Program Overview

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BA (Hons) Photography

The BA (Hons) Photography course at Manchester Metropolitan University has a significant history of developing and supporting contemporary, professional, and creative practices. The course approaches the photographic image as an infinitely varied way of seeing, thinking, and making in the world. Beginning from a broad base of analogue and digital photographic skills, this course enables students to establish their own creative identity.

Course Overview

The course is designed to equip students with opportunities to experiment with new technologies and encounter cutting-edge ideas about photography's future directions. Students will be part of a dynamic and fast-paced creative environment, participating in collaborative, sustainable, and public-facing projects that consider the social value of photography. The course will develop a wide range of versatile skills and confidence in developing a creative identity.

Features and Benefits

• The course is part of the School of Digital Arts (SODA), a £35m investment into specialist spaces with the latest technologies, award-winning teaching, research, and networks that will drive the next generation of creative content.
• A practice-based course that aims to provide an exciting and challenging collaborative learning environment to develop students as independent thinkers and industry-ready practitioners.
• Focuses on photography as an expanded practice, drawing from other related creative disciplines.
• Manchester is a rich cultural and artistic centre with a thriving digital and creative employment sector.
• Students will be immersed in a dynamic, thriving creative community, where exciting events and opportunities are constantly unfolding.

Accreditations, Awards, and Endorsements

• The university has received an overall gold status in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), meaning it's rated as an outstanding university for its student experience.
• 92.4% of students were positive about teaching staff being good at explaining things, according to the National Student Survey 2025 (NSS).

Year 1

Year 1 is aimed at introducing learning, research, and technical skills. Students will be encouraged to undertake a series of independent and collaborative projects introducing approaches that are relevant to the development of a photographic practice.

Core Modules

• Photographic Principles: Introduces the core principles of photography through creative making and technical processes, digital and analogue, testing ideas through workshop-based practical activity.
• Photographic Encounters: Encounters historical and contemporary debates and practices, providing a foundation in how to research, reflect on, and analyse image-based practices.
• Contemporary Photographic Practices: Investigates the interplay between concepts, practical application, and technical skill, engaging with traditional, digital, and expanded photographic technologies.
• Exploring Contexts: Supports students to explore related photographic and industry contexts beyond the university, asking them to learn about and navigate the city, consider and engage with communities and spaces.

Year 2

In Year 2, students will develop new approaches to storytelling. The emphasis is on the exploration of and experimentation with ideas, research methods, industry knowledge, and imaginative approaches to practice through collaborations across a range of related disciplines.

Core Modules

• Photography and Publishing Practices: Introduces traditional, contemporary, and emerging publishing practices evolving from the photographic medium, developing a self-directed project to create and publish a photographic outcome.
• Exploring Networks: Explores contemporary creative and professional contexts, considering self-directed work, experience, and opportunities within an expanded field of photography.
• Photography, Environments, and Audiences: Collaborates with peers and external organisations to co-create photography in the public realm, considering inclusive and sustainable practices.
• Speculative Futures: Challenges students to harness their creative, collaborative, and critical skills to tackle urgent environmental and social justice issues.

Year 3

In Year 3, students will focus on realising their creative potential by undertaking outward-facing research projects. They will also produce two practical bodies of work with opportunities to collaborate across the wider SODA community.

Core Modules

• Practice Exploration: Creates, develops, manages, and realises an independent body of work, built over time through a negotiated plan and proposal.
• Research Contexts: Explores the relationship between the student's work and its related research fields, contexts, commercial, conceptual, and cultural.
• Practice Realisation: Creates a substantial body of work aligned to professional interests and goals, underpinned by technical understanding and critical engagement with contemporary practices.
• Exploring Futures: Identifies and supports emerging work as a professional practitioner, generating public-facing materials presenting the practice.

Study and Assessment

• Year 1: 25% lectures, seminars, or similar; 75% independent study. 100% coursework.
• Year 2: 25% lectures, seminars, or similar; 75% independent study. 100% coursework.
• Year 3: 20% lectures, seminars, or similar; 80% independent study. 100% coursework.

Placements

• SODA Placement Year: Offers the chance to take a year working on placement within the industry, developing workplace skills, practical understanding, and genuine industry experience.
• SODA Study Year Abroad: Allows students to spend an academic year studying with an approved partner university overseas, developing core skills while demonstrating initiative by engaging with a challenging curriculum at a foreign institution.

Entry Requirements

• Typical Offer: 104-112 UCAS tariff points.
• IELTS Score: 6.0 overall with no individual element below 5.5.
• Portfolio: A digital portfolio via online submission will be required.
• UK Students: Level 3 qualifications, including GCE A levels, Pearson BTEC National Extended Diploma, Access to HE Diploma, UAL Level 3 Extended Diploma, OCR Cambridge Technical Extended Diploma, and T level.
• International Students: IB Diploma with minimum 26 points overall or 104 UCAS Tariff points from three Higher Level subjects. IELTS 6.0 overall with no individual element below 5.5.

Fees and Funding

Tuition fees for the 2026/27 academic year are still being finalised. Information on 2025/26 standard undergraduate fees for UK/Channel Islands and EU/Non-EU international students is available.

Careers Support and Prospects

• Employed or in Further Study: 88.7% of UK-domiciled, full-time, first-degree graduates are employed or in further study 15 months after graduation.
• The course prepares graduates for careers as photographers, freelance curators, picture editors, exhibition artists, and teachers. Many students have gained employment in the wider creative industries in Manchester and internationally.