Event & Promotions Management BA/BSc (Hons)
with or without Professional Practice Year
Course overview
BA/BSc (Hons) Events & Promotions Management will give you the insight and skills to run exciting events for any purpose, scales or budget.
There are thousands of events which need organising - whether it's a local charity fundraiser, a music festival, a business conference, a convention or a sporting event. This is a vibrant, dynamic sector, global in its scope, that demands adaptability and quick thinking.
Taught at our Business School for the Creative Industries at UCA Epsom, this course will guide you through how to create an event, from the initial concept through to the organisation and curation of the participant's experience, and on to the final staging.
You will learn about forward planning, venue choice, programming, equipment, experience design and the important role played by food and drink. In addition, you'll learn how to set budgets, analyse data, comply with health and safety regulations and evaluate environmental concerns.
| Length of study | 3 years full-time Or, 4 years full-time with Professional Practice Year |
|---|---|
| Campus | Epsom |
| Entry requirements | 112 UCAS tariff points |
| Course entry options | Sept 2021, Sept 2022 |
| UCAS institution code | C93 |
| UCAS code | N821 |
| UCAS code for course with Professional Practice | N823 |
Course details
Year 1 focuses on the foundations of the events management examining the development of events industry and how it has shaped culture and society, and in turn, been shaped by technology and trends.
Business Bootcamp 1: Design Thinking & Orientation
This unit is designed to introduce you to the Business School for the Creative Industries highly effective learning community and professional global network orientation as you explore design thinking.
Promotional Experiences
On this unit, you'll explore experiential marketing and the growing usage of events as a marketing approach. Today’s market is challenging and highly competitive as brands battle to win the attention of consumers.
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.
Principles of Live Events
This unit will introduce you to the fundamental guiding principles of designing and managing successful events from the generation stage to the post-event review and evaluation.
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.
Business Bootcamp 2: Research and Development
The Bootcamp is an orientation unit for all students commencing Business School programmes and is designed to build a highly effective learning community.
Live Music Industry
The purpose of this unit will be to review and discuss the structure of the live industry, identifying key companies and players, the current issues and the changing interdisciplinary relationships between live and recorded music sectors, as well as the management, organisation and promotion of a live music event.
Crowd Behaviour and Safety
This unit is aimed at exploring crowd safety, including event organisers, stewarding organisations, stadium managers, health and safety officers, and emergency/resilience planners. Those who work with crowds in these contexts depend upon knowledge of crowd psychology in order to enhance positive crowd experiences, maintain safety and security, and to manage risks.
Events and the Experience Economy
This unit will explore long lost archaic rituals such as the Eleusinian Mysteries, timeless practices which have endured such as the Gol land diving ritual performed by the men of the Pentecost Island of Vanuatu, the revival, re-appropriation and reinterpretation of ancient festivals such as the Beltane Fire Festival, the utopic reinvention of folklore celebrations such as Burning Man and large contemporary gatherings like Glastonbury Festival.
Business Seminar 2 – Business Analytics
This unit provides general knowledge about business analytics, illustrated with case studies and examples from various creative industries. In order to use the above-mentioned methods and models effectively, an understanding of underlying probability theory and statistics is needed.
Year 2 deepens your understanding of the digital marketing and technology as well as the financial and logistics of planning and organising events underpinned by contextual theories.
Business Bootcamp 3: Storytelling and Narrative
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.
Financial Management
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.
Influence & Influencers (elective unit)
This unit aims to holistically approach the subject of influence and influencer-led marketing, looking to the practical, critical and theoretical contexts surrounding this subject. We’ll begin by outlining the contexts surrounding influence – including the history of the influencer, and its contemporary applications within fashion, music and advertising.
Digital Marketing Analytics (elective unit)
Digital marketing analytics seeks to understand markets in order 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.
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, boiler plates and building compelling stories and how to pitch them.
Gamification & Marketing (elective unit)
This unit approaches the subject of gamification and marketing holistically, investigating the practical, critical and theoretical contexts surrounding this subject. The unit begins by assessing some of the more well-known intersections in this field in the forms of production, distribution, commerce and consumer experience.
Wearable Technology (elective unit)
The unit explores wearable cultures, alongside the macro and micro landscapes and how this is influencing and impacting the creative industries. It investigates how sectors are adopting, or resisting, the technology and where and how it is being used; end product or experience, production, supply chain.
Business Seminar 3: Professional Practice
You will be guided through a series of lectures, workshops and seminars to prepare you for your industry experience; self-diagnosis will be in respect of your interests, strengths, areas for development and your future career ambitions; building and creating your network, how you can make a positive contribution to industry and how you see yourself and others.
Business Bootcamp 4: Exploring Innovation
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.
Events Design 1
From concept to experience, this unit will explore the different facets of events design, how to inform decisions and deliver high impact and high-value events. Borrowing from design thinking, behavioural economics and social psychology, you will learn to craft eventscapes that transcend the brief.
Supply Chain Analysis & Management (elective unit)
This unit explores supply chains and the impact they have on business. Effective supply chain management minimises cost, waste and time in the production cycle. Case studies will explore and discuss the 5 stages of supply chain management - plan, source, make, deliver and return.
Behavioural Studies and Consumption (elective unit)
This unit aims to introduce students to the theory and practice of consumer behaviour and consumption. You will explore how perceptions, learning, memory, personality, and culture influence consumer behaviour and how consumption changes by cultural and subcultural influences.
Professional Placement (for students not on Professional Practice Year pathway)
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.
Creative Innovation (for students on the Professional Practice Year pathway)
This unit is designed for you investigate the real-world, relevant issues that are impacting on your Industry, whilst challenging well-established theory and/or principles which these contemporary issues conflict with.
Industry Lecture Series (for students on the Professional Practice Year pathway)
The series will include industry expert lectures, group workshops and group working, in order to test and explore industry sectors.
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.
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.
Year 3 provides an opportunity to explore the cutting edge of the events and promotions industry as a global business. You will develop your own major degree project, undertake trips to events and promotions and prepare for your career in professional practice.
Business Bootcamp 5: Research & Methodologies
This bootcamp provides you with an opportunity to understand how effective research can support your studies and methodology is about how you find the answers to your questions and the methods that you use. We shall discuss the different methods by which you can elicit findings whether quantitative (informing by data) or qualitative (informing from opinions). In most of today’s industries ‘data’ is king.
Events Design 2
Building upon the principles and concepts of Events Design 1, Event Design 2 examines further event design as a holistic strategy to connect people and ideas and catalyse action. Exploring different tactics, you will investigate how to engage with stakeholders in a co-creation process at different stages from the Ikea effect to gamification.
Cosmetics & Beauty: Global Industry & Futures (elective unit)
This unit explores the concept of future thinking and its influence on the global cosmetic & beauty industry. You will be analysing influence from culture and society and predicting through recognition of global shifts and emerging trend manifestations. Your work involves 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 your industry.
Fashion: Global Industry & Futures (elective unit)
This unit explores the concept of future thinking and its influence on the global fashion industry. You will be analysing influence from culture and society and predicting through recognition of global shifts and emerging trend manifestations.
Games: Global Industry & Futures (elective unit)
This unit explores the concept of future thinking and its influence on the global games industry. You will be analysing influence from culture and society, and predicting through recognition of global shifts and emerging trend manifestations.
Lifestyle Goods: Global Industry & Futures (elective unit)
This unit explores the concept of future thinking and its influence on the global lifestyle goods industry. You will be analysing influence from culture and society, and predicting through recognition of global shifts and emerging trend manifestations.
Music: Global Industry & Futures (elective unit)
This unit explores the concept of future thinking and its influence on the global music industry. You will be analysing influence from culture and society, and predicting through recognition of global shifts and emerging trend manifestations.
Creative Business Start-up (elective unit BA course)
In this unit you will learn the process of creating and building a new business venture. You will explore a range of case studies and identify and evaluate the role of creativity in business start-ups.
Data Mining for Marketers (elective unit BA/BSc course)
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.
Audience Evaluation (elective unit BA/BSc course)
This unit provides an introduction to 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.
Business Seminar 4: Strategy & Decision Making
This unit provides knowledge about strategic Decision Making for Management and 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
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
In this final unit, you will apply all the learning throughout years 1,2 and 3 to create a distinctive piece of work for your degree project. Your final portfolio will implement a series of outcomes that evaluates and analyses the ideation of your concept.
Tuition fees
The course fees per year for 2021 entry are:
- UK students - £9,250
- EU students - £9,250 (see fee discount information)
- International students - £16,950 (standard fee)
- International students - £16,270 (full early payment fee)
If you opt to study 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.
The course fees for 2022 entry will be available here shortly.
Additional course costs
In addition to the tuition fees please see the additional course costs for 2021 entry. The details for 2022 entry will be available here in due course.
Further information
Find out more about our course fees and any financial support you may be entitled to:
These fees are correct for the stated academic year only. Costs may increase each year during a student’s period of continued registration on course in line with inflation (subject to any maximum regulated tuition fee limit). Any adjustment for continuing students will be at or below the RPI-X forecast rate.
Course specifications
Please note, syllabus content indicated is provided as a guide. The content of the course may be subject to change in line with our Student Terms and Conditions for example, as required by external professional bodies or to improve the quality of the course.
Facilities
The UCA Business School for the Creative Industries, based at our Epsom campus, is the first of its kind in the UK. There’s dedicated studios and study areas, digital media suites equipped with Macs and PCs which are programmed with specialist software including Adobe Creative Suite, Dreamweaver and After Effects. There’s a modern library with a wealth of books and thanks to its location, many collaborative opportunities with students from other courses.
Lecture theatre, UCA Epsom
Business School studios, UCA Epsom
Library, UCA Epsom
Business School studios, UCA Epsom
Course connections
Our BA/BSc Events & Promotions Management course will enable you to pursue a range of careers including:
- Events Management
- Venue Management
- Promotions Management
- Marketing Executive
- PR Executive/Account Manager
- Advertising Agent
- Postgraduate Study.
Your training on this course will prepare you for a wide range of postgraduate courses. We offer postgraduate opportunities in our Business School and we will help you find the correct course for you and support you in your application should further study be for you.
Entry requirements
The standard entry requirements* for this course are:
One of the following:
- 112 new 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 new 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 A*-C and/or grade 4-9 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.
*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.
To view the equivalent entry requirements for your country please select it in the list below.
Don't meet the international entry requirements or English language requirements?
You may be able to enter the course through the following entry courses:
Pre-sessional English courses in the UK or China
This course doesn’t require a portfolio. If you receive an offer, you’ll be invited to attend an Offer Holder Webinar where you can meet the course team and learn more about the course. We welcome students with a broad range of A-level subjects, as well as students with appropriate Art & Design Foundations or BTEC/UALAB diplomas which allow you to demonstrate your ability to research, evaluate and produce creative solutions.
Apply now
UK applications
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Apply for full-time study - starting September 2021:
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Apply for full-time study - starting September 2022:
International & EU applications
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Apply for full-time study - Year 1 - starting September 2021:
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Apply for full-time study - Year 2 - starting September 2021:
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Apply for full-time study - starting September 2022:
When to apply:
We are still accepting applications for 2021 entry - get your application in now.
If applying directly to us, you can apply throughout the year but we recommend you apply as early as possible so you have time to arrange accommodation and visas.
For more information visit our how to apply pages
UK Applications
-
Apply for full-time study - starting September 2021:
-
Apply for full-time study - starting September 2022:
International Applications
-
Apply for full-time study - starting September 2021:
-
Apply for full-time study - starting September 2022:
When to apply:
We are still accepting applications for 2021 entry - get your application in now.
If applying directly to us, you can apply throughout the year but we recommend you apply as early as possible so you have time to arrange accommodation and visas.
For more information visit our how to apply pages
Get in touch