Our BA (Hons) Performance programme is designed to help you become a creative maker, critical thinker, and work ready.

In your first year, you will be introduced to a range of practical skills and knowledge to help build your understanding of the fundamentals of making and studying performance. Your second year uses your new and established skills and strengths to learn to analyse and critically reflect on your practice and explore new approaches to what performance is and can be. Third year offers both continuing and Direct Entry students a range of opportunities to explore your own interests and specialisms, as a way of developing your own creative practice. Your final year is a culmination of your practical and critical learning, where you engage with student-led projects and industry mentors to serve as a strong foundation for entering your chosen career path.

To enhance your learning, the programme also offers masterclasses with visiting artists, workshops with leading industry professionals, and partnerships with national and international arts organisations and venues, providing you with valuable networking and showcasing opportunities for you and your work.

Programme Highlights

This programme is designed to develop your creative and critical thinking skills to prepare you for work in the contemporary performance industries, as well as a range of future career contexts that require effective communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity.

You will develop a wide-ranging critical appreciation for all elements of performance – from contemporary practice to histories of performance, from theoretical study to industry contexts.

Access to our on-site performance, television, and radio studios in Ayr will help you develop your practice across media and learn to collaborate across the creative industries.

You will have a wide variety of opportunities to work with and learn from key people and organisations in Scottish theatre and beyond alongside a teaching team of specialist researchers and practitioners. Key areas of specialism within the programme include contemporary performance practice, applied and community performance, historical and contemporary writing for stage and screen, and performance theory.

Programme Details

Whatever your eventual career goal, the Performance programme at UWS is designed to empower you to explore and build your creative skills and interests to pursue a variety of possible pathways. We recognise the important role that having practical, industry-focused experience has on securing a graduate career, which is why this programme offers a range of real-world professional settings to help you hone your practice.

By offering a combination of practical and theoretical study, this programme will provide you with the opportunities to work across multiple disciplines so that you can learn and create independently and collaboratively in a variety of contexts, from professional performance making, to community arts, education, and further research.

Careers

Our BA (Hons) Performance programme here at UWS will equip you with the knowledge and practical skills to kick-start the following career pathways:

Performer

Director

Producer

Writer

Community theatre maker

Teaching and facilitation

Postgraduate study and research