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Students working with motion capture, a cinema camera and colour grading in a media studio
School 8

School of Creative Technologies and Immersive Media

Culture as a technology industry

Other systems retired drama, animation and fine art as standalone crafts, and on the evidence they were right to do so. Forward University does not repeat that mistake in reverse by abandoning creativity. It rebuilds the creative disciplines as high value technology industries, in which African stories, languages and heritage become globally traded digital products. This is the School that keeps human imagination at the centre of an intelligent economy, and it is unsentimental about the difference between a creative career and a creative hobby: every programme here is assessed on shipped work, paying audiences or paying clients.

Departments
6
Degree programmes
12
Credit units
1,486
Award levels
5

Source: Curriculum Compendium, Path One, page 805.

Departments and degrees

6 departments, 12 degree programmes

Every degree below is published in the Curriculum Compendium with a full term-by-term and block-by-block curriculum, programme learning outcomes and an employment thesis.

Department of Immersive Media and Extended Reality

Virtual and augmented reality, spatial computing, volumetric capture and immersive storytelling.

2 degrees
Department page

Department of Intelligent Audiovisual Production

Generative production pipelines, virtual production, sound engineering and distribution technology.

2 degrees
Department page

Department of Design Intelligence and Product Experience

Product design, service design, industrial design and design systems for intelligent products.

2 degrees
Department page

Department of Games, Simulation and Interactive Systems

Game engineering, simulation for training, serious games and interactive learning environments.

2 degrees
Department page

Department of Cultural Heritage Computing and African Language Technologies

2 degrees
Department page

Department of Sound and Music Technology

Recording, mixing and mastering, live sound and acoustics, music production and audio software, run with intelligent audio tooling throughout.

1 degree
Department page

Cross departmental, School of Creative Technologies and Immersive Media

1 degree
Department page

Open now · First accreditation wave

Programmes accepting applications

Showing 12 of 12 programmes

BA (Hons)Hybrid · 3 years (6 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Bachelor of Arts in Design and Visual Systems

Every product, service and brand now competes on design, and design itself has become a technology discipline of systems, tools and data as much as of craft. The region trains graphic artists for a world that now wants product designers, design systems thinkers and designers who can work fluently ...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
BA (Hons)Hybrid · 3 years (6 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Bachelor of Arts in Film and Screen Production

African screen content is in unprecedented global demand, streaming platforms are commissioning from the continent, and the constraint is no longer distribution but production capacity: too few people who can make screen work to the technical and storytelling standard the global market now expects. ...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
BSc (Hons)Hybrid · 3 years (6 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Bachelor of Science in Computational Linguistics and African Language Technologies

This programme replaces standalone foreign language and translation degrees, whose market general machine translation has largely collapsed, and reconstitutes the discipline on the other side of the technology: students here build the trans...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
BSc (Hons)Hybrid · 3 years (6 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Bachelor of Science in Design Intelligence and User Experience

This programme replaces standalone graphic design and fine art craft degrees, in the specific recognition that routine visual production is automating rapidly while the demand for people who can decide what should be built, for whom, and wh...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
BSc (Hons)Hybrid · 3 years (6 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Bachelor of Science in Game Design and Simulation Engineering

Games are the largest entertainment industry on earth and the most demanding consumer of real time engineering skill, and the same engine and simulation competence sells directly into training, defence, mining, aviation, health and educatio...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
BSc (Hons)Hybrid · 4 years (8 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Bachelor of Science in Games and Real-Time Media

The games and real time media industry is larger than film and music combined, its technology now drives simulation, training, visualisation and the immersive web, and Africa is almost entirely absent from its production side. Games and real time media is a demanding technical discipline of ...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
BSc (Hons)Hybrid · 3 years (6 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Bachelor of Science in Immersive Media and Extended Reality

Spatial computing has moved from novelty to industrial tool: it now trains surgeons, simulates factories, sells property, teaches mechanics and preserves heritage. The technical skills required are scarce everywhere and effectively absent i...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
BSc (Hons)Hybrid · 3 years (6 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Bachelor of Science in Intelligent Audiovisual Production

This programme absorbs and replaces standalone film, drama, animation and general mass communication degrees. Its premise is that the audiovisual industry has become a technology industry: virtual production, generative pipelines, remote co...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
BSc (Hons)Hybrid · 4 years (8 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Bachelor of Science in Sound and Music Technology

African music drives global culture, yet most of the technical value, the production, engineering, mastering and the technology itself, is captured elsewhere for want of local expertise. Sound and music technology is a rigorous technical discipline combining acoustics, signal processing, software ...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
PhDHybrid · 3 to 5 years · Intake August 2027

Doctor of Philosophy in Computational Creativity

Doctoral research at the intersection of computation, culture and creative practice, including generative systems, African language and heritage technology, immersive experience and the evaluation of creative machine output. The programme a...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
MAHybrid · 12 months (2 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Master of Arts in Digital Cultural Economy

African cultural output travels globally while the value overwhelmingly accrues elsewhere, because the rights, distribution, data and negotiation expertise sits elsewhere. This programme builds the executives, policy leaders and institution...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
MScCampus · 18 months (3 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Master of Science in Creative Artificial Intelligence and Immersive Systems

Generative and real time systems have changed creative production faster than any institution has adapted, and the people who understand both the technology and the craft are exceptionally scarce. This programme builds the technical creativ...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis

Coming in future intakes

Planned, not yet accredited

These programmes are designed but will not open until the relevant accreditation wave is complete. We list them so the pipeline is visible, not to imply you can apply.

  • BA Film and Screen Production · Future intake
  • BSc Sound and Music Technology · Future intake
  • BA Design and Visual Systems · Future intake
  • BSc Games and Real-Time Media · Future intake
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