MFA Craft

This course is at the forefront of craft making practices and is for materially engaged makers who are looking to explore craft practices across a range of materials and object types. It encourages the development of craft across specialist and multi-material making, investigating and exploring definitions of contemporary craft practice.

The programme is an opportunity to pursue a making practice that might already be located within a specific material area or object definition such as glass, ceramics, textiles or jewellery, or to develop and expand the definitions and materials of craft practice. The programme supports the exploration of genre-breaking approaches to making, to develop individual and personal methodologies and philosophies, and locate these within a deep understanding of historical, contemporary and future craft making practices, and wider social and cultural contexts.

With access to 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. In addition to traditional material workshops across ceramics, hot and cold glass, metal, wood, textile print, weave and embroidery, there are digital making facilities for laser cutting, 3D printing, CNC routing, and digital print for textiles and ceramics, with access to specialist academic and technical expertise from across the School of Art, to support the development of a wide range of craft making practices.

You will undertake “Core” units delivered by craft making specialists, consisting of design theory and practice lectures, workshops in hand, machine and digital making, group seminars, individual tutorials, live external projects, and research study trips.

‘Options’ units facilitate innovative cross-disciplinary opportunities, supporting the development of collaborative working with students from within the material making and manufacturing cluster of MA/MSc/MFA Product Design and MA/MSc/MFA Textiles, and across the wider postgraduate design community.

Each student’s programme of study is managed through personal learning plans, developed in response to their individual creative and professional ambitions. The final “Synthesis” unit determines the postgraduate award, with the MSc reflecting work that has a more technically innovative focus, and the MA for work that addresses more materially creative or culturally focussed agendas. This innovative structure provides students with the opportunity to convert their practice from BA to MSc, and vice versa.