BA (Hons) Performance and Production

Introduction to Production Skills is a practical and creative course aimed at familiarising you with performance technology while fostering a collaborative and creative environment. This module offers an exploration of various skillsets including Lighting, Sound, Projection, and Multimedia. 

Many individuals unfamiliar with technology may initially feel apprehensive, but this module aims to dispel such fears by demonstrating the vital, intriguing, and highly creative role technology plays in production. Providing a suitable technical backdrop for a performance requires both dedication and imaginative thinking. This module centres on collaborative creation, fostering a deeper appreciation for the technician's role through both theoretical knowledge and practical application. 

This module provides you with an exploration of potential employment routes in the fields of performance, production, and socially engaged practice. Through a series of practical, work-based lectures, you will engage with the theories, methodologies, and practical skills relevant to each employment area. The module aims to equip you with the ability to articulate transferable skills and to network with industry professionals, thereby enhancing your employment prospects. The module is structured into five main sections, each focusing on a specific role within the performance, production, and socially engaged practice sectors. Each section spans two weeks and includes lectures led by tutors and industry specialists. This structure allows for both theoretical understanding and practical application. You will receive up-to-date and relevant training that aligns with contemporary employment opportunities.

This module is designed to immerse you in the art of storytelling through an interdisciplinary lens, incorporating a range of mixed media methods. It aims to equip you with the skills and techniques necessary to craft and perform compelling narratives that reflect personal, political, and social themes. By the end of this course, you will have developed a robust understanding of how to engage audiences through diverse storytelling practices. An interdisciplinary approach is central to this module. This approach will be complemented by exploring cultural and historical contexts, enriching your narratives with depth and authenticity. 

The aim is to provide students with an additional year of study at an approved overseas partner that will complement their programme at LJMU. This is an additional year of full-time study at an approved higher education institution. The modules to be studied must be agreed in advance, and must be appropriate for the student's programme of study. Assuming successful completion of this year, mark-bearing credit will be awarded by the University Recognition Group. The grade conversion scale to be used will be made available in advance of the year abroad.  

This module will prepare students for their independent project through forming, researching, developing, and pitching projects and ideas. It is designed to encourage students to speak from their own artistry and define their interests and developments connecting their prior learning with their onward trajectory and career goals.

Students will work both independently and collaboratively to define roles and contributions to a range of projects through the creation of an independent research document. They will document a range of critical, creative, and practical approaches to undertaking the independent project and demonstrate their responsibilities to ethical, sustainable, artistic and creative approaches to performance and production.

Students will be required to reflect on prior learning and connect with future career aspirations and goals. They will be required to identify a project (solo or group) in relation to their learning development in performance and production. They will demonstrate and set out their role and responsibilities in creating the project, identifying risks, challenges and opportunities. They will evidence feedback and forward thinking through criticality to demonstrate research and knowledge related to the creation of their project.

The module seeks to enhance your confidence in crystallising your personal employment identity and career plan, in the following ways: 

• Building on skills from PP1, you will explore and engage with alternative funding opportunities, learning to develop projects that meet the requirements of available funding schemes and commissions. 
• Through valuable networking opportunities with invited industry professionals, you will enhance your practical knowledge of applying for real-world jobs and participating in relevant interview processes. Students will engage in professional simulations, selecting from a series of employment opportunity categories set up at the start of the module. You will research and create professional cover letters and CVs tailor.ed to specific job descriptions. Subsequently, preparation for interviews, auditions, workshops, screen tests, or skills tests will be conducted, and ultimately observed by a team of professionals (working in sectors relevant to the employment opportunities offered) and marking tutors who will provide feedback/feedforward.  
• The module also allows opportunities for developing essential industry micro-credentials that you can add to your CV.  

Finally, you will be supported in creating and presenting a reflective account of your experiences, culminating in a career plan and articulating your future career trajectory with supporting evidence. 

In this module you will be further able to develop specialist skills and knowledge in a discipline area of your choice. Following the first through weeks, you will propose a project and present a schedule for the work. For the work itself, you will each produce a short piece or practical example (artefact) that can be in any form that suites your specialist interest and develops one or more requisite skill (for example live, voice or film performance, immersive practice etc).

You should use the project to identify and develop experience in a specialist skill that interests you, you should submit this with your preliminary research which might include scripts, designs, research, blogs or journal notes as appropriate to your project. The emphases of the module is on the development of a key - this could be performed or technical in quality. 

This module helps you to identify and create the necessary artefacts and platforms for presenting yourself professionally, as appropriate to your identified specialism. It will help you develop the understanding of who you are as an artist and translate that into an effective digital visual presence. 

A series of workshops and guest specialist lecturers will teach the range of skills required to cover the areas listed, and you should aim to create material week-on-week. 

Each student will be assigned a tutor who is available for tutorial support for four 30-minute sessions (total 2 hours) during the delivery of the module and/or preparation for assessment submission. 

This module is a cumulative demonstration of skills as well as critical and creative approaches developed throughout the course. Students will participate in an independent project (solo or group work) undertaking specific functions and roles to bring about the creation of the project. The project must directly apply learning from the degree e.g., creating a socially engaged project, a performance at a museum, a film screening or a radio drama broadcast, a solo or group performance, or may be a tech design (immersive set), as examples. The role undertaken will be discussed and agreed upon with tutors to ensure comparability and fairness as well as appropriateness to study.

Students will demonstrate the consolidation of their learning through their agreed contribution which should demonstrate their abilities in artistic, production, technical, administrative, socially engaged, or other relevant skill work. They will evidence their ability to work autonomously as performance and production practitioners both independently and collaboratively as well as with a range of stakeholders and partners as relevant to the project and to bring about their critical and creative learning into the delivery of a practical project within the time and scoping requirements directed.

Following the delivery of the project, students will make a public presentation that demonstrates how the project was achieved, critically reflect on their learning experiences, and connect to their onward implementation of learning from the project to future work. Students will be supported through tutorials where students will evidence work in progress through rehearsal, demonstration, and discussion.  Students will take the lead in seeking support from their project supervisor and in ensuring ethical compliance. The tutor (supervisor) will provide guidance and direction and should be the point of contact for clearing all risk assessments and consents for ethical practice.