School of Arts and Creative Industries

At SACI, every course is built around a project-led learning model.

• You'll focus on one module at a time rather than juggling multiple modules.
• Teaching is immersive and concentrated, supporting deeper engagement with each project.
• Staff coach, facilitate, and give feedback in a more sustained and meaningful way.
• You can move through the full project cycle (Define–Design–Produce–Reflect) within a block.
• This structure reduces workload and improves clarity, pace and progression.
• You can engage with external projects more effectively because the project sits in a dedicated teaching window.

You can work on real challenges, shaped by industry, community partners, global issues and professional practitioners.

Each project moves through four stages:

1. 1

   Define

   Work on a real-world challenge faced by companies and agencies and translate it into a meaningful creative brief.

2. 2

   Design

   “Own the problem”: researching, testing ideas, developing skills, and proposing multiple possible solutions with staff acting as coaches and facilitators.

3. 3

   Produce

   Refine your best ideas through feedback from staff and companies and deliver a final output.

4. 4

   Reflect

   Evaluate the final outcome with external stakeholders and reflect on progress, professional growth and employability.

Externality is at the heart of the model: you learn by responding to briefs that are anchored in the real world and visible beyond the university, through exhibitions, performances, publications, events or digital platforms.

What we mean by externality

External input ranges across three levels:

• Basic: projects that are simulated industry briefs, cross-disciplinary collaborations.
• Intermediate: live briefs, organisational partnerships, collaboration with internal research centres, enterprise teams or international partners (e.g. Collaborative Online International Learning).
• Advanced: direct collaboration with industry professionals, creative practitioners, alumni and partners on high-level live briefs.

You can progress from basic to intermediate to advanced externality across your course, building capability and confidence year by year.

Every project results in a carefully researched, professionally relevant output that responds directly to the brief. Outputs can take any format appropriate to the task and discipline.

You should leave with a discipline-specific portfolio of work, from performances and productions to designs and visual outcomes, acting as a practical CV for the creative industries.