BA (Hons) Publishing

UCA’s Integrated Foundation Year is designed to give you the skills you’ll need to start your degree in the best possible way – with confidence, solid knowledge of creative practice, study skills and more.

You’ll explore a range of creative techniques and develop your portfolio, with your chosen subject in mind. We’ll work with you throughout the year to ensure you’re on the right track and give you the tools to achieve your highest potential on your degree.

Find out more about the Integrated Foundation Year

For our students coming from a non-UK educational background, UCA has an Integrated International Foundation Year to bring students from around the world to one hub of creativity. 

This year of preparatory study is designed to give you the skills you’ll need to start your degree in the best possible way – with confidence, solid knowledge of creative practice, study skills and the English speaking and writing skills you’ll need to succeed.

You’ll explore a range of creative techniques and develop your portfolio, with your chosen subject in mind. We’ll work with you throughout the year to ensure you’re on the right track and give you the tools to achieve your highest potential on your degree.

Find out more about the Integrated International Foundation Year

Business Bootcamp 1: Design Thinking & Orientation
This introductory unit welcomes you to the Business School for the Creative Industries, its learning community and professional global network and gets you started design thinking.

Media: Theories & Histories
This unit will situate advertising in broader economic and political practices, and how audiences and consumers value and engage with creative outputs in the public sphere. This unit will equip you to connect your experiences of desiring brands, buying things you’ll never wear, signing up to apps’ invasive surveillance, with thinkers who’ve themselves struggled with and successfully challenged industry barriers to propose creative solutions.

Business Seminar 1: Understanding Consumers
This unit explores what happens before, during, and after the point when someone buys something. It investigates how having (or not having) certain products affects our lives; specifically, how these items influence how we feel about ourselves and each other, especially with the influence of social media and the digital consumption. You’ll explore major trends and changes that impact the study of how consumers behave with a focus on the creative industries and the purchasing of creative goods and services such as fashion, music, cosmetics, beauty, films, media, toys, furniture, and interiors.

Foundations of Marketing and Communications
You will be introduced to the concepts, theories and models utilised in marketing and communications, providing the basis for further study within the course. Specifically, you’ll be introduced to the objectives and theory of marketing as a business function and explore the role of marketing within organisations and how marketing can be used in the achievement of an organisation's goals and objectives. Moreover, you’ll develop your understanding of the principles of marketing and communications and its relevance to organisations in fulfilling their customer requirements in a changing world

Magazine Publishing: Context and Development
This unit will explore this rich industrial and cultural legacy of magazine publishing. In learning about the different ‘taxonomy’ of magazines, and their publishers and technological and industrial processes past and present, you’ll gain an insight into the context and development story of consumer magazines as, crucially, both makers and mirrors of society.

Business Bootcamp 2: Research and Development
This Bootcamp is designed to build a highly effective learning community aligned with the Inclusive Curriculum Framework, through research and development. R&D is the generation of new knowledge to apply to businesses, and is something that companies undertake in order to develop new products, ways of doing business or services, or develop those that already exist.

Magazine Content
Magazines have always been unique in their content, differentiating themselves against other printed media such as newspapers, as a more visual and photographic medium, with diverse audiences and specialist content. In this unit, you’ll understand and learn the skills and craft of magazine journalism, content creation and ‘content marketing’ (or ‘branded content’).

Business Seminar 2: Business Analytics
You’ll learn about business analytics, using case studies and examples from various creative industries and develop your knowledge of statistics and probability. You’ll be introduced to concepts such as random variables and probability distributions, and it cover the basics of statistical analysis and inference.

Understanding Trends & Forecasting
Of the many areas of expertise within the businesses that make up the creative industries; the ability to assess and react to the macro and micro-environment is vital to stay competitive and remain connected to customer lifestyles and buying behaviours. In this unit you’ll explore the concepts, theories and practices of trend forecasting within the context of the creative industries.

You choose one unit from the following:

Fashion: Business & Practices (elective unit)
You’ll learn fundamental principles of fashion business and practices through a global lens in this unit. You’ll identify with how the macro environment affects the fashion industry sector and consumer groups and how it operates, introducing you the various market levels and sectors. Each sector of the industry will be addressed, and you will understand the interrelationships between these sectors with emphasis on the evolution of business models in a digital economy.

Music: Business & Practices (elective unit)
The fundamental principles of music business and practices through a global lens are covered in this unit. You will identify with how the macro environment affects the music industry sectors and consumer groups and how it operates, introducing you the various market levels and sectors. It will examine the various roles and stakeholders in the business as well as the structure, supply chain and distribution of products and services to end users. Within these core areas, the unit will evaluate and consider trends and developmental opportunities and challenges as technology continues to impact on the business.

Lifestyle Products: Business & Practices (elective unit)
This unit introduces you to the fundamental principles of the business and practices of lifestyle products, but through a global lens. You will identify with how the macro environment affects the lifestyle products industry sector and consumer groups and how it operates, introducing you the various market levels and sectors. It will examine the various roles and stakeholders in the business as well as the structure, supply chain and distribution of products and services to end users. Within these core areas, the unit will evaluate and consider trends and developmental opportunities and challenges as technology continues to impact on the business.

Games: Business & Practices (elective unit)
The fundamental principles of games business and practices through a global lens are covered in this unit. You will identify with how the macro environment affects the games industry sector and consumer groups and how it operates, introducing you the various market levels and sectors. It will examine the various roles and stakeholders in the business as well as the structure, supply chain and distribution of products and services to end users. Within these core areas, the unit will evaluate and consider trends and developmental opportunities and challenges as technology continues to impact on the business.

Cosmetics & Beauty: Business & Practices (elective unit)
You’ll be introduced to the fundamental principles of business and practices within the cosmetic and beauty industries through a global lens. You’ll identify with how the macro environment affects the cosmetic and beauty industry sector and consumer groups and how it operates, introducing you the various market levels and sectors. It will examine the various roles and stakeholders in the business as well as the structure, supply chain and distribution of products and services to end users. Within these core areas, the unit will evaluate and consider trends and developmental opportunities and challenges as technology continues to impact on the business.

Business Bootcamp 3: Storytelling and Narrative (all students)
Telling stories is one of the most powerful means that we have to influence, teach, and inspire. It forges connections among people, and between people and ideas. Stories convey the culture, history, lifestyle, and values that unite people, they engender emotion and loyalty. This bootcamp provides you with an opportunity to explore narrative structures and experiment how they have been used, particularly in the changing landscape of digital marketing, demonstrating how important it is to develop your storytelling skills in the creative industries.

Customer Magazine Project (all students)
Across industrial sectors, from supermarket retailing, aviation, automotive through to fashion design and retailer, contract magazine publishing or ‘customer magazines’, have become an important brand communication and brand loyalty vehicle. During this unit, you will gain an understanding of many aspects of this exciting subset of magazine publishing. You will learn about the structures and processes involved in publishing customer magazines across a range of platforms and develop a deeper understanding of the workings of a professional magazine publishing industry. Importantly, you will also have the chance to propose your own client-facing customer magazine project, applying what you have learned to researched real-world brand needs.

Creative Business Start-up (all students)
Learn the process of creating and building a new business venture, through exploring a range of case studies and identifying and evaluating the role of creativity in business start-ups. With this knowledge, you will apply business innovation as well as how to create value in firms, through new product or services, technologies and business. To this, you’ll conduct market research and produce a creative business plan.

Business Bootcamp 4: Exploring Innovation (all students)
Through a series of exciting and engaging fast-paced workshops, tasks and peer sessions you will be introduced and welcomed to professional practice and conduct in the creative industries through the BSCI Honeycomb Lens where we facilitate self-motivation, exploration, empowerment, and support development and recognition of skills for learning as you experience your business school journey.

Professional Placement (all students)
This unit is self-initiated and will involve you taking a legitimate Industry placement opportunity, regarded by you and your unit leader as an appropriate and unique professional experience.

Business Seminar 3: Professional Practice (all students)
Through a series of lectures, workshops and seminars you'll begin your preparations for industry experience. We'll ask you to self-assess your interests, strengths, areas for development and your future career ambitions; building and creating your network, how you can make a positive contribution to the industry and how you see yourself and others.

You choose one unit from Gamification & Marketing and Wearable Technology

Gamification & Marketing (elective unit)
This unit approaches the subject of gamification and marketing holistically, investigating the practical, critical and theoretical contexts surrounding this subject.

Wearable Technology (elective unit)
This unit approaches the subject of wearable technology, assessing the practical, critical and theoretical contexts surrounding this subject. You’ll explore wearable cultures, alongside the macro and micro landscapes and how this is influencing and impacting the creative industries. You’ll look at how sectors are adopting, or resisting, wearable technology and where and how it is being used.

You choose one unit from Digital Marketing Analytics or Influence & Influencers or Public Relations or Journalism or Financial Management for the Creative Industries

Digital Marketing Analytics (elective unit)
Digital marketing analytics seeks to understand markets to improve marketing actions. The ability to acquire, analyse and to understand large marketing data sets, made possible by digitisation, can improve marketing campaigns and result in better performance. Data sets can be mined using a variety of quantitative techniques. Understanding markets better will enable more effective allocation of marketing budgets and an improved understanding of customer experiences.

Influence & Influencers (elective unit)
You’ll apply a critical and theoretical lens to the subject, questioning the role the influencer plays within society and business. This unit in particular will focus on the ethical considerations that arise in the application of influence within marketing contexts, including the sector’s engagement with gender, sexuality and race. Finally, you’ll propose and create an innovative social media campaign, that engages with the subjects explored in this unit.

Public Relations (elective unit)
Great PR resonates in a way that advertising never can. In this unit, you will discover the theories, the personalities, and the good, the bad and the ugly of this craft. You will learn how to produce press releases, how to build and elevate compelling stories and how to pitch them.

Journalism
This unit looks at styles of journalism that allow for even greater levels of depth, investigation, external perspectives, media law and ethics and substantiated fact. You will not only present the story, but look beyond, the story behind the story, and potentially further, the story behind that. As part of this unit, we will present and discuss the importance of “hooks” and “angles” in generating in-depth work, alongside the importance of distinctiveness, in view of the existing sources of information that could be consulted.

Financial Management for the Creative Industries (elective unit)
Financial Management in the creative and cultural industries is all about getting the right financial result by managing your income and expenditure. Financial management is an essential part of any enterprise and business. In this unit, you will explore business, financial and management models relating to the creative economy with focus sessions on the nuances of Fashion, Music and Digital revenue streams.

You choose one unit from Behavioural Studies and Consumption or Identity & Marketing or Music, Media & Communications: Print & Audio or Fashion & Identity or The Business of Magazines

Behavioural Studies and Consumption (elective unit)
You’ll be introduced to the theory and practice of consumer behaviour and consumption. You’ll explore how perceptions, learning, memory, personality, and culture influence consumer behaviour and how consumption changes by cultural and subcultural influences.

Identity & Marketing (elective unit)
An evaluation of both company and consumer identity and culture is a vital component of marketing. This unit will introduce you to how identity and marketing work in tandem. You’ll examine the symbolism of brand identity and its importance in attracting a loyal customer, and the ways marketing utilises data to target segmented consumer groups attracting niche audiences with customised promotions.

Music, Media & Communications: Print & Audio (elective unit)
This unit explores the connection between music and media. It will uncover the history of music media from the early works of music criticism up to the present-day landscape of multiple digital channels, social media and individual narratives. You’ll chart the history of the music press and journalism from Melody Maker to the present-day blogosphere, as well as the history of music in film and on video. You’ll also look at the audio culture around music in terms of radio and podcasting, which has been a growth area of late. Finally, you’ll explore to what degree digital media has disrupted this traditional model of media hierarchy and how music is intrinsic to advertising.

Fashion & Identity (elective unit)
Every person in the world is clothed in some way to make their body socially acceptable, but are all forms of clothing and dress related to fashion? If fashion is produced, promoted, and sold to thousands of people, how can it bear any relation to personal identity? When fashionable looks are mediated to us through social media, film, music video, and journalistic accounts, how can individuals navigate their own embodied fashion journey? This unit explores these slippery questions and more, by considering the ways in which fashion writers and scholars have discussed, examined and argued about what fashion is and how it might relate to notions of identity.

The Business of Magazines (elective unit)
This unit aims to examine some of the various business models within the magazine industry, while attempting to understand the value of established theories through quantitative and qualitative tools of analysis to develop knowledge, understanding and informed practices in the area. You’ll examine the challenges for large legacy businesses that have consolidated into a smaller number of large multinational corporations such as Bauer, Future plc and Hearst, as well as explore entrepreneurship and small business economics and finance of magazine ‘independents’ and start-ups.

Creative Innovation (for students on the Professional Practice Year pathway)
The ability to adapt and innovate is a vital element of creative business to withstand and prosper in fast-paced, and highly transformative sectors. This unit is designed for you investigate the real-world, relevant issues that are impacting on your Industry, while challenging well-established theory and/or principles which these contemporary issues conflict with. You’ll attempt to locate solutions to these problems through creative concepts, underpinned by alternative or reinvigorated principles and/or theory.

Industry Lecture Series (for students on the Professional Practice Year pathway)
This unit allows you to explore contemporary industry practices central to today’s global creative industries. It will allow you to build a portfolio of knowledge pertinent to your chosen industry sector. The series will include industry expert lectures, group workshops and group working, in order to test and explore industry sectors

Critical Analysis with English for Academic Purposes 1 (For direct entry international students only)
This unit will help you improve your academic skills within the context of the creative industries, including learning about our core expectations, formal and informal communication skills, critical thinking, research and presenting skills and academic writing skills.

Critical Analysis with English for Academic Purposes 2 (For direct entry international students only)
This second unit will help you further improve your academic skills within the context of the creative industries, covering academic study, writing and considerations in-depth. This unit covers the likes of critical analysis, research methodologies, referencing, and further writing skills.

You’ll spend two years learning with us, before putting what you’ve learned into practice through a year-long industry placement.

Our Professional Practice placements give you the opportunity to develop your professional, academic and personal potential, equipping you to be confident and engaged in creative workplaces. These qualities are widely recognised by employers and a significant proportion of placement students nationally are offered graduate-level jobs or go onto postgraduate study.

Throughout your placement, your course team will support you, making use of our extensive industry connections to help facilitate you to find about the right placement for you. On conclusion of the placement, you’ll return to complete your final year of study – applying what you’ve learned on the job. 

If you opt to complete a professional practice year, this will take place in year three. You will undertake a placement within the creative industries to further develop your skills and CV.

While on the Professional Practice Year, you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee for that year. This fee will be determined using government funding regulations. Based on current regulations, we expect this to be a maximum of 20% of the tuition fee rate that you are charged for your second year of study. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during this year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this as you approach your Professional Practice Year.

Business Bootcamp 5: Research & Methodologies (all students)
This bootcamp is about examining research and methodologies and how this applies to your course. We will discuss the different methods by which you can elicit findings whether quantitative (informing by data) or qualitative (informing from opinions).

Innovations in Magazine Publishing (all students)
The changing landscape of the magazine publishing industry and the challenges that come with this, is examined in this unit. This is a final year ‘futures’ discursive and research-based unit, one that examines challenge, change, new innovations, new business models and the counterintuitive rise in interest in the printed magazine from a new breed of younger and more diverse magazine publishers – the so called ‘independent magazines’. The unit also uses this focus on people and creativity as an important consideration for the future of the business, with recent research showing a lack of human diversity ‘behind the pages’ of magazine publishing, despite the renewed efforts by the likes of Condé Nast’s Vogue having made considerable in-roads ‘on the page’ in recent years.

Business Seminar 4: Strategy & Decision Making (all students)
More than ever, we are facing the challenge of making decisions under uncertainty against the backdrop of external factors that we cannot control or predict. As leaders, managers and executives, making effective decisions in a time-conscious manner is crucial. This bootcamp will enable you to transform decision-making into a smart and insightful process, providing a robust framework of effective and replicable solutions for better decisions and awareness of decision traps, as well as learning how to assess and choose high-value strategic options under the current climate of enormous uncertainty.

Business Bootcamp 6: Developing Enterprise (all students)
This unit will provide you with the opportunity to develop your creative thinking skills in a collaborative environment, bringing greater understanding to how those ideas may develop and transform through product or enterprise development.

Degree Project (all students)
In this final unit, you will apply all you’ve learned to create a distinctive piece of work for your degree project, the purpose of which is to allow you to identify opportunities successfully in your specialist subject area to promote and to develop your career. Through research, you will independently identify and/or generate innovative opportunities within your specialist subject area. Your portfolio will consist of a series of outcomes that showcase your knowledge, and your key attributes and skills as a reflective creative practitioner. You will be expected to consider the theoretical and professional contexts of your exploration. It is important that your work is contemporary, innovative, and representative of its target audience and industry sector.

All students choose one unit from Data Mining for Marketers or Audience Evaluation or Predictive Analytics for Business.

Data Mining for Marketers (elective unit)
Data Mining focuses on the use of automation to uncover relationships within datasets that can be used to support improved decision processes. When employed in marketing, data mining will use customer, potential customer, supplier, and population data to reveal patterns in the data that have potential to improve the marketing process and outcomes. You’ll be introduced to the processes of data mining using various tools including descriptive statistics, including SPSS and R.

Audience Evaluation (elective unit)
The concept of audiences has been broadened its meaning in recent years and is especially linked to the consumption of media and cultural productions. Audiences have been described as ‘spectators’, and most recently they are regarded as ‘consumers’ who avidly consume a variety of entertainment forms and cultural activities. This unit introduces audience research in the creative industries, aiming to evaluate how audiences play a key role in shaping creative and cultural experiences and marketing activities in contemporary business environments.

Predictive Analytics for Business (elective unit)
Predictive analytics is a domain of statistical analysis that allows an organisation to extract information from data to predict patterns and trends. This unit introduces predictive modelling and explains its application in business decisions. It focusses on a set of statistical techniques including regression modelling, cluster analysis and survival analysis.

All students choose one unit from Music: Global Industry & Futures or Cosmetics & Beauty: Global Industry & Futures or Fashion: Global Industry & Futures or Games: Global Industry & Futures or Lifestyle Goods: Global Industry & Futures

Cosmetics & Beauty: Global Industry & Futures (elective unit)
This unit explores the concept of future thinking and its influence on the global cosmetics and beauty industries. You’ll assess influence from culture and society and predict through recognition of global shifts and emerging trend manifestations. You’ll complete an in-depth study of the current macro environment, using the findings of this study to translate, validate and communicate a vision for the future of these industries.

Fashion: Global Industry & Futures (elective unit)
You’ll explore the concept of future thinking and its influence on the global fashion industry. Analysing influence from culture and society and predicting through recognition of global shifts and emerging trend manifestations, you’ll complete an in-depth study of the current macro environment and use the findings of this study to translate, validate and communicate a vision for the future of fashion.

Games: Global Industry & Futures (elective unit)
You’ll learn about the concept of future thinking and its influence on the global games industries, analysing influence from culture and society, and predicting through recognition of global shifts and emerging trend manifestations. You’ll complete an in-depth study of the current macro environment, using the findings of this study to translate, validate and communicate a vision for the future of the gaming industries.

Lifestyle Goods: Global Industry & Futures (elective unit)
You’ll the concept of future thinking and its influence on the global lifestyle industries, analysing influence from culture and society and predicting through recognition of global shifts and emerging trend manifestations. You’ll complete an in-depth study of the current macro environment, using the findings of this study to translate, validate and communicate a vision for the future.

Music: Global Industry & Futures (elective unit)
You’ll explore the concept of future thinking and its influence on the global music industry. You’ll be analysing influence from culture and society and predicting through recognition of global shifts and emerging trend manifestations. You’ll complete an in-depth study of the current macro environment, using the findings of this study to translate, validate and communicate a vision for the future.

The course is taught by practising journalists and editors with a wide range of skills and experience working for newspapers, magazines, websites, blogs, broadcast and television, having worked for titles such as:

• Time Out
• Harrods
• Selfridges
• The Independent
• Metro
• The Sunday Times
• The Guardian
• InStyle
• The Daily Express
• The Sunday Express
• Channel 4
• Topman
• Pop Magazine

Graduate employability from this course is very high, as the transferable skills acquired throughout the course open the doors to a range of different roles in the creative industries. This course enables students to continue in their careers under a variety of different roles. These could include:

• Feature writer
• Journalist
• PR manager
• Social media manager
• Stylist
• Fashion buyer

You may also like to consider further study at postgraduate level.

BA (Hons) course
BA (Hons) course with Professional Practice Year

The standard entry requirements* for these courses are one of the following:

• 112 UCAS tariff points, see accepted qualifications
• Pass at Foundation Diploma in Art & Design (Level 3 or 4)
• Distinction, Merit, Merit at BTEC Extended Diploma / BTEC National Extended Diploma
• Merit at UAL Extended Diploma
• 112 UCAS tariff points from an accredited Access to Higher Education Diploma in appropriate subject
• 27-30 total points in the International Baccalaureate Diploma with at least 15 IB points at Higher level, see more information about IB entry requirements.

And four GCSE passes at grade 9-4/A*-C including English (or Functional Skills English/Key Skills Communication Level 2).

Other relevant and equivalent Level 3 UK and international qualifications are considered on an individual basis, and we encourage students from diverse educational backgrounds to apply.  

Portfolio requirements

For these courses, we’ll need to see your portfolio for review. We’ll invite you to attend an Applicant Day so you can have your portfolio review in person, meet the course team and learn more about your course. Further information will be provided once you have applied. View more portfolio advice

BA (Hons) course with Integrated Foundation Year
BA (Hons) course with Integrated Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year

The standard entry requirements* for these courses are one of the following:

• 32 UCAS tariff points, see accepted qualifications
• Pass at Foundation Diploma in Art & Design (Level 3 or 4)
• Pass, Pass, Pass at BTEC Extended Diploma / BTEC National Extended Diploma
• Pass at UAL Extended Diploma
• 32 UCAS tariff points from an accredited Access to Higher Education Diploma in appropriate subject
• 24 points from the International Baccalaureate, see more information about IB entry requirements.

And four GCSE passes at grade 9-4/A*-C including English (or Functional Skills English/Key Skills Communication Level 2).

Other relevant and equivalent Level 3 UK and international qualifications are considered on an individual basis, and we encourage students from diverse educational backgrounds to apply. 

Portfolio requirements

For these courses, we’ll need to see your portfolio for review. We’ll invite you to attend an Applicant Day so you can have your portfolio review in person, meet the course team and learn more about your course. Further information will be provided once you have applied. View more portfolio advice

*We occasionally make offers which are lower than the standard entry criteria, to students who have faced difficulties that have affected their performance and who were expected to achieve higher results. We consider the strength of our applicants’ portfolios, as well as their grades -  in these cases, a strong portfolio is especially important.

BA/BSc (Hons) course
BA/BSc (Hons) course with Professional Practice Year

The entry requirements for these courses will depend on the country your qualifications are from, please check the equivalent qualifications for your country:

• Non-UK equivalent qualifications

Any additional entry requirements listed in the UK requirements section, e.g., subject requirements, work experience or professional qualifications, also apply to international applicants applying with equivalent qualifications.

Portfolio requirements

You will be required to submit a portfolio for review. Further information on specific portfolio requirements and how to submit your portfolio will be sent to you after we have reviewed your application. View more portfolio advice

BA/BSc (Hons) course with Integrated International Foundation Year
BA/BSc (Hons) course with Integrated International Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year

For these courses you need to have completed 12 years of schooling (with good grades) and show strong evidence of your ability to successfully complete the programme and progress onto your chosen degree.

Any additional entry requirements listed in the UK requirements section, e.g., subject requirements, work experience or professional qualifications, also apply to international applicants applying with equivalent qualifications.

Portfolio requirements

These courses don't require a portfolio.

English language requirements

To study at UCA, you'll need to have a certain level of English language skill. And so, to make sure you meet the requirements of your course, we ask for evidence of your English language ability, please check the level of English language required:

• English language requirements