BA Performance Design
Our new BA Performance Design programme will equip you with the practical and imaginative tools to bring to life stage productions, live and filmed events.
BA Performance Design applications for 2025 entry will open in the Autumn term.
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About the programme
Key information:
- Art form:
- Production Arts
- Fees:
- Application Fee: £TBC GBP; Tuition Fees: See Fees section below
- Deadline:
- BA Performance Design applications for 2025 entry will open in the Autumn term.
- Level of study:
- Undergraduate
- Mode of study:
- In-person
- Contact details:
- pa_applications@gsmd.ac.uk
About the programme
Bring your creative ideas to life with this innovative new course, which will equip you with the practical and imaginative skills to create designs for stage, performances and live events. The programme blends studio-based design work with hands-on experience collaborating on a wide range of performances using our state-of-the-art facilities.
As a Performance Design student, you will:
• Develop a unique understanding of the creative, collaborative and practical elements of performance design
• Utilise our world-leading facilities to develop your performance design skills, beginning with studio-based projects and building to fully realised designs for public performance
• Undertake a research project that reflects your individual interests, values and aspirations as an emerging artist
• Explore the influence of the histories of art, design and theatre on your own identity as a performance designer
• Make connections with established professional theatre practitioners, unions and societies that support professional practice
You will develop a broad range of skills including:
• Approaches for creating concept artwork
• Scale model making
• Technical drawing (CAD)
• Life drawing and designing for bodies
• The art of presenting a design concept
• History of art and design and contemporary performance
• Active design practice: selecting costume and props, costume fittings, approaches to technical rehearsal, and creative collaboration with directors and other designers
• Understanding and exploring design parameters: budget, costings, limitations
• Instigating design-led performance projects
• Professional portfolio presentation and networking skills
Performance Design students work on a variety of different productions, filmed and live events and digital ventures, engaging with and instigating projects. The programme is aligned with the
BA Production Arts and BA Digital Design & Production programmes, facilitating connections between undergraduate students within the Production Arts department and giving you the chance to develop design skills in areas such as Video and Lighting, as well as learn about the technologies and processes needed to make a performance happen.
This programme shares the following modules with our BA in Production Arts and BA in Digital Design & Production: Personal and Professional Development 1 and 2, Contextual Studies, Associated Studies, Stagecraft & Production Process, and some Year 2 elective modules. These programmes will be going through revalidation in 2024 which may result in changes to modules offered as part of the BA Performance Design programme. Applicants will be advised of the status of the respective modules throughout the application process.
Meet our BA Performance Design team
Join us at our Production Arts Open Day on 13 June 2024
Programme Structure
In Year 1, you focus on gaining a fundamental understanding of the practice and theory of Performance Design.
- You will be introduced to the fundamentals of stage design studio practice, with opportunities to develop your conceptual and imaginative skills, alongside consideration of the practical parameters for performance design.
- You will be inducted into working in Guildhall’s theatre spaces and introduced to the fundamentals of backstage practice.
- You will be introduced to a spectrum of contemporary performance and artworks, alongside aspects of the history and theory of stage design and professional artistic practices.
At the end of Year 1 you will have a grounding in the studio-based skills required of the professional Performance Designer and be confident in creating imaginative design proposals for performance and communicating this to others.
Associated Studies
In the first year you will also take a core module called Associated Studies, which allows you to take a number of short courses in other areas of Production Arts, such as Scenic Art, Prop Making, Lighting, Sound, Video or Stage Management.
In Year 2, programme-specific modules build your confidence in your ability to realise your design proposals in collaboration with others, as well as introducing you to a range of contemporary design practice.
- You will undertake a role on a Guildhall School production in an alternative discipline based on your Associated Studies choices in year 1.
- You will undertake a major studio-based project to create a full professional design proposal and present this as you would in a professional context.
- You will make connections between the history, theory and contemporary practice of art and design and your own creative identity and aspirations.
- You will have the opportunity to practise your collaborative skills in the design and realisation of a small-scale Guildhall project, and through assisting a professional designer who may be working at Guildhall.
You will finish Year 2 having gained experience in moving your designs from the conceptual proposal stage through to realisation. You will have established connections with other programmes and practitioners at Guildhall and beyond.
In Year 3, you will focus on modules that are particular to your area of specialism, while continuing to intersect with other areas of the School.
- You will have the opportunity to instigate your own piece of work, where Performance Design leads the process.
- You will design a public-facing Guildhall School production, working with a director and other visiting professional artists, as well as students and staff on the Production Arts and Digital Design & Production programmes.
- You are encouraged to explore a range of practitioners, events and practices, while reflecting on your research, extra-curricular interests and plans beyond the programme.
- You will have an opportunity to propose, plan and execute a research project of your own choosing.
You will emerge from the programme with a range of speculative and fully realised projects under your belt, and a clear sense of your own values and individual approach to performance design. You will be an experienced collaborator, having worked with a range of practitioners and peers at Guildhall. You will have an emerging industry profile and network.
Programme Specifications
See the full programme specifications, including module specifications and assessment criteria.
Past Production Arts Projects
A site-specific installation in the Bascule Chamber beneath Tower Bridge
Moving Screens
Costume in A Midsummer Night's Dream
Building 'Barbarians': Backstage with Design Realisation
Blackpool Light Odyssey – “An epic journey of light, space and sound”
Beasts of London, an immersive multimedia exhibition with the Museum of London
Guildhall video designers worked with aerial directors/performers
Go behind the scenes of making Senseless, part of Future and Form
Installations projecting onto the façade of Waddesdon Manor
Future careers
This new programme has been designed to enable you to pursue a career as a designer for live performance, working across a wide field of disciplines and sectors. Potential careers it could prepare you for are as a set and/or costume designer, creative director, lighting or visual designer. Possible projects could be productions in theatres, immersive or site-specific work and live music events or festivals.
The BA Performance Design is a new programme, but graduates from our other Production Arts programmes have gone on to achieve employment at industry-leading organisations. Guildhall School has strong partnerships such as the Royal Opera House, the National Theatre in London, Treatment Studio (visual designers for Adele and U2), TAIT Towers and Punchdrunk. Ongoing development of this specialised programme is expected to further enhance our relationship with these employers.
Our Facilities
Our professional-standard performance venues with state-of-the-art equipment allow our programmes to keep in line with current practice and new theatre technology. Students use the School’s on-site theatres, rehearsal rooms and workshops to collaborate on major productions and a range of smaller projects and events.
The programme will be taught in a studio with design desks; workshop and production spaces; and other facilities as relevant (for example, our media/Computer Aided Design room, technical laboratory and student production office). The BA Performance Design Studio will be newly developed to launch with the programme’s first cohort of students in September 2025.
What our staff say
Good collaboration in performance design begins with a good atmosphere in the design studio - we encourage Performance Design students to build a studio community who encourage and support each other.
Susannah Henry, Interim Programme Leader of BA Performance Design
