Acting and Education

Acting and education is a combination that acknowledges a truth about the performing arts: that teaching, facilitation, and community engagement are as central to how the arts function in society as performance itself, and that the skills involved are deeply interrelated. At Liverpool Hope University, the BA Acting and Education is a three-year full-time programme that includes a sandwich year, a year abroad, and work placement, giving you extensive professional and international experience alongside the development of your acting and educational practice.

The acting strand develops your craft as a performer. You will study voice, movement, characterisation, text analysis, and the techniques used in preparing and performing roles for stage and screen. Drama training at degree level is intensive and demanding, requiring you to develop not just technical skill but also emotional availability, creative risk-taking, and the collaborative discipline that professional performance requires.

The education strand develops your understanding of how drama and performance can be used in educational and community settings, alongside broader knowledge of pedagogical principles and how learning works. Applied theatre, drama in education, and the use of performance for personal and community development are increasingly recognised as valuable practices in schools, community organisations, healthcare settings, and youth work, and this strand of the programme prepares you for those roles as well as for performance careers.

Graduates of acting and education programmes work in a range of professional contexts. Performance careers on stage and screen, teaching drama in schools and colleges, running drama workshops in community settings, applied theatre work in healthcare or criminal justice, arts education coordination, and theatre-in-education touring are among the pathways available. The dual training gives you genuine versatility in the employment market: you are competitive for both performance and education roles, which is particularly valuable in an industry where portfolio careers are the norm.

Some graduates go on to postgraduate study in acting, applied theatre, drama education, or related disciplines. The professional experience gained during the sandwich year is particularly important in building the networks and practical competence that career entry requires.