UAL Pilot: Creative Attributes Framework for Enterprise and Employability

Creative Attributes Framework explains how enterprise and employability learning forms a core part of the curriculum in arts, design and media degrees at University of the Arts London (UAL).

A Higher Education Academy (HEA) funded project, the framework is currently in consultation at UAL during 2015/16 in order to test and evaluate the impact of the framework and recommendations for embedding within the curriculum.

The Teaching and Learning Exchange, in collaboration with Quality will be piloting the framework with course teams during 2015/16 to support validation, re-validation, review, and minor modifications. 

The framework demonstrates how, through our curriculum, we empower our students and graduates to develop the wide-ranging qualities, experience and behaviours that prepare them for the future and enable them to develop and sustain a rewarding professional life.

To further enhance, nurture and recognise our students’ employability, individuality and entrepreneurship, the framework sets out:

Our Values
Download the report below to read about the values that underpin how we make enterprise and employability prominent, inclusive and valued as part of a creative education.

Our Practice
Download the report below to read about attributes addressed in our curriculum that enable our students to develop and sustain a rewarding professional life.

Watch this space

A digital resource for enterprise and employability to support course teams in using, adapting and interrupting the framework for their subject will be piloted in February 2016.

If you would like to get in touch to discuss the framework, to get involved or for feedback, please contact:

Cara Lee Roth
Educational Developer
c.roth@arts.ac.uk

Background

The framework was developed through the UAL project ‘Re/Claim’ as part of funding and support from the Higher Education Academy (HEA) Strategic Enhancement Programme.

The purpose of the project was to claim and re-turn to the practices that are at the core of a creative education to understand and articulate enterprise and employability from this ‘insider’ vantage point.

Enterprise and employability is not new to the curriculum. Nor is it an addition. It is core to a creative education and to our practice at UAL. The framework balances the development of our students’ artistic endeavour and creativity with enterprise and employability learning and teaching.

Translating enterprise and employability into student learning is complex, and through the framework, we provide a systematic approach to support curriculum making.  Arts, design and media is not one subject; context of practice is vital to the interpretation and meaning of enterprise and employability. Therefore, the framework offers a considered and cohesive academic language that is descriptive (not prescriptive) and can be used to articulate and benchmark a variety of practice in curriculum delivery.

It articulates what we do well currently, surfacing good practice, ensures students know and understand they access this learning through the curriculum, and sets out an aspirational territory, in order to help us to further improve.

Download below Creative Attributes Framework for Enterprise and Employability Report (pdf)