Craft MA

Why study with us?

• Professional opportunities across the craft industry, with options in business and entrepreneurial practice, community outreach and work placements.
• You'll join a sociable and inclusive community in a vibrant art school environment.
• Students benefit from opportunities as a result of the course’s close relationships with local organisations such as Ditchling and Haslemere Museums and European field trips to craft exhibitions and fairs.
• Tutors and visiting lecturers are dynamic and active researchers, creative designers and craft practitioners with expertise across a range of materials and professions, including furniture, ceramics, jewellery, product, polymers and metals.
• Cross-disciplinary exploration of sustainability, craft heritage, material experimentation, and environmental, medical and digital technologies
• We have fully equipped workshops and digital technologies, supported by a highly skilled team of technical demonstrators.
• Our department recognises, nurtures and demonstrates craft's role in and capacity for cultural, social, economic and environmental benefit.

Syllabus

While focusing on the physical act of making, the Craft MA also covers the theory of craft, allowing practitioners to conceptualise and contextualise their practice with deeper insight. The history, theory and traditions of craft form a core component in every module, and are delivered through lectures, presentations and studio discussion groups.

Craft Practice

This module provides a reflective and productive environment for you to create new and innovative approaches to combine theory, concept and practice through your own craft work. Together with your supervisors, you will formulate a written proposal to guide you towards your own working practice, while undertaking a set project to explore and identify audience and context.

Craft in Context

The Craft in Context module exposes you to contemporary craft debates, allowing you to explore and critically reflect on the process, context and definition of craft as a creative pursuit and investigative methodology. You will investigate how craft practice can relate to and affect cultural and social issues such as the environment, health and wellbeing, the economy, sustainability, ethics and education. You will test and challenge the value of your ideas within a wider social context.

Research Skills and Training

This module offers a broad-based introduction to research and introduces its relationship to your practice. The module seeks to place your own practice and academic work in context. A series of seminar/workshop sessions will introduce you to the range of key research methods and help you develop your own research plans.

Creative Enquiry

Through this practice-based module you will develop a personal portfolio of research – digital or conventional – to inform the creation of artefacts and/or products relevant to your own creative practice. You will be introduced to a range of creative research methods – notational, physiological and improvisational – which will critically challenge and further develop your current practice.

Masters project

The masters project represents the synthesis and culmination of the modules taken on the programme. You will undertake a rigorous investigation into your personally defined area of craft practice, with the final body of work realised through three-dimensional artefacts, objects or other related forms.

Your work will be defined and structured through the personal research statement and plan, which you will develop together with a member of staff. This process of informed individual authorship and ownership enables you, as a creative practitioner, to move forward and pioneer distinctive territories of expertise and insight.

Options

You will be able to choose from a range of modules from across our arts and humanities courses. Options include:

• Sustainable Design Presents
• Political Economy of Globalisation
• Professional Entrepreneurial Development
• Fine Art: Mentoring
• Historical and Critical Studies Dissertation
• Professional Entrepreneurial Development
• Professional Experience with Industrial Placement

Making sure that what you learn with us is relevant, up to date and what employers are looking for is our priority, so courses are reviewed and enhanced on an ongoing basis. When you have applied to us, you’ll be told about any new developments through Student View.

Staff profile

Patrick Letschka

Course leader

Patrick Letschka is a designer and crafts practitioner with a focus on design and making in wood. He has a background in patternmaking and wood carving and employs drawing and moving image as methods of visual research. Patrick has collaborated with leading craftspeople and is particularly interested in the making of objects that function within ritual.

Read Patrick’s full academic profile

Philippa Lyon
Tutor

Philippa Lyon's main research focus is on a range of drawing practices, including in art and design education and health contexts. She has a particular interest in manual drawing that takes place within clinical settings, in the pedagogy of drawing in higher education, the uses of drawing within visual methodologies and approaches to arts/health research. She has a background in literary criticism and literature teaching.

Read Philippa's full academic profile

Student views

Louise Bell, graduate

Following her MA, Louise Bell was chosen to be part of the Crafts Council's 2019 Hothouse programme. Here she explains her experience of studying the Craft MA at Brighton:

"I chose Brighton for my Masters because I was attracted to the syllabus. Making work was a priority, however I also had a desire to look into the way that craft and ceramics in particular can relate to emotional and social issues.

"The course was very special and I felt very privileged to be there. I learnt something new every day: ways to improve my technical skills, how to be an artist and a researcher, new directions and inspirations.

"We worked quite a bit as a whole group. We were taught in a very interactive way. We went to Munich as part of the International Craft and Trades Fair and took part in a group residency at the Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft.

"The year encapsulated what education should be about - learning from others, challenging yourself and having a good time!"

Zahra Priddle, graduate

Opportunities are created for our Craft students to work with students in other discipline areas who have shared interests. Here, graduate Zahra Priddle talks about a shared project with Occupational Therapy students:

"I found the opportunity to collaborate with the Occupational Therapy students an interesting and stimulating experience. The aim of the project was to consider how the impact of craft-making could potentially affect well-being.

"The brief provided a platform to develop a short project that could benefit a particular group or community. Our focus was a group of young adults of 12+ who had suffered trauma, mental health problems and low self esteem and based on research into how origami contributed to positive well-being.

"We designed a short craft project that was based on floating paper wish lanterns used in the East to ‘wish away’ negative feelings and worries. Our project was both biodegradable and easily transportable, requiring minimal tools and using edible, biodegradable rice paper."

International requirements and visas

We can help you meet our English language or academic entry requirements.

Visas and immigration advice

Portfolio and interview 

Portfolio

Your portfolio, together with the 500-word project proposal, enables us to assess your abilities to carry out your chosen project. It should include selected examples of work from projects you have carried out, accompanied by examples of visual research and development work. It can include brief explanatory notes and relevant diagrams, notes, rough sketches, models and mock-ups you used.

Please note that your portfolio does not need to include work that relates directly to the project proposal you are submitting for your application. It is designed to give us information on how you approach your work to help us assess your potential.

Interview

Due to COVID-19, we expect interviews to be online and the processes may change slightly – check back here for updates. If you've already applied, we will tell you about any changes.

Find out more about how to create and submit your portfolio.

Project proposal 

You are required to write a 500-word project proposal to accompany your application form. This is a provisional proposal as an example of your thinking. If accepted, you would have the opportunity to develop and change this by agreement with your tutors.

The following headings are suggested as a guide to writing your proposal:


• the topic or theme of your project

• the aims of your project

• the form your project might take and the main materials you are likely to use

• a very brief description of what the project might involve

• possible technical requirements or methods that you might use

• any other information you think is relevant

Course fees

Scholarships, bursaries and loans

We offer a range of scholarships for postgraduate students. Bursaries and loans may also be available to you.

Find out more about postgraduate fees and funding.

What's included

You may have to pay additional costs during your studies. The cost of optional activities is not included in your tuition fee and you will need to meet this cost in addition to your fees. A summary of the costs that you may be expected to pay, and what is included, whilst studying a course in the School of Art are listed here.

• For most courses you will need to budget for the cost of specialist materials, equipment and printing and are likely to spend between £50–£300 per year.
• Costs in your final year of study are very likely to be higher than in earlier years as you bring together your final body of work and portfolio, and you may need to budget between £200 and £1,000.
• For some courses you may also need to budget up to £100 for specialist personal protective clothing which, with care, will last for the whole of your course and beyond.
• For most courses you will have the opportunity to attend field trips and off-site visits, for example to galleries, exhibitions and studios both in the UK and overseas. These are optional and are not required to pass your course. The amount spent would be based on location and number of trips taken, and typically range between £100 and £700 across the duration of your course.
• You will have access to computers and necessary software at City campus and at other locations across the university. However, many students choose to buy their own hardware – usually a laptop, software and accessories. The amount spent will depend on your individual choices but this expenditure is not essential to pass any of our courses.
• Course books and a wide range of magazines and journals are available in the university libraries. You do not need to have your own copies, but if you wish to, you should budget up to £200 over your course to buy them.
• For courses in which there is an optional placement year, you will need to budget for living costs (rent, food, travel etc) in that city/country, as if you were on site at the university.

You can chat with our enquiries team through the Stay in touch panel at the end of this page if you require further information. Or check our finance pages for advice about funding and scholarships, as well as more information about fees and advice on international and island fee-paying status.

Info

The fees listed here are for full-time courses beginning in the academic year 2021–22.

Further tuition fees are payable for each subsequent year of study and are subject to an annual increase of no more than 5% or RPI (whichever is the greater). The annual increase for UK students, who are subject to regulated fees, will increase no more than the statutory maximum fee.

You can find out more about our fees in the university's student contract and tuition fee policy (pdf).

The tuition fee you have to pay depends on a number of factors including the kind of course you take, and whether you study full-time or part-time. If you are studying part-time you will normally be charged on a pro rata basis depending on the number of modules you take.

Campus where this course is taught

Accommodation

Local area

Maps