We select applicants who can demonstrate current ability and potential to:

Work imaginatively and creatively in performance and visual media:

• Engage with experimentation and invention
• Show imagination and ambition in proposals for your work.

Demonstrate a range of skills and technical abilities:

• Demonstrate spatial awareness
• Show an understanding of narrative and time-based events
• Use verbal and/or visual and/or physical media appropriately and effectively.

Provide evidence of intellectual enquiry within your work:

• Demonstrate relevant research
• Reflect critically on your learning.

Demonstrate cultural awareness and/or contextual framework of your work:

• Identify historical and contemporary performance practices
• Identify social and/or cultural influences on your work.

Articulate and communicate intentions clearly:

• Discuss your work in group situations
• Present your work appropriately and effectively.

Demonstrate commitment and motivation in relation to the subject and the degree course:

• Develop your own ideas and address project briefs
• Show willingness to collaborate
• Reflect your knowledge of this degree course.

What we are looking for

We are looking for a variety and breadth and/ or depth of work.

We are looking for a high level of engagement with projects and tasks and the ability to break away from norms, or to offer alternative interpretations.

We look for experimentation in your work, perhaps a collision of ideas and materials.

We are looking for skills in communication and management of ideas.

We are interested in how you handle time based project or medium.

We are looking for making and drawing – not just to represent but to communicate, as a way to explore ideas

We are looking for the questions you ask and the influences you follow

Communicating with you

After you have successfully submitted your application, you will receive an email confirming we have successfully received your application and providing you with your login details for the UAL Portal.  We will request any additional information from you, including inviting you to upload documents / portfolio / book an interview, through the portal.  You should check your UAL Portal regularly for any important updates and requests.

What happens next

Initial application check

We check your application to see if you meet the standard entry requirements for the course.  If you do, you will be invited to attend a full portfolio review or submit a full portfolio digitally.

Full portfolio review and interview

Full portfolio review takes place at college, normally between February and March.

If you are living outside the UK or are unable to attend the full portfolio review in person, you will be asked to submit a full digital portfolio (up to 30 pages) through UAL’s online portfolio review system.  If you are submitting a full portfolio online, we may interview you by Skype.

Please note that we do not accept portfolios by post.

We are interested in you as an individual. Our focus is on your personal interests, your creativity and your initiative in finding out about your proposed area of study. We would like to know about your favourite performers, directors, designers and artists, where you have seen their work at first hand, and how you have gathered more information about the work that interests you.

Portfolio advice

Your work should demonstrate creative development, whether for a college project or in your personal work. By creative development, we mean:

• Ideas that have originated in your own experience and research and progressed towards potential visualisation
• Ideas, visual research and experimentation are more important than finished design solutions and can be shown in 2D work, or through 3D objects
• It’s important that the creative work you include reflects and demonstrates your thinking, initiative and personal commitment to a particular project, theme or idea.

Please remember:

• The quality of the work is more important than the quantity
• Where possible, large or 3D work should be photographed and scanned
• Please organise your work by project, with supporting work presented alongside final outcomes.

How we notify you of the outcome of your application

You will receive the final outcome of your application through UCAS track.

BA Performance: Design and Practice students leave with a broad and valuable understanding of performance practice in its many forms.

Skills acquired enable BA Performance: Design and Practice graduates to become versatile practitioners in exciting and diverse contexts including theatre, film and television.

BA Performance: Design and Practice students find success as production designers, or in related roles such as director or producer, or, increasingly, in 'hybrid' roles such as designer-director or performer-designer.

BA Performance: Design and Practice graduates also apply their knowledge outside the traditional contexts, working within the fine art industry as performance artists or within the fashion industry as creative managers, video directors and fashion show designers. Or they launch their own independent collaborative ventures, creating performance in their own image.

Recent BA Performance: Design and Practice alumni activity demonstrates the breadth of student activity within the subject:

• Garance Marneur (2007): Winner of prestigious biannual Linbury Prize for Stage Design 2007. Recent design commissions: ‘Dirty Butterfly’ (Debera Tucker Green) Young Vic Theatre, London 2008; ‘Gianni Schicchi’ (Puccini), Mariinnsky theatre, St. Petersburg, 2008 ‘Turandot’ (Brecht), Hampstead Theatre, London 2009, currently designing for RSC Aut ’11 season
• Will Bock, Georgia Jacobs and Mary Pope (2005): Formed ‘Strangeworks’ collective, creators of live performance events including ‘March of the Dead’ street performance for Halloween, Hoxton, London 2008, and drawing workshops at Tate Britain 2009 – 11
• Jing Wong (2006): Co-founder of ‘Daydream Nation’, a company creating theatrical fashion events, including ‘Good Night Deer’ at the ICA Theatre, as part of London Fashion Week 2008
• Samal Blak (2009): Winner of prestigious biannual Linbury Prize for Stage Design 2009. Design Commission ‘Otello’ (Verdi), Birmingham Opera, 2009
• Jungmin Song (2007): Performance Artist making work at Shunt Vaults, Fierce Festival (Birmingham) and Spill Festival (2011)
• Nick Docherty (2008): UK Youth Theatre coordinator for National Theatre, South Bank
• Miriam Buether (2002): Recently awarded Best Design for work at the Royal Court – Evening Standard Theatre Awards. Designed ‘Anna Nicole’ for Royal Opera House – Feb 11
• Ben Stones (2004): Winner of prestigious biannual Linbury Prize for Stage Design 2007, designs frequently in West End and most recently for newly re-opened Arcola Theatre, London.

For details of the wide range of careers support provided for students, please visit our Careers support page.