MA Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries

Course detail

MA Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries is a one-year full-time or two-year part-time multidisciplinary masters course. The course invites its students to apply their creative ideas to the real world. It encourages its students to become problem-finders and change-makers, who are able to function in a wide variety of professional and entrepreneurial situations.The course attracts students from a wide variety of educational and professional backgrounds.

MA Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries is a January start/December finish course. This arrangement allows us to fit eleven months of intensive study and research into a twelve-month period. The summer period is used primarily for independent study, although there are tutorial touch points during this time.

MA Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries students learn to use a full range of research processes. These include primary and secondary research, and also intensive practice in action research and in the related skills of reflection, analysis, and project iteration. Students learn to plan interventions, and to record and reflect on new evidence that they have thereby obtained. At the core of what we expect from our students is a process of engagement and testing with external partners and stakeholders. We are a multi-disciplinary course, so the subject matter of the major project is left to the student – what the course team look for is rigour and commitment in the research process.

Course dates

Spring term:
8 Jan 2018 to 23 March 2018
Summer term:
16 April to 22 June 2018
Autumn term:
24 October to 7 December 2018

Course outline

We utilise a three-step strategy to enable you to develop and apply new creative knowledge.

Unit one requires students to challenge their world view and reconsider their values, while simultaneously becoming aware of the potential of external, action-based research to uncover new questions and new levels of insight and understanding.

Students are immersed in a series of short, individual and team-based projects, designed to interrogate contemporary global agendas while using each other as primary sources of knowledge and challenge, as well as developing skills in contacting and learning from external stakeholders. Students are encouraged to give form to their conclusions in provocative and imaginative ways.

Multi- and inter-disciplinary teamwork is encouraged and a system of rotation is used to ensure that students can work with as many of their peers as possible. Projects in Unit One may be internally driven by the course, or may involve external clients and stakeholders.

Unit two requires students to define and redefine their research proposal, establish the networks they will need to use for stakeholder engagement and external verification, and demonstrate that they both understand and are able and ready to use the methodologies of action research - through creative intervention with stakeholders, reflective practice, and iterative project development and management – in order to interrogate their research question and obtain new knowledge.

Unit three requires students to complete the external verification of their research question, and their reflections on and analysis of its outcomes. The Unit comprises the completion, reflection on and ordering of the research outcomes, and the preparation of the presentation of the student’s conclusions for assessment at the conclusion of the Unit – as well as for public presentation at the Festival.

About the course

• MA Applied Imagination lasts 45 weeks full-time or 90 weeks part time over two years
• MA Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries is credit rated at 180 credits, and comprises three units. Unit One (60 credits) runs for 15 weeks full time, 30 weeks part time. Unit Two (60 credits) runs 15 weeks full time, 30 weeks part time. Unit Three (60 credits) runs 15 weeks full time, 30 weeks part time
• All three units must be passed in order to achieve the MA, but the classification of the award of MA derives from your mark for unit three only
• The difference between the two modes of study is that full time students are involved in more intensive study and, because they are not engaged in full time employment, test their ideas, research and working methods within the College environment with their peers as well as seeking out external verification and challenge
• Part-time students spend less time in formal peer interaction but are expected to test their ideas within their own professional practice as well as with each other as much as is possible. For part time students, the developmental process is less intense during the first year but timetables are constructed to provide maximum opportunity for reflection and critical engagement.

MA Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries Specification 2018/19 (PDF, 486KB)

Industry collaborations

Working with paying clients on live briefs will give you valuable commercial experience which may mean your work being taken forward for production or, if so desired, in the purchase of your intellectual property. All paid projects are conducted within a carefully developed legal framework, which includes student agreements to protect your work and help you realise its commercial value.

Once you’ve graduated, you may be picked as part of a small team to work on a live creative brief, organised by our Business and Innovation department, under the supervision of an experienced tutor. This can be a valuable first step in working professionally in a chosen discipline and has resulted in graduates being hired by clients.

Facilities

• Digital Media

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• Library

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• LVMH Lecture Theatre

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Staff

Course Leader: Richard Reynolds
Course Tutor: Richie Manu
Tutor (Full Time Mode): Lorna Dallas-Conte
Tutor (Full Time Mode): Diana Donaldson
Tutor (Full Time Mode): Cvetana Ivanova
Tutor (Full Time Mode): David Mills
Tutor (Full Time Mode): Aisha Richards
Tutors (Part Time Mode): Paul Colbeck
Tutors (Part Time Mode): Jasminka Letzas
Tutors (Part Time Mode): Elizabeth Wright
Course Librarian: Viv Eades