Contemporary Craft and Health & Wellbeing

Contemporary craft and health and wellbeing is an unusual but genuinely purposeful combination, bringing together the practice-based skills of making and designing with an understanding of how creative activity contributes to human health, recovery and flourishing. Craft practices including ceramics, textiles, jewellery, print and mixed media have long been used in therapeutic and community contexts, and there is a growing body of evidence supporting their role in mental health, rehabilitation and social connection. This degree takes both sides of the combination seriously, training you as a maker and designer while developing your understanding of the health and wellbeing contexts in which creative work is applied.

At Liverpool Hope this four-year full-time programme includes a sandwich year, a year abroad and embedded work placement experience. You will develop hands-on design and making skills through studio practice, experimenting with materials, processes and ideas as part of a supportive creative community. Alongside this you will study the social, psychological and theoretical dimensions of health, wellbeing and creative practice, developing the knowledge base that allows you to work thoughtfully in therapeutic, educational and community settings.

The sandwich year gives you extended professional experience in a relevant context, and the year abroad broadens your perspective on craft traditions and health practices in a different cultural environment. A typical entry tariff of 120 points reflects the programme's accessible character.

Graduates work as practitioners in art therapy and creative health (with additional qualifications where required), community arts, craft education, healthcare settings, galleries and museums, independent making and design, and craft-based enterprises. The combination of making skills and health and wellbeing knowledge is increasingly valued as creative industries and healthcare organisations recognise the role of craft in therapeutic and preventive health contexts. Postgraduate study in art therapy, community art, design or health and wellbeing provides pathways for those who want to specialise further in the professional or academic dimensions of the field.