Childhood & Youth and Contemporary Craft

Childhood and youth studies combined with contemporary craft is an unusual but genuinely coherent combination, addressing both the social dimensions of childhood and young people's experience and the material and making dimensions of craft as a creative and educational practice. Childhood and youth studies examines the conditions in which children and young people grow and develop, drawing on sociology, politics, history, social policy, and cultural studies to ask critical questions about how children are understood, how their rights are protected or violated, and what the experience of being young means in different cultural and social contexts. Contemporary craft engages with material making as both artistic practice and a mode of thinking through which ideas, identities, and relationships with the physical world can be explored.

At Liverpool Hope University this four-year full-time programme, which includes a foundation year, sandwich year, and year abroad, brings these two fields together in a way that is relevant to many contemporary professional contexts, from education and youth work to arts in community and therapeutic settings. The foundation year provides academic preparation and confidence before you engage with degree-level content. The sandwich year and year abroad provide professional and international experience that enriches both strands of the degree.

Work placements are integrated throughout.

You will develop research and analytical skills in childhood and youth studies alongside creative and reflective capacities in craft, building a versatile and distinctive graduate profile.

Graduates move into careers in education, youth work, community arts, social work, arts therapy, educational craft practice, and a wide range of other roles where understanding of young people and skill in creative making both matter. Many continue to postgraduate study in education, childhood studies, or related fields.