A brand new online BA in Visual Communication at Falmouth University aims to redefine creative career paths

Have you been feeling like your creativity needs a new direction? Or, have you simply been looking to kickstart your creative journey? If so, Falmouth University’s new bachelor degree in visual communication could offer your next step. Helping students across the world to retrain, revisit, and redefine their relationship with creativity, the course aims to help guide its students through a post-pandemic creative world. With its 120 year history, Falmouth University offers its students the potential to immerse themselves in its renowned and well established community, whilst also helping them to connect with the wider contemporary creative scene.

The unique and innovative course offers a more flexible and inclusive online learning experience. Avoiding the hybrid online/on campus learning model, it has been specifically catered to an online environment. But, far from neglecting any of the essential aspects of a creative degree, the course aims to offer everything a creative curriculum could need. The student journey from start to finish is curated by Course Leader Sarah Langford to provide a clear and connected learning experience. Hosted live from leading industry studios, students can expect weekly workshops, webinars, tutorials, and critique feedback sessions, all alongside recorded lectures, technical workshops, and task-driven independent work.

Communication, collaboration and community is also a central focus throughout the course, with an online studio space in which students can connect and engage in rich discussions with staff and peers from around the world. “I love the course so much and I am so excited every week. I love the accessibility of the workshops, projects and feedback [...] it's much easier than you would expect being able to share your work online,” Rosie George, a first year student on the course tells It’s Nice That. “I employ a range of digital and analogue methods, scanning and photographing on a mobile phone to share analogue work online. Also posting quick snapshots or updates in our online studio is really easy and a great way to interact with other course mates.”

The course also boasts a whole host of impressive guest lecturers and tutors, including freelance illustrator Rob Flowers, who has collaborated with companies as diverse as Converse, Google and Stella McCartney. “As an illustrator and online tutor for the course my flexible teaching hours complement my freelance career and mean I can connect with and help students all over the world”, Rob explains. “The exchange of inspiration and knowledge from practitioners from all over is awesome and makes for an incredibly exciting, creative environment.” Being taught by such a range of people – from designers, animators, photographers, filmmakers and more – students on the course will benefit from an array of creative stories. This additionally helps challenge existing ideas of what visual communication is, in turn helping students define what it means to them.

With such a broad range of expertise and disciplines being available throughout the course, it helps give direction not only to people with prior creative experience, but people on the hunt for a much needed career change. Alan Lewis, a first year student on the course, was forced into medical retirement from his previous job as a tradesman before his portfolio was recognised by Falmouth’s staff: “It’s astonishing to look back and see the growth in my work,” Alan reflects now. “My style has matured, and my thought process has become stronger. The course can put you on that next step to a brighter, more secure future, with the self-assurance that you are going to be able to shape your own future.”

Equipping its students with such a range of skills and connections and helping them build their self-confidence, the course provides an extensive range of post-graduation possibilities. You can find out more about the university’s new Visual Communication degree and other new online courses on the Falmouth University website.