BA (Hons) Journalism and Creative Writing

"Due to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, examinations may be replaced by an alternative form of assessment during the academic year 2021/2022. Please refer to the Programme Specification on these pages for further details."

Why choose this course?

A career in writing enables you to explore the world through your work – discovering people and places, exploring unfolding events, influencing debate, and shaping your own creative voice. In this course, you’ll write for blogs, websites, print, video, audio, and multimedia contexts, developing the skills to research your subject and really engage your readers.

Together, these subjects give you exciting opportunities to develop your voice as a writer and discover ways to publish your work. In journalism, you’ll learn about ethics, target audiences, and the journey from the interview to the finished article. You’ll produce work on a variety of platforms from blogs to print and report on international stories and ones guided by your interests.

In creative writing, you’ll learn important skills for devising, editing, revising, and submitting your work. You’ll analyse texts, explore the effects of the author’s choices and create short stories, drama, poetry, and creative nonfiction of your own. You’ll also have opportunities to work with schools or museums, attend guest lectures, study abroad, or take a year’s work placement.

All our lecturers are active researchers, so you’ll share the excitement of doing original work in a supportive and highly rated academic community. We’re also rated TEF Gold, making us one of the best universities for teaching and support.

You’ll have the opportunity to meet a wide range of authors, journalists and media practitioners through our speaker series. Our Media Matters guest lectures are given by a range of media speakers from top journalists to our recent graduates. You'll have the opportunity to network with inspirational and well-known screenwriters, biographers, poets, novelists, nonfiction authors, and playwrights at our Creative Conversation events.

What's the course about?

In your first year, you’ll explore the basics of journalism, learning about how to tell factual stories in written form, through blogs and podcasting, and video. You’ll also reflect on how journalists should and do behave and their relationship with the government. In Creative Writing, you’ll start learning how to become a writer and how to write for films, as well as gaining a deeper insight into the genre.

In your second year, you’ll start to broadcast, brainstorm ideas for a magazine concept, learn about how journalism changed the world, and gain insights into the fast-paced world of news, while in Creative Writing, you’ll learn about the art of telling non-fiction stories, in a wide range of genres from memoir to food to travel, and how to write for the stage.

Work placement/study abroad option*: Between your second and final year, you’ll have the option to study abroad or complete a work placement for up to a year. Not only will this give you an amazing experience to talk about, but it will also give your CV a boost. If you would rather go straight to your final year, that’s fine too. You can decide in your second year with us, so there is still plenty of time to think about this.

In your final year, you’ll get a wide range of options. In journalism, you will report on international stories, create your own website, have work experience, freelance, or create your own media business. You will also practice writing for a variety of audiences. In Creative Writing, you’ll get the chance to specialise in either poetry, prose, or scriptwriting and look at popular fiction genres and writing TV drama.

Your main campus is de Havilland

You’ll share this campus with students from business, law, sport, education, and humanities subjects. The student housing is close to our Sports Village which includes a gym, swimming pool, and climbing wall. You can get breakfast, lunch, or dinner in our on-campus restaurant or bar (in the newly built Enterprise Hub) on days you don’t feel like cooking. You can also use the common room to play pool, video games or just to hang out with friends. Our Learning Resources Centres are open 24/7, which means you can study whenever suits you best. Want to pop over to the other campus? You can take the free shuttle bus or walk there in just 15 minutes.

This course includes the options of:

• Work placement
• Study abroad