Lancaster's degree in Fine Art and Creative Writing is taught jointly by the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA) and the Department of English and Creative Writing. This course is ideal for anyone with strong academic and creative abilities who wants to study fine art alongside creative writing.Your Creative Writing courses are taught by a team of widely published authors through a combination of lectures, readings, practice and discussion in regular tutor-led workshops. Your degree includes an Introduction to Creative Writing in your first year, and in your second and third years of study you will choose additional genre-specific units such as Short Fiction, Poetry Writing or Creative Non-fiction.Fine Art at Lancaster gives you the opportunity to integrate Art Practice with Art History/Theory at a high level. From the first through to the final year of your degree you will develop creative and technical skills in painting, drawing, sculpture, digital art and their hybrids. While we have no ‘house style’ the emphasis is on Fine Art practice and Fine Art ‘thinking’ rather than illustration. Our aim is for you to develop the practice and ideas that best reflect your aims and values as a young Fine Artist. Your tutors will be professional artists and publishing historians and the mix of academic and creative skills gained at Lancaster makes you highly attractive for postgraduate study and employers.You will begin your degree with core courses including Modernism in the Arts, Fine Art Practice and Creative Writing. In your second year you’ll move on to subjects such as Studio Practice, Short Fiction: Genre and Practice and our LICA interdisciplinary module Critical Reflections. You will then complete your degree by choosing from a selection of Fine Art and Creative Writing modules on offer such as Expanded Drawing, Longer Fiction and Writing/Reading Poetry.You will have the opportunity to spend Year 3 on placement with a public, private or voluntary organisation in the UK or overseas. This experience will boost your employment prospects and will help you to decide on your career direction and the kind of organisation in which you want to work once you graduate. You will be doing a real, responsible job – with all the satisfaction that brings. Our Placements Team will support you in finding and applying for a suitable placement that will support your professional development. Applying for a placement is a competitive process and the preparatory modules you will complete in years one and two are designed to give you the best chance of success in your placement applications. You will also be provided with dedicated workshops, 1:1 appointments with careers professionals as well as opportunities to speak with employers here on campus.During the placement year you will remain a Lancaster University student, which means that you will still be eligible for a student loan, have access to facilities such as the library and receive discounts on transport and council tax. Your tuition fee will be reduced to 20% during the placement year. The placement will enhance your understanding of the connections between theory and practice and this will benefit your final year of study. This is an exciting opportunity to build up experience and transferable skills, as well as to make contacts with potential employers, which will place you a step ahead in the graduate recruitment market.