Childhood & Youth and Creative Writing

Childhood and youth studies is an interdisciplinary field that takes children and young people's lives as its central subject, drawing on sociology, politics, history, social policy, cultural studies, and psychology to understand the experiences, challenges, and contexts that shape growing up. It asks how childhood is constructed differently across cultures and historical periods, how institutions such as schools, care systems, and families shape young lives, and what justice and wellbeing look like from the perspective of children and young people themselves. Creative writing sits alongside this as a discipline concerned with craft, voice, and imagination, offering a very different but complementary set of skills and ways of engaging with the world.

At Liverpool Hope University, this four-year full-time programme includes a foundation year providing additional academic preparation before the main degree, alongside a sandwich placement year, a year abroad, and work placement opportunities. The combination of features gives the degree a rich structure that extends well beyond classroom learning. The foundation year builds the academic confidence and knowledge base needed for degree-level study in both disciplines.

The placement year and work placements connect your childhood and youth knowledge to professional settings such as schools, youth organisations, charities, and social services. The year abroad adds an international perspective on childhood and culture. You will develop research, analytical, and creative capacities across both subjects.

The pairing is genuinely productive: creative writing develops empathy, imagination, and the ability to give voice to experience, all of which are relevant to working with children and young people. And childhood studies provides material that many writers have found inexhaustible.

Graduates from this combination pursue careers in education, youth work, social care, publishing, arts education, community development, and the charity sector. Many go on to postgraduate study in education, social work, or creative writing, or pursue professional training in teaching or youth justice.