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Creative careers

Build up your contacts and work experience through placements and live projects. Take advantage of opportunities to network with creative professionals. Get inspired by our graduates and consider your own creative career.

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We focus a great deal of time and attention on developing and supporting your employability.

There are so many opportunities to take advantage of to start developing your creative career. From placements and work experience – including working with our Sunderland Creatives Agency – to internships and exhibitions, you’ll get the chance to build up your experience and develop your professional portfolio as you study.

Keep up to date with the latest industry trends and skills through your lecturers, many of who are practitioners, bringing their industry insights into classroom. You’ll even meet influential industry-leaders through their network.

Engage with more industry professionals through our guest speaker and Creative Lives programmes. Recent guest speakers who have joined us on campus include Alec Maxwell, Digital Creative Director at British Vogue, and Craig Mitchell, a maker of ceramic figures. The Creative Lives programme is a series of regular talks delivered by creative professionals who live, work, and thrive in the arts and creative industries. Through these talks, you'll gain an insight into the creative process and career routes of regional and nationally renowned practitioners at different career stages.

Explore our employability opportunities and start to consider your creative career today.

Sunderland Creatives Agency

Get involved with projects for real clients through our Sunderland Creatives agency. The agency combines the skills and talents of students with the expertise of Sunderland-based creative agency, Creo Comms, to support local businesses, entrepreneurs and charities with brand development. You could get involved with projects including graphic design, photography, illustration, video and animation, and much more.

Fashion student Eve Howarth smiling to camera, stood next to a mannequin

Placements and work experience

All our undergraduate Art and Design courses offer a placement or live project, providing you with real-life opportunities to experience the creative industries during your studies.

As well as being beneficial for personal career development, placements and projects can lead to all sorts of exciting outcomes. While on placement at Breeze Creatives, Fashion Design and Promotion student, Eve Howarth (pictured), got the chance to curate and plan an exhibition, showcasing denim garments. Read more about Eve's story.

An interpretation panel explaining the process of erosion on Sunderland's coastline

Robson Creative Internship Award

The Robson Creative Internship Award is an opportunity that provides real-world, paid project experience for Art and Design students in the second and third year of their undergraduate degree. You are required to apply for and complete a specific 100-hour creative project, paid in line with minimum wage.

Through the Internship Award, Erica Donnelly, who studied BA (Hons) Illustration and Design, worked on a project with The National Trust at Souter Lighthouse and The Leas to raise public awareness of the coast as an ever-changing environment. She met with National Trust staff at the lighthouse before going on to design an interpretation panel explaining the process of erosion on the local coastline. Visitors can find the panel next to the England Coast Path on The Leas, just north of Souter Lighthouse.

Exhibition opportunities

You’ll also get first-hand experience of exhibiting your work throughout your studies, culminating in the end of year Degree Shows in your final year. Not only do exhibitions provide you with an opportunity to showcase your work, but they also enable you to develop an understanding of how to fund and secure exhibition spaces, curating and how to critically select work to show a public audience.

The University recently opened the Sunderland Creatives Gallery which is located at National Glass Centre. The new gallery is a fantastic resource, offering you the opportunity to further develop your exhibition skills in a professional, public-facing gallery.

The gallery’s first exhibition featured work by graduates from the years 2020 and 2021, such as Iona Stock (pictured) who graduated in 2020 from BA (Hons) Artist Designer Maker: Glass and Ceramics. She says, “It’s a great space to have open to the students and will definitely be used to its full potential.”

Graduate destinations

Get career inspiration from our Art and Design graduates:

Explore

Five reasons to study fashion

Do you love fashion? Do you dream of becoming the next top fashion designer, stylist or fashion journalist? Good news, here at the University of Sunderland we offer two distinctive courses that will provide you with the key skills you’ll need for a successful career in fashion: BA (Hons) Fashion Design and Promotion, and BA (Hons) Fashion Journalism.

How a masters in Visual Practice can help you develop as a creative professional

Are you an artist looking to develop and sustain your creative practice, while growing your professional profile? Introducing MA Visual Practice – an innovative course that aims to encourage original ideas, creativity and imaginative thinking, in a relaxed and supportive artistic community.

Three reasons to choose animation

Do you have a passion for drawing, creating characters and story telling? Are you curious about how to create an animation? Do you dream of working on the next big, animated movie or game? If you’ve said yes to any of those questions, you may be interested in studying BA (Hons) Animation and Games Art here at the University of Sunderland.