Creative Writing & the Creative Economy MA

According to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, the publishing sector, is the UK's largest creative industry. The publishing sector is made up of a diverse range of businesses operating both on- and off-line, including books, directories and databases, journals, magazines and business media, newspapers and news agencies. It has a combined turnover of at least £20 billion, with more than 8,500 companies directly employing around 167,000 people. In its quality, diversity and reach, UK publishing leads the world.

At the heart of this sector lies a very diverse range of writers.

If you are currently employed in or would like to develop a career in the publishing industry or advertising the Creative Writing & the Creative Economy MA course is ideal. It will help you develop your writing skills whilst giving you opportunities to explore the ways in which you can put this talent at the service of various creative industries.  

What will you study?

By the end of the course, you will have developed your own writing style whilst acquiring the practical and entrepreneurial skills needed to succeed in this creative industry.

If you are looking for a course where you can enhance your creative skills whilst acquiring practical, managerial and entrepreneurial skills this course is for you. We will help you find ways to connect creativity and business in a successful and meaningful way. Find out more...

Please note that this is an indicative list of modules and is not intended as a definitive list.

For the core modules, you will study with students from across all the Creative Industries programmes. For the specialist modules, you will study alongside creative writing fellow students.

Core modules

• Design Thinking and Entrepreneurship in Practice

• Design Thinking and Entrepreneurship in Practice

  This corner-stone module provides you with 'hands on' experience of life in the creative economy through working together to create, design and manage a viable creative enterprise project. 

  This creative project will form the context for subsequent learning throughout the course.

  
   
• Managing Creativity and Innovation

• Managing Creativity and Innovation

  This module aims to develop your entrepreneurial management behaviours, encouraging an approach to learning that copes with and enjoys uncertainty, risks and complexity. 

  The core curriculum of this module will underpin the knowledge and skills required for The Creative Economy module.

  
   
• Leadership in the Creative Economy

• Leadership in the Creative Economy

  This module encourages you to learn experientially about leadership through performance and develop conceptual understanding of creative leadership and how it differs from more traditional approaches. 

  Where appropriate, you will apply your learning to leadership roles in the creative project developed within The Creative Economy module.

  
   
• Contemporary Issues in the Creative Economy

• Contemporary Issues in the Creative Economy

  This module offers a range of optional learning experiences to complement the three core modules above. These include areas such as:

  • consultancy practice;
  • cross-cultural management communication;
  • creativity and consumption; and
  • critical appraisal of the creative economy. 

  Specific learning outcomes for each student will be agreed with the course director, and may involve taught sessions, work-based learning, or a mixture of both.

  
   

Specialist modules

• Special Study: Workshops in Popular Genre Writing
• Writers' Workshop

• Writers' Workshop

  In this module you present and discuss your own and other students' work in a weekly workshop. The draft work you present may include several genres and forms, including:

  • crime writing;
  • fantasy fiction;
  • children's literature;
  • historical fiction;
  • science fiction;
  • romance; and
  • autobiography.

  Alongside practical criticism of student writing, you will discuss:

  • the scope or constraints of the various genres;
  • the implications of particular forms; and
  • the relevant components of good writing, including appropriate use of language, narrative pace, dialogue, expression, characterisation and mood.
  
   

Final project

• Personal Research Project

This course is taught jointly by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the Faculty of Business and Law.

Find out more...

Learn more about the facilities available to you as a student of this course.
Find out more...

We want to make sure you get all the support you need while you are with us. Here you can see the range of support we can offer you while you're doing this course.

Find out more...