Assessment on this MA is designed for creative people, not traditional academics. You won’t be writing essays for the sake of it or sitting exams under pressure. Instead, you’ll be showing what you do best: making things, reflecting on them, and developing your ideas through action.
Here’s how it works across the programme:
Practice and Process
You’re marked on two things:
Your prototypes – the experiments, sketches, tests or trials that show your creative process in motion.
Your production diary – a simple, visual record of what you did, why you did it and what you learned. Think of it as the story of how your ideas evolved.
Action Research
This module is about curiosity. You’ll choose a question about your own creative practice and explore it through doing, testing an idea, gathering feedback, and seeing what changes. You present what you found out in whatever format suits your work: video, design boards, workshop documentation, or written reflection.
Engagement
Here, the focus shifts to your audience, the people you’re trying to reach. You’ll create something, share it, test how it lands, and reflect on what worked and what didn’t. Again, the assessment is one project that mixes creative work with your reflections on the process.
Community
This is about collaboration and connection. You’ll develop a proposal that brings people together, whether that’s a workshop, event, exhibition or online space. You’ll be marked on how clearly you think through the purpose, impact and relationships behind your idea.
Major Project
This is where everything comes together. You’ll design, develop and deliver a substantial creative project that represents your practice at a professional level. You’ll be assessed on the creative output itself, alongside a reflective report that captures your thinking, methods and growth across the course. This is your chance to show the full evolution of your creative voice and the impact of your learning.
Across all modules, the emphasis is on process, reflection and growth.
You’ll be encouraged to show your working, not just the polished result, including the tests, the pivots, and the moments that didn’t quite work but taught you something important.
The top marks go to work that shows boldness, curiosity, reflection and craft, not perfect grammar or academic jargon.
In short, you’re not being judged on how academic you sound, but on how well you can make, think and learn through your creative process.