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BA (Hons) Acting

Develop as a performing artist working towards a career as an actor and creative practitioner ready to enter the worlds of stage, film, television, radio, and digital media.

BA (Hons) Acting at Norwich University of the Arts offers an unparalleled creative environment for the actor in the United Kingdom. Spotlight graduate membership from the first term of the final year will place you in the best position to promote yourself to the industry as you complete your training.

As an actor at Norwich, you will not only be expertly trained as a performance artist who serves to represent the human condition within the roles you play, but also as an individual practitioner able to create your own work across a myriad of artistic disciplines and media.

For BA (Hons) Acting we are not only concerned with ‘how’ to act but we also question what acting as a discipline ‘does’ and explore new possibilities for the craft as we engage across various media, styles and forms.

Personal toolkit of skills

Joining the BA (Hons) Acting course enables you to perform in a variety of situations and be equipped to go into many areas of film, television, radio and digital media, and work across several platforms.

You will become an instigator and facilitator of future trends and developments in your field. Our course has been designed to build on your existing skills, not just in acting, but also to acquire transferable skills of research, critical thinking and independent study.

As you explore embodied live performance you will be encouraged to experiment with different live and recorded settings and gain skills across various mediated technologies through sound and camera work.

Master performance techniques

You will graduate with your own personal toolkit of skills, learned as part of a hybrid delivery — in the studio and digitally through diverse acting training methods such as those of Batson, Chekhov, Hagen, Meisner and Stanislavsky and the voice training practices of Berry, Bryon, Linklater and Rodenberg.  

The embodied performance training at Norwich integrates voice, movement and acting, examining practices that are designed to aid you to access your full emotional and creative instrument.

Alongside this intensive training, you will be encouraged to explore and experiment across different live and recorded contexts while gaining skills across various mediated technologies through sound and camera work.

You will collaborate with our other screen-based courses in film, animation, visual effects and games while you develop your own links with industry in line with your chosen career trajectory.

Career preparation 

Professional development is an important aspect of all courses at Norwich and is taught throughout your studies. By your final year, your professional preparation will be tailored to your preferred career path. For Acting this will include: 

  • A Spotlight Graduate membership
  • Headshots 
  • CV writing 
  • Audition and interview skills 
  • Website development 
  • Grant writing skills 
  • Networking 
  • Showreel 

In the first term of your final year you will be eligible for Graduate Spotlight membership. This extra support will further your knowledge and provide extra opportunities to help you take your first steps into the industry after university. It’s a stamp of professionalism that puts you in the best position to promote yourself to the industry as you complete your time with us.

As a trained actor graduating from this rich environment, you will be well placed to not only get work as an actor within more conventional contexts such as stage, film and TV, but you will also be equipped to create new work innovating performance practice(s) at the edges of the specialism.  

The transferable skills and stage craft you will acquire will open a range of career opportunities within the acting profession and wider industry, where communication skills are in high demand.

Course information

All courses run as a blend of on-campus and digital teaching and learning, and follow current UK government safety advice. Applicants and students will be notified directly if any changes need to be made.

Typical career paths include:

  • Actor
  • Performance Artist
  • Researcher
  • Personal Assistant
  • Sales and marketing
  • Promotional work
  • Modelling

You’ll also get specialist creative careers advice from our Business and Employability Team to help support you as you plan your career.

Course Information

Institution Code: N39
Course UCAS code: W410
Course length: 3 years
Sandwich courses: Creative Professional Development (1 year, Level 5 diploma), or Creative Computing (1 year, Level 5 diploma), available between years 2 & 3

A / AS Levels – GCE
GCE A/AS Levels 3 A-level qualifications at grades BBB. Where candidates are not taking 3 A-levels, NUA will consider combinations of A-level/AS-level and other Level 3 qualifications.

BTEC Extended Diploma (QCF or RQF)
Distinction, Merit, Merit in an art, design or media related subject

BTEC Diploma (QCF or RQF)
Distinction*, Distinction* in an art, design or media related subject

T Levels
A T Level in any subject with overall grade Merit or above

Access to Higher Education Diploma
Pass

International Baccalaureate Diploma
A minimum of 27 points

NUA welcomes applicants of all ages from all backgrounds. Your application will be primarily assessed through interview and audition so even if you have no formal qualifications or do not meet our typical offers it can still be worth applying.

If you are studying at the time of your application and your audition is successful, it is likely that you will receive a conditional offer.

If the qualification that you are studying is not shown, do not worry as we are able to accept other pre-entry qualifications as well as combinations of different qualifications. Please do contact our Student Recruitment Team if you have any queries.

2023/24 University fees for new entrants

Norwich University of the Arts will assess students’ tuition fee status using the guidance provided by the UK Council for International Student Affairs

Students from the UK or Ireland and EU students with ‘Settled’ or ‘Pre-Settled’ status will be charged ‘Home’ fees if they meet the relevant residency requirements.  They will usually be eligible for a tuition fee loan from the UK government, meaning that they won’t have to pay Norwich’s tuition fees upfront.

Students who do not meet the necessary residency requirements will usually be charged ‘Overseas’ fees and will not be eligible for the UK government tuition fee loan. Since 2021/22, this includes new entrants from the EU, EEA, and Switzerland who do not have ‘Settled’ or ‘Pre-Settled’ status, because the UK has now formally left the EU.

Fee status Course Annual fee
Home Undergraduate degree (full-time three and four year degree) £9,250
Overseas Undergraduate degree (full-time three and four year degree) £18,000

For Home undergraduate students starting in 2023, inflation may be applied to your fees in later years, if the UK government were to increase the fee cap beyond the current limit of £9,250 per year. If such an increase were to apply, we would confirm this in advance to you of each academic year, and we would limit the increase to the maximum allowed by the Office for Students.

For Overseas undergraduate students starting in 2023, inflation will be applied to your fees in later years. We will confirm this in advance to you of each academic year, and we will limit the increase to no more than the Office for Students’ recommended inflationary measure, which is RPI-X. RPI-X is calculated by the Office for Budget Responsibility. In setting fees for the following year, we will use the Office for Budget Responsibility’s RPI-X forecast for quarter 3 of the relevant year.

See our Fees and Funding page for further information which is also available in a downloadable format.

Financial support for UK students in 2023

Tuition fee loans and loans for living costs are usually available to UK and some EU students, as well as non-repayable Norwich University of the Arts bursaries based on family income. Find out more about applying for funding.

All students have an opportunity to spend a year, between the second and third year of their course, enhancing their employability options through a Level 5 Diploma.

These courses are offered in Creative Professional Development; a structured programme of input sessions and work-based learning, and Creative Computing; designed to build the foundation skills in coding and software design that are in high demand in the digital and creative industries.

Lecturers

Jef Hall-Flavin
Tanya Roberts

Recent Awards

Top 10 for
Teaching Quality

by the Times and Sunday Times 2022

Top Two UK
Creative Arts
University

by The Complete University Guide 2024

GOLD-rated
University

the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF)

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