Craft & Material Practices

UCAS code: 67T2

Here's what Arts University Plymouth says about its Craft & Material Practices course.

With almost 150,000 people employed in the UK’s craft industry, skilled craftspeople are putting the country on the map for original, forward-thinking contemporary design. The relationship between thinking and making is constantly evolving. Experimentation and innovation are driving a new wave of craftspeople to explore original directions, often looking to develop methods in which we can live harmoniously within natural and fabricated environments while supporting a healthy ecosystem.

Whilst studying BA (Hons) Craft & Material Practices, you’ll have access to our spacious Materials Lab which includes specialist facilities for ceramics, glass, metal, and wood, encouraging you to explore traditional making alongside the rapid digital prototyping facilities in our Fab Lab, giving you the opportunity to reinvent craft for the 21st century. However, learning isn’t limited to our design studios and workshops – you will meet some of the UK’s most inventive and entrepreneurial contemporary makers and thinkers through studio visits, demonstrations, and presentations.

Why Choose this Course? On this course, you’ll discover an array of material practices, including glassblowing and kiln-formed glass, ceramics, metals in various scales, woodworking, concrete, plastics, and textiles in our state-of-the-art workshops.

You’ll expand your critical approach while honing research and analytical skills. Our programmes foster diversity in both thought and practice, emphasising practical applications alongside reflective, analytical writing. Whilst studying with us, you’ll have access to the Making Futures conference to engage with critical discourses by international makers, curators, and critics, enriching your understanding of contemporary craft.

You’ll study specialist ceramics techniques such as throwing, slip casting, slab-building, coiling, glazing, and raku firing. Working with glass will include hot glass making, kiln-formed glass, coldworking, and lampworking. Working with metals will see you casting, welding, and grinding. If you’re looking to specialise in wood-working, you’ll have the opportunity to learn woodturning, joinery, and CNC routing. In the Fab Lab you will experience laser cutting, CNC milling, and 3D printing.

Through the use of these traditional materials, as well as explorations in smart and adaptive materials, you’ll develop new modes of creative authorship through experimentation, research, and invention.

Enhance Your Creative Practice Experience a dynamic and stimulating learning environment, fostering experimentation and innovation in practice. Embrace the dynamic interplay between theory and practice, exploring the potential of material and visual exploration, collaborative working, and the contextualisation of histories and contemporary contexts.

Students studying this course learn the ins and outs of enterprise and entrepreneurship, mastering skills in pricing, display, and promotion tailored to diverse markets. Gain practical insights through working on live briefs, pitching to clients, and entering competitions, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of customer needs and market dynamics.

Students engage with live briefs and real clients, collaborating with prestigious institutions such as The Tate Exchange, The Box, MAKE Southwest, and Mount Edgcumbe Estate, fostering professional connections and real-world experience. They also work with industry partners including the Crafts Council, the Goldsmiths’ Company, the Association for Contemporary Jewellery, Hothouse, Craftspace, the Devon Guild of Craftsmen, British Art Medal Society, the Eden Project, Mount Edgcumbe and Dartington Crystal on live briefs, competitions and exhibitions.

Graduates from this course go on to become ceramicists, glass artists, prop designers, ornament/wearables designers, sculptors, architectural surface designers textile designers, fine artists, gallery and museum professionals after they have graduated.

Our taught programme encompasses a wealth of disciplines, materials and approaches, from one-off artefacts to batch production methods, all underpinned by strong methodologies and a focus on design solutions. The range of primary material practices that we cover on our programme includes ceramics, fine metalwork and silversmithing, glass blowing and kiln-formed glass, wood, mould-making, laser cutting and CAD/CAM. You will also develop an understanding of materials such as concrete, plastic and resin – crafting your original ideas into finished artefacts.