Fine Art and Creative Writing (Placement Year) BA (Hons)

Lancaster University

Lancaster's degree in Fine Art and Creative Writing is taught jointly by the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA) and the Department of English and Creative Writing. This course is ideal for anyone with strong academic and creative abilities who wants to study fine art alongside creative writing.

Your Creative Writing courses are taught by a team of widely published authors through a combination of lectures, readings, practice and discussion in regular tutor-led workshops. Your degree includes an Introduction to Creative Writing in your first year, and in your second and third years of study you will choose additional genre-specific units such as Short Fiction, Poetry Writing or Creative Non-fiction.

Fine Art at Lancaster gives you the opportunity to integrate Art Practice with Art History/Theory at a high level. From the first through to the final year of your degree you will develop creative and technical skills in painting, drawing, sculpture, digital art and their hybrids. While we have no ‘house style’ the emphasis is on Fine Art practice and Fine Art ‘thinking’ rather than illustration. Our aim is for you to develop the practice and ideas that best reflect your aims and values as a young Fine Artist. Your tutors will be professional artists and publishing historians and the mix of academic and creative skills gained at Lancaster makes you highly attractive for postgraduate study and employers.

Your Placement Year

Sometimes known as a year in industry, your placement year will take place between your second and final year of study and this will extend your degree to four years.

A placement year is an excellent way to...

• try out a role that you may be interested in as a career path
• start to build your professional network (some placement students are offered permanent roles to return to after they graduate)
• develop skills, knowledge and experience to put you ahead of the field when you graduate

You'll spend your third year in a paid, graduate-level position, where you’ll work for between nine and twelve months in the type of role that you might be considering for after you graduate. A very wide range of companies and organisations offer placements across all sectors. As a full-time employee, you’ll have a detailed job description with specific responsibilities and opportunities to access training and development, the same as other employees.

Our Careers and Placements Team will help you to secure a suitable placement with expert advice and resources, such as creating an effective CV, and tips for applications and interviews. You will still be a Lancaster University student during your placement and we’ll keep in touch to check how you are getting on.

The university will use all reasonable effort to support you to find a suitable placement for your studies. While a placement role may not be available in a field or organisation that is directly related to your academic studies or career aspirations, all offer valuable experience of working at a graduate level and gaining a range of professional skills.

If you are unsuccessful in securing a suitable placement for your third year, you will be able to transfer to the equivalent non-placement degree scheme and continue with your studies at Lancaster, finishing your degree after your third year.