Performing Arts

Create bold, original performances on our performing arts degree. You’ll collaborate, experiment, and push creative boundaries in a thriving artistic city.
Performance can provoke change, spark conversation, amplify untold stories, and bring people together through unforgettable shared experiences. BA (Hons) Performing Arts is a dynamic, practice-led degree where creativity, collaboration, and experimentation are at the heart of everything you do. You’ll explore what performance means to you while developing the practical, creative, and professional skills needed to thrive in today’s evolving creative industries.

Whether you’re passionate about acting, dance, live art, directing, devising, choreography, or writing, you’ll be encouraged to take creative risks, think boldly, and produce work that reflects your artistic identity.

As part of this course, you’ll:


• Create bold, original performance work through hands-on workshops, rehearsals, live projects, and collaborative production



• Develop your creative voice across performance, movement, writing, directing, choreography, and live art



• Experiment with contemporary boundary-pushing performance techniques



• Learn from practising artists and industry professionals with real-world creative experience



• Undertake a professional placement in your second year to gain invaluable industry experience



• Showcase your work to artists, producers, programmers, and public audiences at the Leeds School of Arts annual festival



From technique classes and collaborative devising to public performances and professional placements, this course prepares you to become a creative, adaptable, and socially engaged practitioner.

Find out more

Study in Leeds – your creative playground
Leeds is a city powered by creativity, culture, and collaboration. With its vibrant network of independent theatres, dance companies, festivals, galleries, live art events, and grassroots performance spaces, the city becomes an extension of your studio. You’ll be surrounded by opportunities to experience inspiring live work, build professional connections, and become part of an exciting artistic community.

Build industry experience
In your second year, you’ll step into the professional world through an industry placement designed to expand your experience and creative network.

You could work with theatre companies, festivals, arts organisations, or community projects in the UK or abroad. Previous students have completed placements with Company Chameleon in Manchester, BMotion Festival in Italy, and Sheffield-based theatre company Third Angel.

Learn from practising artists
Your tutors are active practitioners working across performance, theatre, dance, live art, and creative production. Their professional experience shapes teaching that’s ambitious, industry-informed, and connected to the realities of today’s arts sector.

Collaborate with creative partners
Through partnerships with organisations such as Compass Live Art Festival and Yorkshire Dance, you’ll engage with artists and creative professionals shaping contemporary performance practice.

Develop your voice in specialist facilities
You’ll rehearse, experiment, and perform in professional-standard facilities designed to support your creative work. This includes specialist studios used by renowned organisations such as Northern Ballet and Yorkshire Dance, alongside dedicated spaces within our £80-million Leeds School of Arts building.

Why study the BA Performing Arts course at Leeds Beckett University?
- Gain real-world industry experience through professional placements and live projects


- Learn from practising artists and experienced creative professionals


- Take part in masterclasses, workshops, and guest talks from visiting creatives


• Collaborate with leading arts organisations, festivals, and cultural partners



• Access industry-standard performance and rehearsal facilities

Curiosity needs thinkers, makers, and dreamers. It needs you!

Leeds Beckett believes that when unlike minds come together, incredible things happen. That’s why they don’t just teach; they collaborate, challenge and inspire.

Their courses are meticulously designed, combining practical experience through work placements with a vibrant location at the heart of one of the UK’s largest student communities. Boasting a top 10 UK ranking for both course quality and student life (Uni Compare 2026) and a prestigious five-star QS rating, LBU sets the standard for excellence.

The university prioritises student wellbeing and stands among just seven universities nationwide to earn the University Mental Health Charter Award - proof of their unwavering commitment to advancing mental health and wellbeing.

All of this is why 98% of Leeds Beckett students and graduates would recommend studying at the university to a friend (Uni Compare, 2026 reviews).