Making Contextual Studies More Visible: The Creative Endeavours Symposium at the University of South Wales

Contextual Studies needs to be more visible in universities to encourage student engagement. Every year final year and MA students in the Faculty of Creative Industries, at the University of South Wales would write a critical paper only never to reread it after submission. The paper will discuss how the annual Creative Endeavours Symposium was founded in 2015 to address this. It will consider how the symposium enhances the learning experience and provides students with the opportunity to showcase their work. The paper will also argue that the event’s transdisciplinary nature allows students to learn from other disciplines and establish professional contacts for the future. A discussion point will be how the symposium increases employability by improving transferable skills by providing the opportunity to try out presentation situations prevalent in the workplace environment. Finally, how the symposium facilitates student progression by enabling students to witness final year and postgraduate research will be considered.