Careers in the Arts

Currently studying for my BA in English Literature, hardly a day goes by where I don’t hear someone say that an arts degree is unemployable. This is a myth engrained into the culture of our departments, and it’s absolute rubbish.

Last year I became student representative for Careers and Skills in the English department. Since then, I have realized that we have two major problems; deciding what we want to do when we leave university, and working out how we’re going to do it. Students tell me all the time that this university doesn’t give us enough opportunities as arts students. Whilst these opportunities aren’t always as spoon-fed as they are for other departments, they are nonetheless there.

Hardly a day goes by where I don’t hear someone say that an arts degree is unemployable. This is a myth engrained into the culture of our departments, and it’s absolute rubbish

One of the biggest fields we go into is sport – I was so surprised when I found out! How on earth can one go from analyzing Freud to working for a football team? Well, I checked on MyAdvantage, a university service which allows students to see job vacancies, careers fairs and careers-based talks, and I went along to a talk called “the business of sport”; it was genuinely eye-opening. The sports industry, like every industry, has to put itself into the public space and be communicative. That means they need advertising copywriters, editors, PR liaison people, HR people, Marketing Executives, Records Managers – people with BAs, basically. You can always find places to apply your skills, they can just be a bit challenging to find.

That isn’t to say we at Student Careers & Skills don’t do anything specifically for arts students. One thing I’m really looking forward to is the event ‘Discovering Careers in the Creative Industries’, which is on Thursday 19 November, from 6.30pm to 8.30pm in Zeeman Building. This will give you ideas about career paths and introduce you to people who can really help give your career direction; the university doesn’t want to just push you down the corporate route if that’s not where you want to be. Skills and Careers can also help you into more ‘pure arts’ careers, teaching, graduate schemes in the sector or further academia, and so on.

Going into the arts is so diverse and yet the individual has to be so focused

There are so many people who want to help you get ahead, and progress as a humanities graduate/undergraduate. Utilize their skills and time. Make an appointment with your departmental advisor, and they will make you a battle plan! They can enable you to write a killer CV and help you find contacts to go where you want to go. But you have to communicate with us. Going into the arts is so diverse and yet the individual has to be so focused, that coming to see us or emailing the Facebook page is (I believe) the best way for you to move forward. Whatever you want to do, whether it’s teaching or performance poetry; we will do our best to get you there. You just have to talk to us!