Contemporary Craft and Creative Writing

Bringing contemporary craft and creative writing together as a joint degree creates a programme built around making: making objects and making meaning. Contemporary craft is a field that takes the traditions of hand-making, including ceramics, textiles, metalwork, jewellery and mixed-media work, and places them in dialogue with design thinking, cultural theory and the contemporary art world. Creative writing, meanwhile, is concerned with the craft of language itself, from fiction and poetry to script and non-fiction, and with developing writers who are both imaginative and technically skilled.

Together they form a combination focused on what it means to create things that communicate.

At Liverpool Hope University, this three-year programme builds a supportive community where makers and writers can develop toward their creative potential, as the university's own description puts it. The craft strand gives you hands-on experience of design and making processes, material exploration and the development of a distinctive creative practice. The creative writing strand develops your ability to work across genres, to draft and revise, to give and receive critical feedback and to find your own voice.

The programme includes a sandwich year, a year abroad and work placement opportunities, providing structured pathways to develop your practice and professional confidence in different environments and contexts.

The combination trains habits of attention, patience and revision that are as valuable in professional life as in the studio or at the desk. Both craft and writing reward careful observation and the willingness to work through multiple iterations, and both are disciplines in which technical skill and creative ambition need to develop together.

Graduates go on to work as makers and designers, writers and editors, arts administrators, workshop leaders, gallery and museum professionals and educators. Further study in fine art, craft, creative writing or arts education is a common route for those who want to deepen their practice or move into specialist professional roles.