MA programme applications

With the global community facing major environmental and geo-political issues, what role can artists, designers and makers play? At Plymouth College of Art, we believe that artists and creative thinkers have central roles in resolving our relationship with the environment, with equality and diversity and the challenges of migration amongst many others, and that the world needs creatives now more than ever. Looking to the horizon, Oxford Economics predicts that with the right investment, the UK’s creative industries will recover faster than the UK economy as a whole, growing by over 26% by 2025 and creating 300,000 new jobs. This means that now is the time to join us at Plymouth College of Art, to study for your MA and find your path as the creative who makes a difference, to develop the skills, networks and experience needed to influence and shape the future of arts and culture in the UK and internationally.

Founded in 1856, Plymouth College of Art is a small independent, university-sector art school with an internationally distinctive identity. Nationally, we’re a Founding Associate of Tate Exchange and internationally we act as advisors to the Cheongju International Craft Biennale, are founders of the world-leading Making Futures brand, and work in collaboration with Artslink International Education in Shanghai. Our contribution to the creative industries and cultural agenda continues to grow, offering more opportunities each year to collaborate with leading creative practitioners from around the world.

Our postgraduate programmes will give you critical insight into the contemporary creative landscape and empower you to work effectively from your chosen place within it, exploring your creative practice by critically engaging with the cultural, technological and economic challenges that are shaping our world. 

Practice
At Plymouth College of Art you will join an active, cross-disciplinary community of makers and thinkers. Our programmes are structured to encourage debate, exchange and interdisciplinary collaboration. This is achieved through a combination of cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary specialist teaching and access to external speakers and projects. Throughout your study you will be encouraged to engage with our research culture as well as with academic communities across the world. 

Community
You will find yourself at the heart of a distinctive kind of creative community—an art school run by artists and designers, for artists and designers—a space of thinking and making, your gateway to an international network of arts and cultural, commercial and industrial practitioners, businesses and institutions in which we engage, exhibit, curate and publish widely.

Resources
Our dynamic, postgraduate community offers a rich environment that provides critical and technical expertise across an expansive range of disciplines. Our MA students develop within their field and refine their practice in a space that fosters experimentation and reflective engagement with issues that are shaping the world we hold in common. Our taught postgraduate programmes provide you with a Masters experience and training in specialist disciplines, research methods, critical thinking, intellectual property rights, ethics, project design, professional codes and conceptual frameworks, and an access to outstanding workshop facilities. At every stage in your development, you will be supported by the academic and technical expertise of staff who are industry-active practising artists and innovators in their specialist fields.

We offer the following courses: MA by Research, MA Ceramics, MA Crafts & Material Practices, MA Creative Education: Making Learning, MA Disruptive Design, MA Drawing, MA Entrepreneurship for Creative Practice, MA Fine Art, MA Glass, MA Illustration, MA Jewellery, MA Painting, MA Photography, MA Printmaking, MA Textile Design, MA Visual Communication, Master of Fine Art (MFA).

For more information about our creative degrees email hello [​at​] pca.ac.uk or apply now through our website.