Postgraduate study in illustration reflects the diversity of the subject and the opportunities that exist in areas such as publishing, advertising, graphic and web design, theatre, television, art galleries and museums. We welcome applicants with a variety of approaches to Illustration, from both academic and professional perspectives.
You will be encouraged to explore a range of methods with support from highly accomplished and respected staff, all of whom have understanding and expertise in the art of illustration.
Facilities include excellent individual working spaces with access to a drawing studio and extensive printmaking resources. There are life drawing classes, workshops and field trips. You will also have the chance to study bookbinding, book arts, digital technologies and web publishing.
The programme also includes working with writers, designers and publishers in collaboration and in live briefs. Many of our postgraduates have seen their work published and there are a small number of set projects, which evolve from year to year to reflect contemporary developments in Illustration. For example, students have made work for the Royal Botanical Gardens, Edinburgh Filmhouse and the ECA Bookmarks symposium.
You will be encouraged to take part in national and international competitions, with the aim of joining the ranks of those who have exhibited and won prizes in prestigious events, such as the V&A Student Illustration Awards, Folio Society, Penguin Book Awards, 3x3 and Image Nation.
This programme offers an excellent opportunity for independent, focused study. MA students produce a body of practical and written work on an agreed topic. MFA students produce an extended range of work, appropriate to the length of the course. Self-directed projects are connected to a number of set projects, workshops and collaborations throughout the academic year.
Your studies will combine practical studio work with theoretical and written studies, including professional practice elements in preparation for employment in the industry. There is a lecture/seminar series that will examine the wider context of your studies, presented by contemporary illustrators, designers and artists.
Graduates explore an exciting and diverse range of careers, including working as picture book illustrators, designers, freelance illustrators, artists and craftsmen, or in leading agencies.
The Sequential Design/Illustration MA attracts new and established illustrators, artists and designers from all over the world who are keen to explore the principles of sequence within their chosen field and make them visible through a variety of forms.
These forms have included written and illustrated books for children and adults, interactive design, film, graphic novels, stage and exhibition design, animation, book arts, narrative textiles, experimental writing, product design and even community projects that encourage social development through storytelling.
In its 25-year history, this course has built on the gathered knowledge and experience of its staff and students to cover topics that are relevant to all MA students interested in storytelling, visual narrative and delivering complex sequential messages.
Recent graduate work – ranging from a biography of Edith Sitwell to a series of calendars made from human hair – demonstrates the diversity of individual research. Other students have examined the legacy of recipes, the secret language of headscarves, the parallels between quantum physics and Taoism as demonstrated through a detective novel, and the role of plumage in communication.
You can study on a part-time or full-time basis.
Lectures, seminars, reviews and assessments are held at fixed times on Wednesdays. Other patterns of attendance vary according to individual circumstances. During holidays you will be engaged in independent study.
Your work will be predominantly project based, which may comprise of one or more parts focusing on a central theme or idea. A single project or investigation will in most cases sustain a student through the entire duration of the course, but at stage assessment, in consultation with tutors, it may naturally evolve into a new or related area of study.
The nature of the subject demands the continual interaction between research, analysis, and practical realisation, as well as an extended period of development for ideas to become fully meaningful. Throughout this investigation you will receive support and guidance from the course tutors.
Making sure that what you learn with us is relevant, up to date and what employers are looking for is our priority, so courses are reviewed and enhanced on an ongoing basis. When you have applied to us, you’ll be told about any new developments through our applicant portal.
As the course develops, there is increasing opportunity for independent and self-directed work, though each student is allocated a personal tutor who oversees the planning and content of individual projects. Besides practice-based work, the course also includes a written element in which you will be asked to reflect critically on the research and development of your project.
The Visual Narrative module includes lectures, themed group events and small practical activities such as the Surprise Project, where you are asked to deliver a surprise though a sequence of six images or objects, with the module group as your target audience. From this experience, you learn the nature and importance of surprise in basic storytelling and develop a vocabulary for narrative. In scheduled theme day events, such as Modern Cautionary Tales, you work in groups to challenge your quick-thinking skills in the invention, planning and presentation of a story.
While students accepted on the course should come with the technical skills necessary to fulfil their projects, access to the diverse workshops facilities – for example in bookbinding, letterpress, printmaking and photography – will be made available as appropriate to your project. There is also a substantial specialist library and a full range of computer facilities.
In order to bring together a variety of students and approaches, this course coexists with the Arts and Design by Independent Project MA. Both are based at our Grand Parade campus.
Stage 1
Stage 2
We arrange a programme of weekly lectures by a range of practitioners and academics to broaden your experience and understanding of professional issues and activity. Lecturers describe their practice and professional experience, sharing insights about their research methods and discoveries.
The programme is organised to relate to specific stages of the course and varies on a two-year cycle, so part-time students have access to a different set of events in each of their two years of study.
Because of the diversity of our students and the projects they create, their professional achievements are equally wide-ranging. Successful commercial enterprises have been established, research degrees undertaken, books published, collaborative design groups formed, and work exhibited in major galleries and institutions. Graduates have also participated in festivals and conferences around the world.
Recent graduates include:
Our Arts and Design by Independent Project MA is a highly individual course offering you the opportunity to propose and develop your own academic programme in a particular field of craft, design, communication or image-making within a stimulating educational context.
A central project forms the core of the course. The project encourages experimentation and innovation in a specific field. You will develop and consolidate your project in consultation with academic staff throughout the course, utilising facilities and drawing on expertise from our other arts and humanities courses, as well as other areas of the university.
There is an extensive programme of lectures, events, films, and seminars throughout. We ask you to keep a critical diary during the course and to write a project report at the end of each year. This report is a considered critique of your studio-based work and decision making.
You can study on a part-time or full-time basis:
Lectures, seminars, reviews and assessments are held at fixed times on Wednesdays. Other patterns of attendance vary according to individual circumstances. During holidays you will be engaged in independent study.
Your work will be predominantly project based, which may comprise of one or more parts focusing on a central theme or idea. A single project or investigation will in most cases sustain a student through the entire duration of the course, but at stage assessment, in consultation with tutors, it may naturally evolve into a new or related area of study.
The nature of the subject demands the continual interaction between research, analysis, and practical realisation, as well as an extended period of development for ideas to become fully meaningful. Throughout this investigation you will receive support and guidance from the course tutors.
As the course develops, there is increasing opportunity for independent and self-directed work, though each student is allocated a personal tutor who oversees the planning and content of individual projects. Besides practice-based work, the course also includes a written element in which you will be asked to reflect critically on the research and development of your project.
The Visual Narrative module includes lectures, themed group events and small practical activities such as the Surprise Project, where you are asked to deliver a surprise though a sequence of six images or objects with the module group as your target audience. From this experience, you learn the nature and importance of surprise in basic storytelling and develop a vocabulary for narrative. In scheduled theme day events, such as Modern Cautionary Tales, you work in groups to challenge your quick-thinking skills in the invention, planning and presentation of a story.
While students accepted on the course should come with the technical skills necessary to fulfil their projects, access to the diverse workshops facilities – for example in bookbinding, letterpress, printmaking and photography – will be made available as appropriate to your project. There is also a substantial specialist library and a full range of computer facilities.
In order to bring together a variety of students and approaches, this course coexists with the Sequential Design/Illustration MA. Both are based at our Grand Parade campus.
Stage 1
Stage 2
Because of the diversity of our students and the projects they create, their professional achievements are equally wide-ranging. Successful commercial enterprises have been established, research degrees undertaken, books published, collaborative design groups formed, and work exhibited in major galleries and institutions. Graduates have also participated in festivals and conferences around the world.
Recent graduates include:
Many of our graduates cite the course as having been a strong influence on their success. Kate Adams MBE, founder of Project Art Works, described the course as "richly diverse in the practice it promotes and encourages". She went on to say: "The analysis of working methodology was really formative and important for me. I founded Project Art Works a few years after completing the course and felt it had a big influence on how we expressed the conceptual and political drive of our early projects."
In the MA/MFA Photography, you will be encouraged to test and push the boundaries of the photographic medium. You will explore approaches to visual narrative, including the photographic and cinematic, and evaluate the relationship between photography and texts/sound/space.
You will primarily use digital and analogue photographic technologies, but may also develop your practical skills through media such as moving image and bookbinding. Particular themes will explore photography in relation to context: portfolio, book art, gallery, screen and installed space. You will develop your own philosophy to photography and are expected to consider and evaluate your work in relation to the current photographic discourse on the shifting genres and boundaries caused by advancing technologies.
Photography is part of the Department of Media at Manchester School of Art which has an established community of interdisciplinary staff, and research students with expertise in fields that include Animation, Filmmaking, Photography, Media Theory and Multimedia Digital practices.
The Department promotes a blending of arts practices responsive to current cultural and digital industries demands; inspiring students to engage with real world scenarios through creative and imaginative responses.
It has developed a framework that fosters interesting and diverse approaches to engage with external partners within the city, the region, nationally and internationally. Recent partners include HOME, BBC (Media City), CITV, Manchester City and Regional Art Galleries, Open Eye Photography Gallery, Red Eye Photography Network, International Anthony Burgess Foundation and international partnerships in China, India, Brazil, Russia and Europe.
Core to all of the teaching and research in the Media department is the continuing exploration of new modes of expression through digital technologies and support students in developing a robust and individual creative practice that has relevance to a diverse range of cultural industries.
The MA Photography is made up of four units totally 180 credits.
You will develop the outline and first framework for a future large-scale project by investigating a range of practical research methods and experimenting with the innovative application of related media and theory content through visual and theoretical outputs, and display forms.
You will also explore the pre-production and prototyping phase of the specialist creative process and project development.
You will also be encouraged and supported to extend your experience in the professional sphere either through a practical project, research context, exchange, work experience, or other negotiated professional set of interactions with an external partner, groups of students and creative industry
Towards the end of the programme you will undertake a major project to consolidate your past research and practice into fully realised collections, pieces, proposals, business plans, or exhibitions – what ever means is appropriate to the work. You will also have developed a strategy for the continuation of your practice located and contextualised to the profession or discipline.
If you choose to progress to MFA Photography award you will study a further two units of 60 credits each.
This award is focussed on the continuation of your practice aligned to the research and selection of appropriate public or professional venues and platforms to disseminate a significant body of work. You will be required to produce work for a public audience in the most relevant and appropriate form along with any implicit publicity and dissemination material.
The interdisciplinary nature of the programme enables you to experiment, engage and explore traditional and new media methods of practice to best envision your ideas. Discussion and critique of key theoretical practices is explicitly aligned to your subject interest.
The programme fosters an active approach to studio practice by offering open access to painting and sculpture studios; technical materials workshops (incorporating 3D printing and welding); lens-based media (photography darkrooms and green screen media); recording studios; printmaking, bookbinding and publishing. Independent studios are allocated from the outset of the programme and individual and small-group tutorials help you consider your practice. Learning is facilitated by staff members who are experts in the field towards your individual goals. These might take either a studio or more theoretical, curatorial, or contextual tract depending on your own desires and ambitions.
Stage 1 involves professional skills development, studio practice and the opportunity for collaborative working. Stage 2 offers the time and space for self-authored research development to identify the trajectory of your visual ambition. Stage 3 culminates in the production, installation and public display of exhibition work in generously proportioned studio galleries.
Course structure
Core modules
Modules offered may vary.
How you learn
At MA level it is vital that you take an active role in structuring your own learning, and engage with the relevant methods and underpinning theories of your discipline. The use of a variety of methods, including tutorials, seminars and workshops, enables key principles to be applied to the day-to-day interaction between participants - benefiting tutors and students alike. Individual support, provided by a personal tutor, is an integral feature of the learning and teaching strategy.
An intrinsic aspect of your main study area and its supporting subjects is research. You need to find and make sense of a wide variety of information from books, newspapers, journals, magazines, websites, archives and many other sources. Seminars enable structured discussion and analysis to take place between groups of students and a tutor. They are organised to be interactive and to facilitate the free exchange of ideas through which you learn the process of argument and reason. At postgraduate level it is likely that you will organise and hold some of your own seminar sessions, not necessarily with staff present or playing the lead role.
Practical workshops are used to introduce specific skills, followed by independent learning, project work, tutorials and critiques. Critical reflection is key to all successful origination and is therefore essential to the creative process. You are expected to test and assess your work against criteria which you develop in the light of your research.
How you are assessed
Various assessment methods are used throughout all of the modules and are specified in the module handbooks. These are primarily what we call in-course assessments, where you submit work during the delivery of the module, rather than sit timed examinations at the end. Arts modules are generally project based and primarily assessed through appraisal of a portfolio of work, often accompanied by a verbal presentation. Creative work is largely developmental and you are assessed on the process by which you achieve your solutions as well as the result, so it is essential that you provide clear evidence of your development work.
Graduates typically pursue careers as self-employed artists and creative practitioners within the cultural sector. Some find employment in arts and cultural management or choose a career in teaching. Further study at doctoral level is also an option.
This course is for materially engaged makers who are looking to explore craft practices across a range of materials and object types. The programme encourages the development of craft across specialist and multi-material making, as you investigate and explore definitions of craft practice.
Your work may already encompass making in a specific area such as glass, ceramics or jewellery, which you are wanting to develop or expand. This course will encourage you to progress and challenge your practice, to explore genre-breaking approaches to material and process making.
Using the wide range of hand, machine and digital technologies at Manchester School of Art, you will work within, across and between definitions of craft, to evolve and progress a unique and personal making practice within contemporary craft.
The programme is supported by a comprehensive range of workshops for hand, machine and digital making. In addition to traditional material making workshops in ceramics, glass, metal, wood, textiles and bookbinding, there are digital making facilities for CNC routing, rapid prototyping, plasma & laser cutting, and digital print for textiles & ceramics. Students have access to a wide range of specialist academic and technical expertise from across the School of Art, to support the development of a wide range of craft making practices.
Design Network
Based in the heart of the School of Art, MA/MFA Design: Craft is part of an innovative design network — a community of staff and students exploring design ideas in a discursive, cross-disciplinary studio environment. Critically informed practical designers, the group works experimentally, inspired by new insights and possibilities.
While studying towards a particular qualification at MA/MFA level, students experience their subject in the broader context of contemporary design practice.
Dedicated spaces for the postgraduate community have been developed to enable the postgraduate community to flourish. These spaces, for thinking and practice, are located centrally within the School of Art, allowing easy access to an extensive range of workshops where the combination of traditional and state of the art equipment opens up a world of exciting possibilities.
