Course overview

The MA in Illustration gives you the opportunity to navigate your practice within a supportive creative community, build confidence in your work, develop visual storytelling skills and succeed with a sustainable creative profession.

Youll have access to excellent creative facilities and your own studio space to question, challenge and explore your image-making skills.

Underpinning the course is visual storytelling, as well as practice-as-research. Students are encouraged to take their work in their own idiosyncratic directions. There is no predetermined outcome – it is part of the course to develop your own themes and creative inquiries. The drawing and practical experimentation is framed as practice-as-research to provide structure and a theoretical rigour to your work.

We are home to the Cheltenham Illustration Awards (CIA), an international illustration competition that leads to a touring exhibition of highly commended entries, presenting an opportunity to exhibit your work nationally. Alumni have begun successful businesses such as The Potthouse Collective, have worked at Meri Meri, Jelly Armchair, and Inky Little Fingers, become freelancers, or moved into doctoral study.

Careers

Graduate career-ready and discover a range of exciting roles in illustration. Work independently as a freelance illustrator, design for graphic novels, games art, animation, storyboarding and visualisation for production design.