Program Overview

Contemporary creative writing is diverse. It’s digital and on the page; social and singular. Our comprehensive programme includes prose fiction, YA, flash fiction, poetry, scriptwriting for live performance and screen, life writing and memoir. In fact, whatever you want to write, you’ll find an opportunity to explore it with us. We have modules on graphic novels and comics alongside modules in live literature, creative enterprise and professional practice to support your career development. You'll have the opportunity to collaborate on creative projects with other students both within and outside Creative Writing. You’ll be able to work on magazines, local literary festivals and podcasts, while collaborating with fellow students through our creative writing, publishing and journalism student-run societies.

Creative Writing

From a broad base in the creative industries the programme explores how writing gets written, how it gets published, and how you as a student and future graduate can take your own writing as far as possible.

The programme is comprehensive in its range, and includes prose, poetry, drama and life writing. Whatever you want to write, BA (Hons) Creative Writing at Bath Spa University provides you with the necessary support and opportunities to write it.

Tutors on the programme are all practicing writers, many with international reputations. All are masters of their craft, meaning that tuition is focused and specialised. Their continuing practice as well as their experience of teaching and research underpins every lecture, seminar, workshop and tutorial.

There is a key focus on employability in every module from year 1 to year 3. Staff encourage you to engage with key stakeholders and teach you the vital transferable skills necessary for a portfolio career.

In an increasingly digitised market, you’ll have the opportunity to make films and podcasts and explore online media. Equally, you may work with colleagues on Bath Spa’s Publishing programme.

BA (Hons) Creative Writing offers a broad range of options for any writer, but also enables writers to work within a specific area of work. The diversity of this programme is exceptional and its delivery world-class, described by our external examiner in 2015 as “the flagship example of its type”

Drama

BA Honours Drama is designed as a liberal arts programme which engages with creativity, culture and enterprise, and which seeks to bring into contact academic and industry relationships. It includes collaborations with the subject areas English, Creative Writing, Music and Theatre Production and is underpinned by the themes of collaboration, digital literacy, creativity, employability, research and professional practice.

The focus of the program is on:

• The practical and critical exploration of drama and its place in the contemporary world;
• The effects and benefits of bringing into contact academic, professional and community discourses through partnerships and outward facing work
• Collaboration with local theatres, theatre companies, arts venues, and educational and cultural institutions in Bath, Bristol and beyond;
• Working with industry professionals, writers, actors, directors and theatre practitioners from the fields of experimental, educational,professional and community-based theatre and performance;
• The effects and benefits of collaboration between drama and other academic disciplines.

The program structure locates practice within a framework of ideas, histories and critical concepts and allows you to strategically acquire knowledge, skills and understanding through active participation in processes of research, performance, reflection and evaluation. We offer you strands of study in ensemble performance and performance analysis that include modules in performance skills and performance making. We also offer optional modules in areas such as performance and media, writing for performance, Shakespeare, acting and directing, and theatre for social change.

For those of you who wish to specialise in-depth in a particular area of study, we offer the option of two bespoke pathways: Writing for Performance, and Musical Theatre. The Drama degree thus allows you to choose between a program with a clear and specialised trajectory, or a program that provides you with a more open and varied study experience.