Contemporary Craft and Health & Wellbeing

Contemporary craft and health and wellbeing is a degree that takes seriously the growing body of evidence linking creative making to human health. Craft practices, including ceramics, textiles, jewellery, printmaking, and other material disciplines, have long been recognised as having therapeutic and restorative dimensions, and this degree brings that insight into formal academic and professional focus, developing you both as a maker and as someone who can deploy craft in health, community, and wellbeing contexts.

At Liverpool Hope University you will study across three years on a full-time programme, with a sandwich year that places you in a professional environment, a year abroad for international study, and work placement integrated throughout. The contemporary craft strand is hands-on and design-led, focused on building your technical skills across a range of materials and processes while developing your creative identity and your capacity for innovative project work. The health and wellbeing strand develops your understanding of how creative practice relates to physical and mental health, engaging with therapeutic approaches, community arts, and the evidence base for arts in health.

You will learn to design and facilitate craft-based activities for diverse groups, including those with mental health conditions, older adults, people with disabilities, and communities facing social disadvantage. The combination of making expertise and therapeutic awareness is what makes the degree distinctive.

Graduates work as makers, craft practitioners, and artists, exhibiting and selling their work independently and through galleries and craft markets. They also work in arts and health organisations, hospitals, hospices, care homes, schools, and community organisations, facilitating creative workshops and programmes. Social prescribing, which involves connecting people with community activities as a complement to medical care, is a growing field that increasingly draws on practitioners with craft and wellbeing skills.

Further study at postgraduate level in art therapy, applied art, occupational therapy, or craft education is a natural progression for those who wish to deepen their therapeutic expertise or pursue more senior and research-oriented roles.