Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in English and Creative Writing

at Leeds Beckett University - City Campus United Kingdom

Develop the entrepreneurial flair to kick-start, manage and grow your own business or help an existing enterprise to expand.

As part of your course you’ll:

• Gain a broad understanding of how businesses operate
• Learn the behaviours, techniques and principles to succeed in today's economic climate
• Develop your individual promise by studying modules that will help shape you into a budding and innovative entrepreneur

If you take a paid work placement in your third year, you’ll develop and enhance your employability skills.

As well as having the option to gain experience on a placement, you’ll take part in workshops and work on a consultancy project within a start-up business.

Our guest lecture series will help give you access to the enterprise expertise present in Leeds, the northern powerhouse of the region's businesses and economy. Past speakers include the CEO of the London Stock Exchange, the Chief Executive of the British Bankers Association and the Chief Economist of Yorkshire Bank.

You’ll be guided by practising writers and researchers, undertaking modules that encourage an interdisciplinary approach to understanding writing and contemporary culture.

As part of your course, you'll:

• Develop strong communication and creative thinking skills by engaging with a diverse range of disciplines
• Receive a broad foundation in creative practice and cultural studies
• Inform and develop your own creative practice by exploring poetry and the short story in more depth
• Tailor your study to suit your career aspirations through a range of option modules
• Complete a dissertation-length project
• Produce an anthology in collaboration with your fellow students, developing your entrepreneurial skills

You’ll take an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on multiple areas of research and culture to inform your creative writing practice. With a particular focus on employability, the course offers a range of specialist modules that encourage you to reflect on your skillset.

You will specialise in either contemporary literature or creative writing. Taught in workshops held on weekday evenings, you will be able to fit your studies around your existing commitments.

Contemporary Literature
Specialise in researching contemporary literature. You will be introduced to a range of recent literary texts in English and develop an advanced, critical understanding of recent debates on the contemporary creative process.

You will be encouraged by expert tutors to develop your skills in close reading, creating and delivering presentations and formal discussions. Modules will explore how contemporary literary studies is a creative process, and will enable you to specialise in topics at the cutting edge of the discipline.   

Your independent project will enable you to experience the process of defining your own area of investigation and conducting in-depth research and writing.

Creative Writing
Study creative writing at an advanced level. From the outset, you will focus on developing particular expertise in the writing process, and the texts and theories you study will enhance your writing practice.

Develop your skills in product design and professional practice.

As part of your course you’ll:

• Gain insight into user requirements, economic, environmental and ethical considerations, as well as materials, manufacturing, production and industry capabilities
• Use your insights to help inform the design of your products
• Design a range of products for both commercial and domestic use, including furniture, interior products, consumer goods and sustainable products
• Work on live industry briefs, which will ensure you’ll be working in real world settings to design products that make a positive contribution to the world around us

As part of this course you’ll:

• Understand contemporary and relevant critiques of the current housing sector
• Explore topics within the context of housing studies such as the ways different groups co-exist in urban areas, leadership, professional ethics, and tenants’ law
• Be encouraged to enhance your learning by taking part in debates, contributing to research seminars or helping out in partnership meetings with housing employers
• Study modules with embedded professional development to enhance your employability
• Learn from practising housing studies professionals, whose wide-ranging experience will inform your learning

You’ll have the chance to support your learning and experience different urban and cultural environments on field trips. Working alongside students from other universities on joint fieldwork projects will enable you to develop your teamworking, communication and planning skills.

As part of your course you’ll:

• Learn more about your current artistic interests as you draw from a range of disciplines as inspiration for your project work
• Develop your passion, whether that’s for creative text writing, dance, acting or directing
• Use project work to explore your particular area of interest
• Enhance your practical performance skills and confidence in your ability to create performance work through weekly technique classes and creative workshops
• Undertake a professional placement during your second year

Leeds is home to hundreds of professional theatre collectives, dance companies and arts festivals so you’ll be surrounded by a vibrant creative community and an exciting range of performance work.

We’ll support you in setting up your second-year professional placement. You could spend a semester learning alongside and networking with one of the many artistic companies in Leeds or you could choose to travel abroad to work for an international organisation. Our students have previously completed placements at Company Chameleon in Manchester, BMotion Festival in Bassano del Grappa, Italy and with theatre company Third Angel based in Sheffield.

All of the staff teaching on your course are practising artists, which means our teaching is based on real professional experience. You’ll also have the chance to attend additional workshops delivered by external artists and companies.

Engage with all forms of mass communication – the internet, social media, television, radio, popular music and cinema – on this dynamic course that critically explores cultural trends and media industries.

As part of your course you’ll:

• Get hands-on to create photographic essays, blogs and podcasts
• Design a talk programme for a radio station
• Invent and pitch a lifestyle TV concept
• Design and create an online game and form an anti-racism campaign group
• Work with professionals from social media, marketing, TV and magazine production
• Graduate with a recognised degree and employable skills across all current and potential future media platforms

The Northern heart of culture and the arts
You’ll be offered unique opportunities to gain work experience with the media, cultural and creative industries in Leeds, such as museums, art galleries, theatres, film production companies and recording studios that surround the city centre campus. You may also get involved in many regional events; for example, the Harrogate Film Festival, the Ilkley Literature Festival or the Leeds West Indian Carnival.

Industry links
Take advantage of the special relationships we’ve developed with employers and cultural industries throughout the city and across the region. Students have completed placements in the editorial team at Hallmark Studios and with Peepal Tree Press – an internationally-renowned publisher based in the city.

As part of your course you’ll:

• Develop your expertise in the strategic management of integrated marketing communications and advertising
• Study broader marketing areas such as market research and digital communications
• Understand how to use your communications expertise to build relationships with specific target audiences
• Learn how to support the achievement of business objectives and development through marketing and advertising management
• Have the opportunity to be mentored by marketing practitioners

If you’re an innovative thinker who thrives on the stimulating combination of English literature and history, this qualification will appeal to you.

As part of your course, you’ll:

• Learn about the relationship between the two subjects by critically and creatively focusing on specific time periods or themes
• Analyse the key genres of prose, poetry and drama
• Explore the relationship between historical developments and genres of creative literature, including detective fiction and postcolonial literatures
• Engage critically with literary texts from a variety of historical periods, cultures, and genres, from the early modern era to the present day
• Gain an understanding of human developments, ranging from the 17th century to the 20th century

You’ll learn from tutors who are widely published and actively researching new topics, providing fresh course content that is constantly evolving.

We regularly offer cultural studies seminars where visiting lecturers present and elaborate on their own literary or historical research.

Build on your existing biomedical sciences knowledge and skills to become a specialist in medical microbiology. You will have the opportunity to experience a range of techniques across microbiology, and the topics you will study, from the role of microbiology in medicine to molecular microbiology and epidemiology, will give you specialist knowledge and a variety of skills applicable to a range of careers in the field of biomedical sciences and microbiology.

This course will be delivered through independent laboratory research and expert lectures. You will complete a range of activities and assignments, including group projects that will mirror the work environment by requiring you to work effectively as part of a laboratory team and produce reports to detail your findings.

You will be supported in your studies by staff with vast practical and academic experience, which will allow you to pursue your research interests in a wide range of areas. The modern facilities you will have access to include our purpose-built Biomedical Sciences Laboratory that contains a range of the latest scientific testing equipment, IT and AV facilities. You will have access to visiting professionals through our seminar series, who will share their industry and research experience. Not only will you gain insights into the very latest practices, you will also be able to cultivate your professional networks.