Course summary

Arts University Plymouth is an arts university for the 21st century, preparing students who are uniquely placed to provide creative solutions to the complex global challenges of a changing world. Formerly known as Plymouth College of Art, we were granted full university title in Spring 2022. We are now the city of Plymouth’s first and only specialist arts university, allowing us to offer our students a dynamic and unique learning experience. In May 2022 we were awarded the Best Small or Specialist University at the 2022 WhatUni Student Choice Awards, coming top in a list of well-respected specialist UK universities, based on unbiased and honest reviews from students across the UK, in a category that highlights the quality of our provision as a specialist creative university. With almost 150,000 people employed in the UK’s craft industry, skilled crafts-people are putting the country on the map for original, forward-thinking contemporary design. The relationship between thinking and making is ever-evolving, with experimentation and innovation seeing a new wave of makers take their craft profession in fresh and original directions, often looking to develop methods in which we can live harmoniously within natural and fabricated environments that support a healthy ecosystem. Our spacious Materials Lab includes specialist facilities for ceramics, glass, metal and wood, encouraging you to explore traditional making alongside the rapid digital prototyping facilities in our Fab Lab, giving you the opportunity to reinvent craft for the 21st century. However, learning isn’t limited to our design studios and workshops – you will meet some of the UK’s most inventive and entrepreneurial contemporary makers and thinkers through gallery visits, demonstrations, and presentations. You’ll study specialist ceramics techniques such as throwing, slip casting, slab-building, coiling, glazing, and raku firing. Working with glass will include hot glass making, kiln-formed glass, coldworking and lampworking. Working with metals will see you casting, welding, and grinding. If you’re looking to specialise in wood-working, you’ll have the opportunity to learn woodturning, joinery, and CNC routing. In the Fab Lab you will experience laser cutting, CNC milling and 3D printing. Our ambition is that your material practice develops in an international context, and you’ll be given the opportunity to visit a number of current events such as Sieraad in Amsterdam, Collect in London, British Ceramics Biennial, and New Designers. Recent contributors to the course include Elliot Walker, Steve Dixon, Pr Neil Brownsword, Caroline Broadhead, Dr Erin Dickson, Lucy Brown, Sam Photic, Nuala Clooney, Mount Edgecumbe and Eden Project. You’ll learn about enterprise and entrepreneurship, and how to price, display and promote work for a range of different markets including: large scale site specific work, individual exhibition pieces and domestic products, all based on knowledge of your customers and the experience gained by working on live briefs, pitching to clients and entering competitions. Study with us and you’ll expand your critical approach alongside developing skills in research and analysis. Our creative programmes encourage diversity in thinking and making - from practical applications through to reflective, analytical writing. You will also have access to our Making Futures biennial conference, offering you the chance to listen to critical discourses by international makers, curators and critics. Graduates can become:

• ceramicists

• glass artists

• prop designers

• ornament/wearables designers

• sculptors

• architectural surface designers

• textile designers

• fine artists

• gallery and museum professionals