Lighting Design, BA

at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama

Year 1: Introduction
 

• Includes a solid grounding in ‘the tools of the trade’, building confidence in the practical side of creating stage lighting and working on developing your creative responses to texts and other sources.

• You will be guided to develop ways of successfully collaborating, and working as part of multi-disciplinary creative and technical teams.

• Short production projects offer opportunities to practice the roles, so that by the summer term, you will be ready to take on a lead role on a smaller show, or assistant on a larger production.
   

Year 2: Continuing the process of building practical skills and confidence as a designer
 

• Through realised productions and speculative projects, you will work closely with students from other courses and visiting professionals

• Develop your ability to communicate, negotiate and solve problems in a team environment

• Workshops include working at height, working with electricity, programming, video design and event lighting.

• By the end of this year, you will be confident in rigging, focusing and plotting lighting for other designers, as well as for your own independent work.

• Complete at least one realised lighting or video design for a Central production.
   

Year 3: Focus on professional development
 

• You will be able to take advantage of Central’s relationships with the lighting industry, including numerous alumni and leading international designers.

• Begin to focus on your preferred career pathway.

• There are opportunities to continue to develop the skills of a contemporary lighting designer or video designer and gain a further understanding of the technologies involved.

• Projects offer experience of the managerial and creative demands faced by lighting designers on larger projects and productions.

• You will take part in an exhibition presenting a portfolio of your best work to the industry.

Our standard academic entry requirements range between 120 and 64 UCAS tariff points. You can see how many tariff points your qualifications would gain on the UCAS Tariff Calculator. International qualifications and others not covered within the UCAS tariff can also be accepted. 
 

Please note that we make lower offers (including unconditional) to exceptional candidates and those who have alternative or prior experience to offer. All candidates invited to interview are asked to bring a portfolio. Interview and portfolio are key factors in determining which applicants are accepted on to the course.

English Language Requirements

Applicants for whom English is not their first language are required to prove their English language proficiency by gaining an overall score of 7.0 in an IELTS test. We do accept equivalent English language qualifications. Applicants are advised to gain this certification as early as possible and more information can be found
 

The fees for ALighting Design, BA  may vary from £20,000 to £35,000 annually for tuition fees. The fee's prices may get higher for International Students.

Graduate employment and career pathways include:
 

Theatre
 

Including as Programmer and Assistant Lighting Designer:

• National Theatre

• Glyndebourne

• English National Opera

• Sadler’s Wells

• The Place

• Young Vic

• Royal Court Theatre

• Tricycle Theatre

• Hampstead Theatre.
   

Lighting Design

• Linbury Studio Theatre at the Royal Opera House

• Arcola Theatre

• Tricycle Theatre

• Park Theatre

• Curve Theatre Leicester

• Numerous small and medium-sized producing and receiving houses throughout the UK and Europe.
   

Site-specific work

• Goat and Monkey

• Secret Cinema

• National Youth Theatre.
   

Events and Production

• Graduate traineeships with White Light and Imagination
   

Working on events at The Royal Albert Hall, the Roundhouse, Chelsea Football Club, The O2 Arena, Geneva Motor Show and venues throughout the UK and Europe.
 

Video and Projection Design
 

Team members at:

• English National Opera

• Glyndebourne Festival Opera

• National Theatre

• Complicite

• For bands including Jess Glynne, Two Door Cinema Club, Anna Calvi and Eros Ramazzotti.
   

Concert Touring and Festivals

• Including Glastonbury Festival, Latitude Festival and V Festival.
   

Touring Lighting Designer

• Worldwide with bands such as Bombay Bicycle Club, The Streets, The Script and Sweedish House Mafia.