The Course
You will leave with the skills, knowledge and confidence to build a career as a designer within the performing arts.
You will be seen as creative, ambitious and multiskilled, equally at home designing the sets and costume for a theatre production or leading a site-specific performance event or creating the environment or lighting for a music gig.
This is a practical course with a strong emphasis on realised performance work every year.
Average places available: Up to 20 each year
Career prospects
You will possess an extensive range of skills and experience in performance design and an in depth knowledge of the arts and entertainment economy that will equip you for a fulfilling and successful career in this exciting and challenging field of work.
Many graduates are enjoying careers in fields such as theatre design, architectural lighting, art direction for film and TV, prop making, museum design, concert lighting and costume design.
Each year we conduct a survey of our alumni who graduated almost four years earlier to find out what they did after leaving us. You can see the results of the latest survey by clicking on the factsheet image.
We also take part in the annual Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey to find out what our graduates are doing six months after they left us. The results are published on Unistats and you can see summary statistics in the Key Information Sets box at the bottom of this page.
The Graduates
Theatre and Performance Design and Technology graduates have progressed to work in diverse organisations including
- Aardman Animation Studios
- Adlib Audio
- Apollo Victoria Theatre
- BBC News and Sport
- BSkyB
- Bush Theatre
- Cardiff Millennium Centre
- Cirque Du Soleil
- Crucible Theatre
- Designlight GMBH
- De Montfort Hall
- Disney
- Donmar Warehouse
- Drammen Theatre
- Echo Arena and Conference Centre
- Everyman and Playhouse Theatre
- Guggenheim Museum
- Garrick Theatre
- Lime Pictures
- Lite Alternative
- National Theatre of Cyprus
- Nickelodeon
- No Fit State Circus
- O2 Academy
- Octagon Theatre
- Oslo Nye Theatre
- Philharmonic Hall
- Pleasance Ltd
- PRG
- Royal Caribbean International
- Royal Court Theatre
- Royal Opera House
- SHUNT
- Sky News
- Stadttheater, Giessen
- The National Theatre
- The RSC
- In lighting design for The Wombats, The XX, Sleigh Bells, Bat for Lashes, Frankie Boyle, Jimmy Carr; touring automation for Girls Aloud, Keane, Kings of Leon, Coldplay, and Sigur Ros.
Recent stage design credits include Othello (Sheffield Crucible), Flashdance (West End - nom. Best Set Design, Whatsonstage Awards), Richard II (Donmar Warehouse). TV design includes Life on Mars, Project Runway, Big Brother and more. Graduates are employed in stage management, set and costume design, prop making, lighting technology, live theatre sound, model making, wardrobe supervision, scenic construction, TV camerawork, corporate events, AV design, video editing, rigging and flying control, puppetry and architectural lighting design.
Key Information Set
The Key Information Set (KIS) below provides prospective students with facts and figures about studying at LIPA, which are comparable with other institutions.
As part of the Higher Education Funding Council’s work to enhance the information that is available about higher education, the KIS includes information such as:
- Course professional accreditation
- Assessment methods
- Learning and teaching activities
- Tuition fees
- Accommodation availability and cost
- Student satisfaction (National Student Survey)
- Post study employment prospects (Destination of Leavers from Higher Education)
This information is summarised in the “widget” (below). The widget also contains links to the Unistats website that enables you to compare KIS data with other courses.
Please remember to read these facts and figures in conjunction with the other information on the LIPA website to give you the fullest possible insight to studying here.