COURSE
CURRICULUM
NON LINEAR is a free, practical foundation course for the creative and digital industries. Written and codelivered by further and higher education specialists together with industry partners, the programme focuses on a mix of stackable creative habits and practices, processes and skills that are the anchor point for an enjoyable career.
NON LINEAR is underpinned by 6 key methods:
Participate - Engage, understand, shape community
Purpose - Your motivations, your drive, your ambition
Process - Technical skills development (creative computing, content creation)
Practice - Apply, test, improve, repeat. In the classroom and in industry
Play - Create, fail, have fun
Pause – Reflect, evaluate, rest
Participants (you!) will graduate with a combination of broad industry experiences and be ready to tackle the everyday requirements of the commercial creative landscape. You will also develop a portfolio piece that deepens a craft and technical skill - reflecting who you are creatively.
You will work both collectively and independently, exploring the dynamics of the professional ecosystems involved in delivering high-quality work, while at the same time defining and refining your own unique voice and creative ambitions.
Each participant will be supported through peer group sessions, accountability partners and will have access to an industry mentor, who will sit alongside the specialist careers support team at A New Direction.
The programme will run Monday 17 November 2025 – Friday 27 February 2026 with course activity predominantly taking place Monday – Wednesday. Hosted at the Good Growth Hub in the Queen Elisabeth Olympic Park in Stratford and at University of the Arts campuses spread across London, the course blends in-person workshops with virtual learning. The course is split into 3 distinct chapters.
Chapter 1: Foundation
Culture & Participation
This first segment of the course will drill into Participation and Purpose. Activity aims to build engagement and shape the culture of the cohort and collaborators – our employer partners. Chapter 1 will set the scene by exploring the norms and behaviours of the industry—what’s expected, its peculiarities, and the key skills required. It will also examine how participants align their lived experiences with industry expectations. Masterclasses from industry partners will explore creating content with AI tools, understanding roles in production and how to try and fail with workshops from the Failsafe Collective who are part of A New Direction.
Chapter 2: Craft x Education
Content Creation and GenAI
As the delivery partner for this chapter, the University of the Arts Creative Computing Institute will provide technical insights into creating content with the support of AI tools. This will include learning how to code, craft digital experience and exploring machine intelligence.
Participants will have choice to refine portfolios and build a web platform and practice digital skills to an employer brief. Details are:
Week 1: What is Generative AI
This week introduces you to the fundamental terms and concepts required to work with Generative AI systems for creative production. You will be introduced to a range of free and paid services to use for GenAI experimentation.
Week 2: Prototyping – Static
During week 2 you will be experimenting with the use of GenAI systems within a creative prototyping workflow. We will cover low-fidelity sketching, LLM feedback loops and other text-to- image and image-to-image techniques such as upscaling, editing and style referencing.
Week 3: Prototyping – Motion
This class introduces you to video generation and animation pipelines using Generative AI, focusing on techniques such as camera control, transitions, VFX and lip syncing.
Week 4: Coming together.
This class encourages students to display and discuss their work-in-progress shorts to share ideas, techniques and processes with each other. Critical discussion will be held around students’ experience of working with LLMs for creative production and the relationship to future work in industry.
Assessment
Students will produce a final 1-2 minute short film created using Generative AI tools and techniques. The final document should evidence the use of GenAI for storyboarding, asset production and realisation. This will be assessed.
Chapter 3: Industry
Practice
The final chapter will collaborate with a core group of employer partners providing practical work experiences for students to apply what they have learned in the first two chapters. This is about testing out a range of junior roles including:
- Running assistant roles to learn about product assistant opportunities.
- Creative assistant roles to learn about brand campaigns and UX insights.
- Freelance opportunities including content creation and videography.