Program Overview

Journalism & Creative Writing BA(Hons)

Course Overview

Become a multi-skilled, passionate and ethically-driven journalist, writer and digital creative.

Key Details

• Location: Falmouth Campus
• Course duration: 3 years / 4 years
• Attendance: Full-time / Professional Placement
• UCAS code: 39B5/PY49

Course Details

Year One

• Writing: Craft and Contexts: Explore the practice of writing as a discipline and a craft, and debate ideas about writing, authorship, genre, creativity and audience.
• Mission Launch: The Reporter's Toolkit: Develop your curiosity about the world around you, learn to generate great story ideas and how journalists construct their stories.
• Digital News Lab: Audiovisual Storytelling: Develop the foundational craft skills and storytelling know-how needed to operate effectively in the digital news media environment.
• Breaking the Rules: Remix and Writing Back: Experiment with radical and ‘rule-breaking’ creative writing techniques, including reversionary writing, collage, reviewing, adaptation, pastiche and parody.
• The Information Age: Exploring the Media Landscape: Examine trends and debates shaping the way journalists and communications professionals operate, including key laws and regulations.

Year Two

• Digital News Lab: Local is Global: Develop your journalistic research, storytelling and editing skills, focusing on a key current issue with resonance both regionally and globally.
• Creative Non-Fiction: Explore how creative, journalistic and critical skills can be used to create essays, interviews, travel writing, psychogeography, reviews, journals, diaries, biography, autobiography and memoirs.
• Making Magazines: Learn about the business, editorial and technical skills involved in producing magazines for print and digital platforms.
• Collaboration: Join a project team to work on a “challenge brief” and develop cross-disciplinary reflective collaborative practice and work.

Optional Modules

• Games: Critically consider narrative techniques in the gaming world and how to write for an active audience.
• Poetry: Explore how form influences the way we read or write poems, and develop your own poetry writing skills.
• Satire & Scandal: Examine texts that have challenged societal taboos and held a light up to hypocrisy and humbug.
• Screenwriting: Study the craft and creativity of writing for the screen, and develop your own screenwriting skills.
• Fiction: Learn about characterisation, narrative structure and building language landscapes, and develop your own fiction writing skills.
• Magic & the Impossible: Explore science fiction, fantasy and contemporary fairy tales, focusing on texts produced since the 1950s.

Year Three

• Digital News Lab: Going Live: Operate collaboratively in a deadline-driven newsroom, taking responsibility for organisation and quality.
• How to be Right: Advanced Investigation and Research: Develop your academic and professional skills, learning how to select and apply a range of methods to conduct advanced research.
• The Springboard: Apply your skills and knowledge to set up your own business, establish yourself as a freelancer or for use as an employee in a business or organisation.

Optional Modules

• Mini-Documentary: Produce powerful non-fiction film or audio, deploying digital technologies to experiment with deep emotional storytelling.
• Dissertation and Portfolio: Complete an independent extended piece of creative writing or collection of creative pieces, accompanied by a written work on an area of Publishing Studies/English Literature/Journalism.
• Creative Writing Portfolio: Complete an independent extended piece of creative writing or collection of creative pieces, accompanied by a document demonstrating consideration of audience and context.
• Children and Young Adult: Analyse and experiment with all forms of children’s writing, contemporary and historical, from picture books to Young Adult.
• Crime and Dark Fiction: Examine the allure of all things dark, looking at how crime, horror and the monstrous shift in representation at different times.
• We have Never Been Human: Examine the role of literature in how we understand ourselves, and how solid is our ‘humanity’ and where do we draw the lines self and other, nature and culture?
• Innovations: Explore cutting-edge theory and practice in partnership with professional contemporary writers and scholars.

How You'll Learn & Be Assessed

• How You'll Learn: Practical and peer-reviewed workshops, lectures, seminars, and self-directed work, with tutor contact time each week and frequent one-to-one tutorials.
• How You'll Be Assessed: 100% coursework, with a variety of assessment types based on the modules chosen, including portfolio, presentation, report, journal, essay, practical and case study.

Facilities

• The Newsroom: Equipped with 30 workstations and state-of-the-art software, including Adobe Creative suite.
• The Soundhouse: Dedicated radio studio and podcast facility.
• The Lighthouse: Exclusive study and meeting space for School of Communication students and staff.
• The Shed: Dedicated study area.
• University Stores: Access to mobile audiovisual kit, such as video cameras, microphones and portable rigs.
• Publishing Platforms: Opportunities to get involved with dedicated publishing platforms, such as truthfal.com and Fal Writing.

Staff

• Andy Chatfield: Senior Lecturer in Journalism.
• Kevin Bishop: Lecturer, Multimedia Journalism.
• Steve Bough: Lecturer, Multimedia Journalism.
• Dr David Devanny: Associate Professor Multimedia Writing & Storytelling.
• Andy Dillion: Thesis title: Blood Pours Slower than Rye: Representations of the Irish pub in contemporary crime genre.
• Professor Ruth Heholt: Professor of Literature and Culture.
• Rupert Loydell: Senior Lecturer, English & Writing.
• Dr Marshall Moore: Course Leader and Senior Lecturer.
• Dr Abigail Wincott: Associate Professor of Audio Journalism.
• Dr Eoin Murray: Lecturer, Creative Writing BA(Hons).
• Dr Jennifer Young: Head of People Success.
• Nicola Coplin: Lecturer.
• Dr Adrian Markle: Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing.

Careers

• Jobs Undertaken by Recent Graduates: Associate Producer for CNN, Communications Manager, Marketing Director, Senior SEO Executive, Press Officer, Essayist, Novelist, Magazine Editor, Staff Writer, Creative Copywriter, Freelance Writer and Blogger, Publisher and Marketing Project Manager, Operations Manager, Social Media Editor, Intelligence Analyst.

Fees, Costs & Funding

• Tuition Fees: £9,535 per year (full-time UK), £17,950 per year (full-time EU/international), £1,905 per professional placement year (full-time UK and EU/international).
• Recurring Annual Costs: £300-£400 (books, notepads, printing, local travel).
• Optional Study Trips: Approx £1000 (optional study visits for the course duration).
• One-off Costs: A reasonable computer or laptop, a smartphone with video camera and standard Wi-Fi (c. £).

Funding

• Student Funding Pages: For information about funding available, please visit our student funding pages.

Ask a Student

• What Better Way to Find Out About Life at Falmouth University: Ask our current students about course details, academic support, the social scene and settling in.

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