Contemporary Craft and Music

Contemporary craft is a discipline that sits between fine art and design, rooted in the physical act of making but attentive to the ideas, contexts, and communities that give that making its meaning. It draws on traditions of ceramics, textiles, jewellery, wood, metal, and mixed media while remaining open to digital fabrication and hybrid methods that characterise practice today. Music, by contrast, is one of the oldest forms of human expression, encompassing performance, composition, analysis, and production across a vast range of traditions and contexts.

Combining these two disciplines invites you to think about creativity, materiality, and communication from angles that neither subject fully explores on its own.

At Liverpool Hope you will develop hands-on craft skills alongside musicianship and musical understanding, working in studios and workshops that support both practical and reflective learning. The programme builds a supportive community of emerging makers and designers, and the dual structure of the degree means you are always working across disciplines, finding connections between the tactile and the sonic. The course runs across four years, including a sandwich placement year and a year abroad, both of which give you extended experience beyond the university setting.

Work placements are embedded in the programme, and the typical entry tariff is 120 points.

Graduates from craft and music combinations tend to move into plural, portfolio careers. Possibilities include independent practice as a maker or musician, roles in arts education and community arts, museum and gallery work, arts administration, and production design. The entrepreneurial dimension is often significant: many graduates develop their own studios, labels, or creative businesses.

Further study in fine art, design, music, or arts management is a natural route for those who want to deepen specialist practice or move into research and teaching.