Location

Farnham

Start date

Sept 2026, Sept 2027

Duration

3 years full-time

UCAS logo

UCAS codes

Course: W266
Institution: C93

+1

Foundation year

Optional extra year of study

+1

Placement year

Optional extra year of study

Entry requirements

Check qualifications

Ceramics & Glass at UCA

Where fire, material, and curiosity shape who you become as a maker on our BA (Hons) Ceramics & Glass degree course.

Facilities you won't find elsewhere

Our workshops are among the most comprehensive at any UK university – a fully operational glass hot shop, lampworking stations, kilns for casting and fusing, potters' wheels, hand-building spaces, glaze technology rooms, and 3D clay printers. You can also access wood, metal, digital fabrication, and printmaking, opening up cross-disciplinary possibilities.

Find your material. Find your direction

In first year, you'll work across both ceramics and glass, building foundational skills side-by-side. From second year, the choice is yours – go deep in one, or explore what happens when you bring both together. This is a course built around your curiosity – there's no pressure to decide before you're ready, and no house style to follow. Your vision is all that matters.

A close community that makes you braver

Working in small groups, this is an intimate, supportive environment where you know your tutors well. Open-plan workshops mean skills are shared between students and creative confidence builds through daily studio culture. Your peers across the wider crafts programme become collaborators, critics, and friends – and that sense of community is something our students consistently value.

Real-world practice, built in from the start

Professional development starts from day one. You will have worked on live briefs with New Ashgate Gallery, created site-specific work with Surrey Hills Arts, and visited working studios – from the pottery supplying Gail's Bakery to commercial glass-blowing workshops. By graduation, you'll have a professional portfolio, real industry networks, and the creative confidence to pursue a dream career in crafts.

Two minute stories


Discover the stories of our Crafts students

What you'll study

The content of the course may be subject to change. Curriculum content is provided as a guide.

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

Maker + Material: 30 credits
You will be introduced to fundamental making skills and material knowledge specific to the discipline. You will learn core techniques, processes, and material properties through hands-on learning, experimentation, and critical reflection. Emphasis is placed on developing your confidence in practical skills while beginning to understand how your material choices shape creative outcomes.

Career Catalyst: Skills & Capability: 30 credits
In this module you will focus on building creative, technical and digital capability aligned to professional standards. You develop transferable skills through practical projects, feedback and reflection, strengthening professional literacy and confidence. This module prepares you to apply your skills effectively across disciplines, laying the foundations for collaboration, industry engagement and complex creative challenges.

Process + Potential: 30 credits
This module introduces production-led approaches to craft practice, focusing on repetition, duplication, and variation as tools for iterative design. You will develop technical skills, deepen material understanding, and embed sustainability and ethical awareness into your workflows. Through thematic research and experimentation, you will explore how production methods shape ideas and outcomes, planning and managing resources to create resolved artefacts that communicate concepts visually and materially.

Hybrid Practices: 30 credits
You will develop creative practice through experimentation with analogue, digital, and hybrid techniques. You will extend skills and ideas developed elsewhere in the course by applying them to new material, technical, or contextual situations, exploring how tools, processes, and formats shape creative outcomes. Through studio-based experimentation, you will test and iterate work across physical, digital, spatial, and/or screen-based approaches, with an emphasis on learning through doing, adaptation, and reflection rather than producing resolved outcomes. The module encourages consideration of context, audience, and presentation, alongside ethical, sustainable, and inclusive creative decision-making, supporting progression into more independent practice.

Material Matters: 30 credits
This module positions material research as a core skill in contemporary craft. You will investigate physical properties, cultural significance, and sustainable potential through making and critical inquiry. Emphasis is placed on experimentation, risk- taking, and the productive role of failure, as you progress toward resolved artefacts with conceptual and technical ambition. Through iterative practice and reflection, you will develop an informed, ethically aware approach to material selection and use, culminating in a coherent body of work.

Career Catalyst: Communities & Influence: 30 credits
This module emphasises collaboration, participation and real-world impact. Working with audiences, communities and professional contexts through live briefs, projects and engagement opportunities. This module develops professional agency, teamwork and networks, helping you understand how creative practice creates value, influence and opportunity within industry, civic and global contexts.

Audience + Identity: 30 credits
During this module, we will support you as an emerging maker to define and propose your individual creative direction and position your practice within relevant audiences and contexts. You will develop a coherent body of resolved practical work through research, design development, and critical reflection. Building on your prior learning, you will iteratively prototype and test ideas, producing artefacts that demonstrate conceptual clarity, technical resolution, and contextual awareness. Through reflective writing, you will articulate the relevance of your practice within the wider field.

Festival: 30 credits
This is a module that prepares you for professional practice through the planning and/or delivery of public-facing creative work, applying critical analysis, audience engagement and sustainable principles to help define and test your creative practice.

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 your 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.

Please note: If you are an international applicant, you will need to enrol onto the course ‘with Professional Practice Year’. It will not be possible to transfer onto the Professional Practice Year after enrolment

Creative Research: 30 credits
This is a module that challenges you to investigate questions or themes through advanced, critical research and/or practice, communicate your findings effectively and evaluate how they shape your own, distinctive creative work.

Career Catalyst: Futures & Direction: 30 credits
This module supports your transition beyond graduation by focusing on professional identity, positioning and future direction. Consolidating learning through portfolio development, research and career planning you will prepare for employment, freelance practice or further study. The module develops autonomy, confidence and resilience, equipping you to navigate and shape your future professional pathways.

Major Project: 60 credits
Your final module, that brings together the knowledge, skills and behaviours you have learned to develop research-informed, critical and sustainable work that defines your practice and readiness for next steps after graduation.

This course is designed to offer you (if eligible) the opportunity to study part of your degree aboard at a UCA partner university, while still earning credits towards your UCA degree.

For more information please visit the Study Abroad section

Integrated foundation year

  • Independent study: 72%
  • Scheduled teaching: 28%
  • Maximum percentage of scheduled delivered online: 20%

Year one

  • Independent study: 72%
  • Scheduled teaching: 28%
  • Maximum percentage of scheduled delivered online: 20%

Year two

  • Independent study: 74%
  • Scheduled teaching: 26%
  • Maximum percentage of scheduled delivered online: 20%

Year three

  • Independent study: 76%
  • Scheduled teaching: 24%
  • Maximum percentage of scheduled delivered online: 20%

Professional placement or International year (if undertaken)

  • Independent study: 98%
  • Scheduled teaching: 2%
  • Maximum percentage of scheduled delivered online: 100%

Please note: these details are for 2026 entry and could be subject to change for other years of entry.

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.

Upcoming webinars

We offer a range of webinars throughout the year that you may be interested in.

You can also view recordings of all previous sessions through the UCA webinar archive.


Fees & financial support

Tuition fees - 2026/27

  • Integrated Foundation Year: £9,790
  • BA course: £9,790

If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee, for 2026/27 this is £1,955. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during your Professional Practice year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this.

Government guidance indicates that tuition‑fee caps will rise annually with inflation from 2026, subject to legislation, so tuition fees are likely to increase each year of study. 

Tuition fees - 2026/27

  • Integrated Foundation Year: £9,790 (see fee discount information)
  • BA course: £9,790 (see fee discount information)

If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee, for 2026/27 this is £1,955. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during your Professional Practice year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this.

Government guidance indicates that tuition‑fee caps will rise annually with inflation from 2026, subject to legislation, so tuition fees are likely to increase each year of study. 

Tuition fees - 2026/27

  • Integrated Foundation Year: £18,000
  • BA course: £18,000

If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, for 2026 you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee of £3,490. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during your Professional Practice year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this.

The fees listed here are correct for the stated academic year only, for details of previous years please see the full fee schedules.

UCA scholarships and fee discounts

At UCA we have a number of scholarships and fee discounts available to assist you with the cost of your studies.

Financial support

There are lots of ways you can access additional financial support to help you fund your studies - both from UCA and from external sources. Discover what support you might qualify for please see our financial support information.

Additional course costs

In addition to the tuition fees there may be other costs for your course. The things that you are likely to need to budget for to get the most out of a creative arts education will include books, printing costs, occasional or optional study trips and/or project materials.

These costs will vary according to the nature of your project work and the individual choices that you make. Please see the Additional Course Costs section of the Course Information Document for more details of the costs you may incur.

Find out what's included in your tuition fees.

Ceramics & Glass career opportunities

We enjoy close links with a range of professional organisations who are able to benefit our students in the form of work experience and deeper collaborations. We work with a range of Worshipful companies and other organisations who are able to benefit our students in the form of bursaries, awards, seminars, workshops, commissions and competitions. Our students have also taken part in competitions with the Lighting Industry Association and the British Art Medals Society. Other links include:

  • Worshipful Company of Glaziers and Painters of Glass
  • Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers
  • Bullseye Glass of America
  • Gaffer Glass UK
  • 318 Ceramics
  • The Crafts Study Centre
  • Grayshott Pottery
  • Froyle Tiles

As well as study abroad/international year opportunities, a European study trip is organised each year and is open to all year groups.

The course at Farnham is the UK’s representative of ISCAEE (International Symposium of Ceramics Art Education and Exchange). Every two years staff and students visit an institute for a symposium. Students exhibit their work and deliver lectures alongside their professors. These are all published in ISBN publications. They experience demonstrations from experts and cultural visits. Countries visited include China, Japan, Korea and Turkey.

Many of our graduates become self-employed designers and makers, setting up their own businesses and also taking freelance commissions. Others can go on to work in a number of different roles, including:

  • Pottery designer
  • Teacher/Lecturer
  • Art technician
  • Ceramics instructor
  • Ceramics manufacturer

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


What our Ceramics & Glass students say

“I always felt like I was a ceramics rebel at UCA, ignoring typical ‘rules’ of ceramics. I gained the foundational skills and modes of thinking there that were so important in shaping how I think about my practice today, particularly things like my relationship with risk... [The faculty and visiting artists] both challenged me and supported me when I needed it."

Read Ben's story Chat to UCA students

Ceramics & Glass entry requirements

For both the BA (Hons) course and Integrated Foundation Year course we will need to see your portfolio, see the portfolio requirements section for more details.

 

Select your country to find the equivalent requirements

Portfolio requirements

For both the BA (Hons) course and the course with the Integrated Foundation Year we will need to see a portfolio.

  • UK applicants: We will invite you to attend an Applicant Day so you can have your portfolio review in person.
  • International applicants: We will ask you to submit an online portfolio. 

In your portfolio we’re looking for 12 to 20 examples of your current work, that showcase your level and range of achievements. 

Please see our Ceramics & Glass BA (Hons) portfolio requirements and read our advice on creating a strong ceramics and glass portfolio.

UCAS applicants should also check our UCAS personal statement guide for Ceramics & Glass applicants.

Full portfolio requirements and advice

Apply to BA (Hons) Ceramics & Glass

Please use the following fields to help select the right application link for you:

UCAS codes

  • UCA institution code: C93
  • Three year degree: W266
  • Plus professional practice year: W267
  • Plus integrated foundation year: W26A
  • Plus integrated foundation year and professional practice year: W26B

BA (Hons) Ceramics & Glass key statistics

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