Creative Arts
Creative arts as a field of study encompasses the making, analysis, and cultural understanding of art forms across a wide spectrum, including visual art, craft, design, photography, film, music, creative writing, and performance. It treats creative practice as both a set of skills to be developed and as a mode of enquiry, a way of investigating and responding to the world that is distinct from but as rigorous as scientific or critical academic work. Students who come to creative arts study typically have a strong existing creative identity and a desire to develop it through sustained reflection, experimentation, and engagement with the broader creative tradition.
The Open University offers this programme on a part-time distance learning basis, making it accessible to students who need to study around work, family commitments, or other responsibilities. You will engage with creative practice in your chosen area or areas alongside the cultural, historical, and critical study of creative arts, developing both as a practitioner and as a critically reflective thinker about art and its contexts. The Open University's distance learning model provides high-quality materials, online tutorials, and academic support that allows serious, sustained creative and intellectual work without the need to attend campus, and the flexibility of part-time study allows you to take the time you need to develop your practice thoughtfully.
Graduates from creative arts programmes work across the full breadth of the creative industries, including fine art, illustration, photography, film, theatre, music, writing, graphic design, arts education, community arts, and arts administration. The Open University qualification is well respected, and many graduates bring professional experience to their studies that enriches the degree and prepares them for continued development in their creative careers. Further study at postgraduate level in specific creative disciplines or in arts education is also a pathway available to graduates.