Design Studies
Postgraduate
In London
Description
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Type
Postgraduate
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Location
London
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Duration
1 Year
Suitable for: Our students come from all over the world and we celebrate and include their diverse cultural knowledge in our quest to create alternative paradigms. Students draw on each others professional and diverse cultural experience to provide critical and constructive insights that open up new ways of thinking and doing.
Facilities
Location
Start date
Start date
About this course
Honours Degree; evidence of experiential learning equivalent to a degree; or 3 years relevant professional experience.
All classes are conducted in English, so you will be required to have a fluent understanding of the language. Minimum scores for entry on to a postgraduate course are as follows:
* IELTS (International English Language Testing System): 6.5
* TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language): hand written test: 568-587, computer based test: 226-240
Reviews
Course programme
Content
We are called Design Studies but in reality our passion is to foster and empower students to apply their imagination. In order to understand how we do this it is necessary to understand why we do it.
So let's start with some of the key questions that motivate us to believe that a Masters education in Applied Imagination is an essential starting point for new lives and better worlds:
- Is design a redundant word?
- Why does sight determine our ways of doing and our values at the expense of the other senses?
- Why does design make the problems of the planet worse rather than better?
- Why do "creative" people always think they know best?
- Why do people who think and act like bureaucrats lead the future?
- Why do people who control resources always think they best?
- What is the difference between having an imagination and applying it?
- What do we need to learn in order to use our imagination?
The last question is the starting point for our programme and like everything we do there is no single answer. But here is the some of the knowledge that we have gained over the last eighteen years of working with some the world's best students.
- We need to learn how to learn.
- We need to understand that other disciplines are not the enemy but are potential collaborators.
- We need to learn how to develop our imagination but also how to communicate our inspiration in ways that make sense to people who are risk averse.
- We need to work with others in ways that challenge and extend all of us.
- We need to learn how to develop out ideas beyond the superficialities of style and genre so that they are truly capable of making us and the world a better place.
Structure
We constantly evolve our programme but in its simplest form it provides a structure that encourages and supports dramatic change and a growth of personal and collective knowledge.
We begin by recruiting from a wide a range of disciplines. We are thus able to create a microcosm of the problems and potentials that inhibit or facilitate positive change.
We create teams from a multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural student body to encourage the sharing of skill and knowledge. We deliberately reflect contemporary realities by the creation of challenging scenarios that confront, provoke, and ultimately unite our students in ways that enable them to recognise the value of shared endeavour.
Once our students understand that applying the imagination is not the prerogative of the lone genius, we move on to concentrate on framing questions that will enable individuals to acquire a mastery of their own subject.
The final phase of the course is all about the achievement of the right level of knowledge and understanding to enable students to convince even the most sceptical that they have truly achieved a mastery of their research sphere.
This ultimate goal is achieved by a carefully strategized combination of imagination and application.
While no prior craft skills are needed, students develop artefacts that give dimension to their question. This allows them to test that question by taking it to the communities that will be best able to advise them of its veracity. In this way a student is able to pursue a number of motivations in parallel, for example research can be used as an introduction to future collaborators, clients, or employers.
We encourage students to frame their own questions and confirm their own motives. We support and ultimately measure progress against the priorities of imagination and application.
Dedication
1 year, full-time.
Additional information
Career opportunities: Economic meltdown, eco disaster, globalization, obesity, and a number of other concerns all offer dramatic confirmation that we need new ideas and new ways of thinking and doing. Perhaps we are entering the age where finally we can move beyond theory and meta-management? Whatever the scenario that troubles or inspires- you are the best solution. The investment that you make in yourself is the capital that your post MA career will be built upon. The future is literally yours to make and this is what our students tend to do.
Contact person: Geoff Crook
Design Studies