MA in Art and Design
Luton, United Kingdom
MA
DURATION
1 year
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
Full time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
EARLIEST START DATE
31 Jan 2026
TUITION FEES
GBP 16,900
STUDY FORMAT
On-Campus
Fast-track counseling
By contacting the school, you'll get access to free priority counselling for any study and application questions.
Key Summary
Spanning a range of art and design disciplines, this Master’s is taught by specialist tutors able to develop your practice and take your existing skills to the next level within the areas of advertising design; animation; graphic design; fashion; fine art; illustration; interior design or interior architecture; photography; motion graphics; and interactive design. It prepares you to exhibit or realise your work in a number of professional environments including galleries, museums and public, community, commercial or industry settings.
Student experience
- Gain experience by working on live briefs; submitting for national competitions and delivering cross-discipline projects while building a research and practice portfolio.
- Take part in course visits to artist studios, external lectures and exhibitions, either locally or farther afield, and expand your professional knowledge and skills at talks and workshops with visiting speakers.
- Attend our weekly ‘World of Work’ guest talks from a wide range of creative-industry professionals, who share their insight into paths to employment and establishing yourself as an independent creative.
- Take on freelance commissions with the support and advice of the University’s Careers and Employability Service.
- Given our proximity to London, benefit from frequent, industry-relevant field trips to the capital as well as local arts and culture venues such as The Culture Trust, The Hat Factory, Wardown Park Museum and Stockwood Discovery Centre.
- Support for postgraduates includes one-on-one tutorials with your personal tutor as well as professional and academic support.
Industry links
We are members of the British Fashion Council; the Association of Fashion Textiles Courses; the Association of Illustrators; and Artists Access to Art Colleges (AA2A).
You may work on live briefs for companies such as Bedford Creative Arts, London Luton Airport, Luton Town FC, Luton Culture Trust and Penguin Books as well as taking part in collaborative projects with leading art and design practitioners.
Why choose the School of Arts and Creative Industries
| Study with a team of established tutors and practitioners who place emphasis on your personal creative development. | Work in a vibrant, creative studio space with industry-standard facilities, equipment and software. | The course prepares you to exhibit or realise your work in professional environments such as galleries, museums and public, community or commercial settings. |
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Postgraduate Scholarships
You can find all of our Postgraduate scholarships listed below.
- Postgraduate Global Subject-Specific Merit Scholarship
- Postgraduate Global Merit Scholarship
- Vice Chancellor's Scholarship for Postgraduate Students
- Chevening Scholarships
- Alumni Scholarship
Prompt Payment Discount
A discount of £500 is available for prompt payment of each year’s fees in full, before or at the point of registration, for both undergraduate and taught postgraduate programmes.
Postgraduate research students who pay their full tuition fee before or at registration will receive a £1,000 discount on that year’s fees.
The tuition fee pre-payment of 65% will be calculated on the full, published tuition fees and will not take into account any scholarships, bursaries or awards. These will be applied to the remaining balance of your fees.
Sport Scholarships
Our sports scholarships are designed to develop and support talented students at the University of Bedfordshire.
Our sports scholarships on offer provide financial and performance support services that utilise the University’s outstanding facilities.
Please contact us for more information.
What will you study?
Studying our Art and Design BA (Hons) course will equip you with in-depth knowledge and skills in the world of art and design - ranging from traditional drawing and painting to a new era of digital art. In your first year, you will partake in a digital photography and video unit called Making Images that will teach you to work with lens-based media while also developing good practices and skills in recording your work. Context and Ideas will also introduce you to key theories on art and design as well as its effect on culture and society. You will then apply this theory to practice in our Thinking Through Making unit which aims to encourage you to take creative risks and develop an aesthetic sense through using various technologies, processes and ideas. You will have the freedom to discover your own creative processes through experimentation and as a result, use a range of media to communicate your ideas. As a creative student, you will be exposed to a variety of art and design practices. Within the unit, Art and Design: Exploring Materials and Methods, you will explore, test and experiment with a range of techniques used to produce art based on researching the works of key practitioners in the field. Through working collaboratively in groups and on your own, you will embrace diversity and cultural differences within contemporary art practice.
To build on this, the subsequent unit, Art and Design: Developing Materials and Methods, will give you the opportunity to cultivate creative risk by experimenting with creative production methods. This process will help you establish and develop your own studio practice. Another area of project work involves our Collaborative Enterprise unit, where you will collaborate in group settings to apply your knowledge and expertise in a wider professional community. To help you with the research and analytical skills needed for project work, our unit in Context and Meaning will allow you to critically examine a range of texts on art, design and visual culture while placing this theory and practice into global contexts. This will also be helpful in critically evaluating your own creative work. To add to this, our unit in Developing Professional Practice will teach you to incorporate independence and professionalism in the presentation of your creative portfolio or exhibitions.
In your final year, you will further deepen your insight on contemporary art and design practices, in our Critical and Creative Contexts unit that will allow you to explore issues and critical debates in the field. This will be particularly useful for your Final Major Project in Art and Design. This research-based project is a brilliant opportunity for you to showcase a body of work in line with your creative interests at public exhibitions. Our career-focused units in Creative Futures will provide you with the relevant skills and knowledge for your career in a professional creative role. Whether you aspire to become a freelance artist or designer or to pursue further study, this unit will support you in developing a career that suits your ambitions and interests. Furthermore, you will be encouraged to participate in live projects, competition briefs and other group work while developing your ability to professionally present and market yourself and your portfolio using online media tools.
How will you be assessed?
A range of appropriate assessments will enable you to grow in confidence and demonstrate your acquisition. You should provided you have engaged in the course be able to meet the demands of formal summative assessment in your stride. The requirements for assessment range through the types listed below. Since self-directed practical projects are at the heart of learning activities they will logically be the subject of assessment. Formative and summative assessments of practical assignments are seen as an important method of ensuring your understanding developing relevant cognitive and practical skills and of ensuring personal creative development and progress. Continuous appraisal by both peer review and your tutors is a feature of the course and although there are no end-point examinations summative assessment is carried out in relation the work that you produce as part of the course. This will predominantly be based on an accumulation of the work that is done as a result of a research enquiry that is initiated and developed by you engaging in a range of activities as part of its production. The following are examples of the various assessment methods used: - Coursework to include examples of creative practice in an appropriate medium associated with research material notebooks research reports essays contextual writing. - Assessments based on individual presentations. - Portfolio reviews are a key means of assessing but they are also important for collating work for presentation in a professional context such as an interview. Essays and reports feature in developing your writing skills helping you to express ideas in a variety of ways and styles and to develop academic writing skills that are of particular benefit in producing a contextual rationale for your major project.
This course will equip you with the skills required to establish your creative practice at a professional level working as an independent artist or designer.
Enter into small and large art and design enterprises including museums; galleries; advertising agencies; design agencies; and other businesses and institutions with internal design departments.