners who want to create immersive worlds for entertainment design, production, and research.

You will design a well-researched and richly detailed world in a collaborative and interdisciplinary environment that integrates imagination and emergent technologies. You will have opportunities to explore designing cultural, historical and futuristic worlds through drawing, iterative design, and 3D prototyping.

Candidates are encouraged to position their work within a professional context to help inform the visual output and production method. The function and output of the worldbuilding will be examined through a self-determined approach, whether that’s drawing on concept art, VFX, game art and design, or analogue game design.

Embracing emerging technologies, such as VR and 3D printing, candidates will be able to explore wider contexts of worldbuilding, creating negotiated projects ranging from environment concept art, matte painting, theme park design, VR experiences or table-top game prototypes. The course provides the critical and progressive space to explore the processes and contexts to visualise and build immersive, believable and sustainable storyworlds.

This course offers opportunities to engage with diverse and innovative approaches to fashion image-making. It will develop your knowledge and understanding of the lens-based fashion industry and encourage an experimental, creative approach to produce visually striking photographs and films.

Our vibrant and collaborative learning environment will promote the exchange of ideas, and offers ‘hands on’ industry experience in the form of live briefs, publishing and exhibition opportunities, educational trips and commissions. Collaborating with students across the University and with wider creative communities locally, nationally and internationally is supported.

Your programme of study is informed by current and emerging industry contexts and practices, and you will work with highly skilled practitioners and specialist tutors, responding to exciting projects and briefs that develop your creativity, professionalism, preparation for the work place and offer real-life learning opportunities.

The course integrates creative practical projects with analysis of historical, cultural and social contexts of fashion image-making and you will be encouraged to take an experimental and questioning approach to your practice. We invite internationally renowned speakers to give an insight into current industry practices and offer opportunities to engage with external practitioners. In the past our students have been on study visits to Paris, Milan and New York, plus day-trips within the UK. Course related educational visits/trips experiences can take a variety of formats including physical and virtual.

This course will advance, widen and deepen your existing fine art practice through a series of modules designed to enable your progress through practice-led research. Dialogic exchange is at the heart of this course of study, staging, at its core, teaching and learning approaches in the form of regular dynamic group work, supported by individual tuition.

This course cradles all specialisms within contemporary practice such as painting, drawing, sculpture, text, performance, media and sound. The core seminars will use group work to explore the wider field of practice within which such disciplines are situated, and deepen individually nuanced discourses through an individual tutorial programme.

Working with subject specialists you will be introduced to practice-led research approaches to advance your knowledge acquisition of advanced critical and analytical methods and approaches in your own practice. The programme of study will explore your creative ambitions in the context of both knowledge and market-led fields.

The course begins with a sharing of personal intentions through exhibiting your own work to peers, and progresses to a conclusive moment of public sharing, where you will materialise theories, concepts, techniques, processes and crafts as artwork. You will be supported to articulate your ideas in visual, oral, written and material forms.

Our BA (Hons) Fine Art course immerses you in a diverse, creative community where you are encouraged to learn the business of becoming an artist in the contemporary world.

This engaging course is housed within specialist studio communities, each led by experienced teams of artists. You will engage with a range of strategies to support the development of your studio practice with an emphasis on craft, skill and critical thought.

You will be supported to produce work that spans a diverse range of media. You will embrace appropriate forms of resolution such as painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, installation, performance, screenings, text or sound works.

On joining the course you will embark on an initial period of orientation, induction and familiarisation which draws from our long history of traditional art education. You will then work in one of the specialist communities where there will be regular critiques, seminars and material workshops involving students from different levels of the course.

We engage with cultural visits to galleries and exhibitions, and you can take inspiration from nearby Leeds Art Gallery, the Henry Moore Institute as well as the award-winning Yorkshire Sculpture Park and The Hepworth Wakefield. Course related educational visits/trips experiences can take a variety of formats including physical and virtual.

You will be encouraged to seek opportunities to exhibit your work, gaining valuable experience and practical skills that will help to prepare you for a range of rewarding careers in this exciting discipline.

On this course we see no boundaries between performance, production and composition. We look for creative and versatile musicians who wish to develop their performance, production and technical skills to a professional level in order to prepare for a career in the contemporary music industries.

We recruit musicians to the following principal studies: vocals, keyboard, guitar, bass guitar and drum kit. You will study in a creative environment that fosters collaborative opportunities with students across a range of disciplines. Our course nurtures and develops musicians to have the confidence to create original music. Performance, production and composition are integral to our approach whilst providing you with a clear understanding of the business of music and the structure of the music industries. Our experienced tutors and visiting industry professionals will support and stimulate the development of technical skills necessary to thrive as a working musician in the 21st century creative world. On graduation students will have the choice of a wide range of career options.

This dynamic course develops your musicianship through specialist 1:1 vocal/instrumental tuition, a range of band performances and learning from experienced visiting musicians with a range of styles.  Our vibrant community gives you the opportunity to work with creative writers, graphic designers, fine artists, visual communicators, photographers, fashion designers, animators, filmmakers, and creative advertisers. Our degree provides the unique opportunity to build important creative networks and an impressive musical portfolio from the outset of your professional life.

Our MA Creative Practice has been devised for creative practitioners, recent graduates and professionals who wish to examine, strengthen and deepen their practice within their own context.

This course offers a bespoke learning experience that is tailored to each student’s practice: a wide range of creative practitioners have all studied on this course.

The course encourages you to pursue an individual research interest for the duration of study which will allow you to examine and strengthen your own practice and place it at the centre of your studies. It addresses the needs of graduates who want to continue to develop their practice and identities in the context of the creative and cultural industries.

Students will maintain contact with other creative practitioners and develop freelance or other career paths in the context of a portfolio career. This course will also prepare those who wish to develop ideas for application to a practice-based PhD.

This course provides the framework and critical discourse for the candidate to develop, create, and publish a graphic novel over the course of study.

You will research and develop sequential narrative methods, world-building techniques, and graphic novel publishing and immersive technologies. Engaging with the breadth and depth of what a sequential narrative could be, you will critically examine and contextualise your work in relation to emerging social, political, cultural, and ethical issues. You will work individually and collaboratively to produce a graphic novel that questions the role of the comic artist, audience, distribution and immersive media.

You will be supported by a team with diverse research and practical interests within sequential narrative, comic art and graphic novel culture, working closely with visiting industry professionals. You will challenge what a graphic novel can be, working collaboratively with writers, artists, publishers and readers – the aim is to create externally-engaged, progressive, inclusive, and immersive graphic novels for a diverse and growing readership.

This transdisciplinary course offers a space for you to explore comic and concept art holistically. We are a practical course where you can discover the theory, practice, and professional context of comic and concept art through a hands-on and industry-relevant approach.

You will have opportunities to apply your skills across a range of specialisms including character, environment, architecture, prop, mech, vehicle and creature design, storyboarding, narrative illustration, webtoons, comics and graphic novels. The course will enable the development of your professional understanding of studio and freelance practice, whilst acquiring specialist skills within a range of creative careers from concept art for the film and game industries, to comic art and self-published comics.

Your learning experience will be professionally focused throughout the course with opportunities for industry contact and embedded professional practice skills. Established industry links will complement the curriculum through visiting professionals, live briefs, and visiting lecturer workshops. This course promote an awareness of the comic and concept art industry practices in an international context. There are opportunities for collaborative projects within the course and across the University. You will also have a variety of opportunities to collaborate with industry, past examples include Thought Bubble – the leading comic art festival in Europe. You will be supported in developing a range of career options upon graduation.