Contemporary Craft and Film & Visual Culture
Contemporary craft and film and visual culture is an unusual but genuinely rich combination, bringing together the material intelligence of making by hand with the critical and analytical frameworks needed to understand moving image culture. Contemporary craft is concerned with design and making, exploring what happens when skilled hands engage with materials, whether those materials are clay, glass, metal, wood, or textiles, and examining what craft means in the context of digital production, global supply chains, and renewed interest in the handmade. Film and visual culture asks how moving images work as art, as entertainment, as ideology, and as experience.
At Liverpool Hope University, this three-year full-time degree places these two disciplines in dialogue, combining studio-based craft practice with critical and theoretical engagement with film and visual media. In contemporary craft you will develop your technical skills in design and making within a supportive community of emerging makers, exploring processes, materials, and conceptual approaches that extend your range as a creative practitioner. In film and visual culture you will study the history and theory of cinema and related visual media, learning to analyse films and other moving images with critical precision.
A placement or work experience year is built into the degree, and a year abroad is also available, broadening your creative and intellectual horizons.
You will develop both practical making skills and the critical vocabulary to understand and articulate what you and others do. This combination is well suited to careers that value both creative capability and cultural understanding.
Graduates pursue careers as craft designers and makers, visual artists, arts educators, gallery and museum professionals, arts administrators, and in film and media organisations. The combination of practical skills and critical knowledge is also relevant in cultural journalism, community arts, and design-related sectors. Many graduates develop independent creative practices alongside teaching or other arts-related work.