Master of Arts in Social Media and Digital Communication

at University of Westminster - Harrow Campus United Kingdom

This three-year degree is one of the best-known film courses in the world, with an international reputation for its academic and practical teaching.

Our students’ films are shown at festivals globally and have won a host of honours and awards, including Royal Television Society Awards, a Student Academy Award and a Grierson Best Student Documentary Award.

We operate from a purpose-built studio facility in Harrow, with two large film and television studios, a set construction workshop, a 3D workshop, and extensive post-production facilities. The environment is both scholarly and creative, with all students studying film history, criticism and aesthetics alongside their practical work.

You'll learn to collaborate creatively as you develop production specialisms in areas such as writing, producing, cinematography, directing, production design, editing and sound. You'll also gain the transferable and cognitive skills necessary for lifelong personal and professional development.

We aim to develop thinking filmmakers who have something to say to, and about, the world. A very high proportion of our students go on to work in film and television, and recent work from notable alumni includes The Greatest Showman and Nocturnal Animals (Seamus McGarvey, cinematographer), Senna and Amy (Asif Kapadia, director) and No Time to Die and Skyfall (Neal Purvis, screenwriter, producer). Under the Shadow, the first feature directed by 2005 graduate Babak Anvari, was selected as the UK entry for the 2017 Best Foreign Language film Oscar and won the Outstanding Debut Award at the 2017 BAFTA Awards.

The course receives substantial support from the industry and you will gain experience of working with professional actors, negotiating with facilities houses, equipment hire companies and local authorities.

Based at the recently refurbished Harrow Campus – home to the Westminster School of Arts – you will work alongside students from design, photography, music, fashion and journalism, in a unique hothouse of creative opportunity.

Through an excellent network of industry contacts, some of whom teach on the course, and including many alumni of the course, students have opportunities for part-time work, placements and work-related learning activities.

The second year includes a core work-based professional learning module in which students may undertake a short work placement and begin to develop their industry connections and awareness.

Students may also undertake an optional year-long placement between their second and third year.

Our innovative MA in Film and Television builds on its prestigious heritage as the longest running degree programme of its kind in the UK. We aim to equip you with wide-ranging skills, knowledge and critical awareness to meet your career aspirations in sectors in which moving images play a central role. Our curriculum incorporates an exciting variety of learning and teaching activities designed to foster your capacity for researching and rigorously analysing different aspects of film, television and moving images. You will have the opportunity to develop key skills for communicating about and with moving images across a range of contexts and platforms.

The Photography Arts MA offers a dynamic mix of photography practice and research to support your development as an artist. Students learn to navigate the rapidly changing field of contemporary photography, while preparing themselves for diverse career paths. Each student develops two distinct bodies of work to exhibition and/or publication standard, as well as deepening their research and writing. Your progress through the course is supported with one-to-one meetings with a personal tutor, as well as lectures, seminars, tutorials and critique sessions. You will be empowered with visual, critical and practical skills that culminate in the Masters Project, exhibited in a central London degree show.

Students are fully supported by our internationally renowned photography staff and inspired by an exciting range of prominent visiting photographic artists and thinkers. Situated in Westminster School of Media, Arts and Design, you will have access to extensive photographic facilities and a wealth of inter-disciplinary expertise. You will be part of a world-famous centre for photography research.

Our Television Production BA is a practice-based course taught by broadcast industry professionals and media theorists, combining critical analysis with hands-on practical skills.

Our course focuses on how television programmes are conceived, produced, commissioned and distributed in a digital broadcast and multi-platform environment. 

You’ll work across a digital workflow supporting single-camera and multi-camera studio production modes and produce programmes across all genres, from documentary and drama series to TV commercials and studio entertainment shows.

As well as learning practical skills in editing, camera operations, sound recording, lighting and graphics, you’ll study critical analysis of the ever-changing global broadcast and digital media industries. 

You’ll work with industry-standard facilities and equipment, and you’ll be taught by experienced industry professionals and practitioners, including documentary filmmakers, directors, producers and screenwriters. We also host a range of visiting lecturers and guest speakers, from sound designers to investigative journalists and social media strategists.

Our course is designed to prepare you for the challenge of a multi-skilled, mixed-portfolio career, and our graduates leave equipped with the knowledge, skills and mindset necessary to thrive in the creative industries.

Our course capitalises on the benefits that London has to offer, particularly through our connections with the many production companies based in the city, with links that include ITV studios, Disney and London Live. Our students have undertaken work experience with a range of employers, including the BBC, Endemol and ITV. 

Based at our vibrant Harrow Campus, just a 20-minute train ride from central London, you’re ideally placed to take up a range of exciting opportunities as you begin your professional career.

Our course in Fashion Marketing and Promotion has been designed to cater for creative, passionate and motivated students who want to pursue a creative degree within the fashion industry and develop a solid understanding of business in our digital era.

The fashion promotion industry offers some of the most attractive jobs in the industry and our course allows you to experience the wide spectrum of this field. The course will also give you a much better understanding of how you could use your strengths to achieve your future ambitions in the arena of fashion promotion.

Our aim is to help you realise your potential by directing you to the areas that are of greatest interest to you, both for your studies and in the future. 

We’ve developed this course with expertise from the industry in order to respond to the changing needs of fashion brands in our current innovative fashion industry landscape. Our industry experts are increasingly looking for creative and digitally literate fashion business graduates to help drive their marketing and promotion strategy across multiple customer touchpoints. This course is designed to develop your creative, technical and business skills on a commercial level.

During your three years on the course, you'll be introduced to a wide range of fashion promotion and marketing projects, including trend, creative marketing and communication, branding, styling, visual merchandising photography, film and media, visual merchandising, branding, strategic marketing, digital creation and new development in social media.

You'll also have the opportunity to apply for a semester abroad during your second year of study at one of our partner institutions. Our exchange programme is designed to equip you with the creative skills, knowledge and practical experience, along with the development of a professional character that is key to successful employment.

Our Contemporary Media Practice BA is built on our long tradition of teaching interdisciplinary media practice, working across moving image, photography and interactive media.

Our unique approach combines the creative exploration of art school traditions with academic and professional excellence. We have extensive industry-level facilities and equipment, and to develop your skills and knowledge we use a variety of assessment methods, including practical projects, presentations, written work, research tasks and portfolios.

Our course sets high standards for professional achievement in specific media industry roles, and prepares you for the challenge of a multi-skilled portfolio career. You'll also gain the transferable and cognitive skills necessary for lifelong personal and professional development.

Our graduates have a high employment rate across the media industries, including broadcast television; commercial photography and photojournalism; curating and film programming; film direction, production, editing and visual effects; fine art practice; and new media.

Studying this course will enable you to develop your creative media production skills across a range of disciplines, and give you the ability to adapt to the creative opportunities of new media forms and hybrids. It will enhance your ability to participate in contemporary cultural debates, and develop your awareness of the political, ethical and aesthetic implications of your work.

This course offers a hands-on curriculum that allows you to develop core journalistic skills in broadcast and digital media. You will learn the technical skills to master TV, audio and digital reporting. The course has a very practical focus, so you will develop your own story ideas and gather your own material through research and reporting for journalistic course work.

You will be given full training in using our up-to-date video, audio, social media management and mobile journalism resources, ensuring that you graduate from the course as a multi-skilled journalist. These practical skills are underpinned with training in media law, ethics and regulation.

Whether your passion is current affairs, arts and culture, investigative features, travel, fashion, sport – or you are still deciding, our aim is to help you to find your first job in journalism.

This innovative Master's degree aims to equip students with the skills, knowledge and strategic approach to develop and analyse social change campaigns and activism, with a particular focus on the role of communications and the media. This is the only postgraduate programme of its kind, and has a flexible delivery to suit both full-time and part-time students.

The course builds on our close links with leading campaigners and communicators in London's vibrant social change sector. An advisory panel, with representatives from Amnesty UK, Friends of the Earth, Save the Children, WaterAid, SumOfUs, Advocacy Hub, Campaign Bootcamp, FairSay and The National Council of Voluntary Organisations among others, will ensure we always reflect the skill sets in demand and deliver an exciting learning experience. A limited number of work placements and internships will be available.

Live Music is at the centre of Music as an industry and cultural experience. There is a rich set of global opportunities arising from the significant economic and cultural global growth of Live Music. Central to this are music festivals as economic, social and cultural centres of importance, enhanced by the link between social media and experiential experiences.

This new course will help you to develop a comprehensive knowledge and critical understanding of business and practice in the live music and events industries and equip you to navigate this fast-changing and challenging environment. It also sets out to examine how the live music and events industries interact with wider social and technological transformations, critically important in a socially distancing environment necessitating new business models such as live streaming, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality.

At Westminster, we already have a highly regarded background and established reputation for successful teaching and research in music and events from the very heart of the global centre for live music, London. Our Live Music Management MA has been developed alongside and is heavily integrated with industry and will be delivered by both leading academics as well as frequent guest speakers from the live music industry (including leading industry spokespeople and companies).

The Media and Development MA is an interdisciplinary course that teaches main theories, concepts, case studies and practical media skills around the theme of media and development and its implications for less developed countries. The course will provide you with a unique blend of theory and practice teaching, aimed at deepening your knowledge of the history of communications within the development process of emerging economies. It will critically evaluate the impact of international and regional institutions from a critical political economic perspective. Teaching by academic staff, guest lecturers and other carefully selected staff from development organisations will provide you with an overview of the policies, actions and impact of state and non-state institutions within the area of communication media and development.

A distinctive feature is its emphasis on the practical role of communication media in development. You will participate in media production workshops and take part in our internship programme, offered in partnership with media and development organisations in London. As part of the work experience module, students participate in an extensive NGOs and media seminar series featuring experts and panel discussions. The work placement programme is in line with the University of Westminster’s strategy of nurturing of the critical practitioner.