The chances of you becoming a great storyteller and filmmaker by just sitting in a classroom listening to lecturers talk for hours are not good. Instead, our thinking is, the quicker we get you out there, in the real world, the quicker you start to see how stories are shaped by locations and then the quicker you will become a mature filmmaker.

By teaching in different locations, we offer a special learning experience, with an exciting and innovative blend of taught and practical sessions that take place at a variety of venues including cafes, churches and shops, bringing you closer to where stories are told. Our practice-based modules are taught in condensed two or four-week blocks one after another, mirroring the production process.

We also do not teach software or cameras in the traditional way either. Instead, workshops prepare you for the creative industry by teaching you within job roles and on location. You will learn what it means to be a producer, a director of photography or a first assistant camera through to directing short drama pieces. All this is supported by teaching staff and technical demonstrators.

To learn how to communicate stories well, you need to understand and experience life. You need to experience the world with all its beauty, quirks, and complexities head-on. This means a mix of philosophy, psychology, communications, and maybe even a little quantum mechanics. To help with that, we offer an exciting and intensive blend of cross-discipline teaching and intense practice sessions. You will be challenged to take your learning from the classroom to out there in the real world - this is where the teaching really begins.

We are also one of the few UK Film Schools that offer our students the opportunity to run a film festival. The Copper Coast International Film Festival is a Swansea College of Art UWTSD student-run film festival that attracts interest from around the world, giving an insight into the wider film market and an understanding of what it takes to make an award-winning film. We are now in our fifth year and still going strong. 2022 will see an extra special festival, the best of the best: a retrospective of the first five years.

So here at UWTSD Swansea College of Art, you will be offered a student-focussed learning environment offered nowhere else. You will learn storytelling in all its forms over a coffee in a café, or a script reading in a graveyard, church, moor, beach… Location teaching and location learning are special. Our philosophy is simple — if you never leave the classroom, you will always remain a student and although we have never met, we know that you are not going to university to graduate as a student filmmaker, but as a professionally minded filmmaker, ready to conquer the world.