Why Leeds?
With great music venues, culture, shopping, and parks - we've got it all. Leeds city centre has been named one of the Best Places to Live in the UK*.
*The Sunday Times Best Places to Live Guide, 2026
Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Undergraduate BA (Hons)
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:
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.
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.
Still thinking about your uni choices? Discover Uni has official information to help you decide. They provide statistics for courses taken from national surveys and data collected from universities about their students.