Dec-08: Praise from our External Examiner

John Deeney was also one of our external examiners over the past three years - here is an extract from his final report for us.

"Drama, Performance and Theatre Arts provision at Staffordshire University is now fully established with a strong regional and national reputation.

Drama Students at Staffordshire are given the increasingly rare opportunity to work within models of professional practice in their performance and production modules the standards achieved here are generally excellent with some students demonstrating pre-professional levels of attainment.

In addition to the provision of outstanding practice-based opportunities, the teaching of dramaturgy, theatre history and theory offers original and challenging entry points to the range of materials covered.

It has been both instructive and a pleasure to be an external examiner for Drama and Theatre Arts at Staffordshire University over the past years. I would particularly like to commend the diverse expertises and dedication of the academic staff, which, over the years, has clearly encouraged numerous students to attain levels of excellence that are on a par with he highest achieving students nationally. I should also like to commend the academic staff's concern for the progress of all students where matters of personal welfare were concerned.

Drama and Theatre provision at Staffordshire University offers students a rather unique combination: the integration of models of professional theatre practice with sustained academic enquiry."

Nov-07: Course praised again by External Examiner

Rob Swain is an experienced professional Theatre Director, he is also the Programme Director for the MFA Theatre Directing course at Birkbeck, University of London. He has been the independent external examiner for Staffs University's Drama, Performance and Theatre Arts BA(Hons) award for the past three years. here are some extracts from Rob's final independent report for the University.

"As in previous years, the students demonstrated a high level of commitment to all areas of the productions: acting, design, stage management, lighting and marketing.

It is clear that that the teaching encourages a strong sense of ownership of the production by the students and this results in high levels of commitment, discipline and artistic endeavor. In short, it leads to students taking responsibility for their own creativity, individually and as a group.

There were also some excellent pieces of [written] work and some clearly very well-informed and intellectually strong students and the playwriting module continues to produce some startlingly original and arresting work.

The strength of this programme is its combination of practice and theory, and of process and product, The staff are to be congratulated on devising assessment modes and strategies that allow a fair and accurate means of assessing performance, understanding and reflective analysis.

The course is attracting more students each year. This reflects the uniqueness of the course in offering a combination of a sound theoretical understanding of theatre combined with practical experience: it offers a range of experiences of drama and possible career paths without being entirely theoretical or vocational. The course continues to attract a range of professional artists to contribute to the teaching, and this, taken together with the range of professional and academic backgrounds of the permanent staff is a real strength of the programme.

It is quite clear that the students on this course have a great deal of respect and admiration for the teaching staff and that the teaching staff encourage students to develop their own creativity and a commitment to the work through a mutual respect and a shared ethos about the course. This is coupled with the benefit of experienced professionals teaching on the programme and excellent facilities. As a practice-based course led by practitioners it is clear that the course fosters a sense that this is a place of work, and all the sense of ownership and responsibility that goes with that, as well as being a place of study provided for the students.

I have been the external examiner for three years an I am ending my term. During this time the physical facilities have improved remarkably, not only in the main studio but also in the adjacent buildings. It is a credit to the award team and must be one of the reasons they have been able to sustain the integration of practice and theory while expanding the range of modules and student numbers. They have also forged important links with local theatres, enabling important industry placements at the New Vic and Regent and the use of the broader local cultural ecology as a resource and inspiration. (documentary theatre is an example).

It is clear that this course is offering a combination of theoretical and practical modules that offers wide study choices during the course and wide career path choices at the end of it and this is attractive to potential students.