MA Arts and Cultural Enterprise

Course detail

MA Arts and Cultural Enterprise acknowledges that we are living in a fast-changing, globalised world, which presents a great number of opportunities and challenges for cultural innovation. This Masters programme takes these changing conditions as a starting point to engage you in developing new knowledge and skills in the fields of arts management and cultural production.

The course has been developed specifically in response to an increasing need for multi-skilled individuals who can both generate the ideas for original arts and cultural events, and provide leadership for the teams that realise them. These individuals will be dynamic, responsive, fluent in public and private sectors, and have the ability to collaborate and develop networks. The course addresses a contemporary shift within the cultural economy towards experiences and events, and away from the artefact. It is a response to multiple new forms of artistic and creative practice, which demand new, hybrid forms of cultural management and organisation.

MA Arts and Cultural Enterprise begins with a definition of enterprise as engaging with projects that are new, challenging and complex. It aims to enable you to gain a unique skill and knowledge set to become an active creator in arts management and cultural production, whether as entrepreneurs, or within larger existing cultural organisations, anywhere in the world.

The course is aimed at graduates with some work experience who wish to challenge themselves by gaining a critical understanding of our world today, in order to develop innovative approaches to arts management and cultural production. Focusing on the core capabilities of CSM, and its central role in the future of arts, design and other creative industries, it will offer you insights into aspects of cultural policy and governance, an introduction to business skills and processes, and strategic planning, which will equip you to shape creative futures. It will encourage radical thinking, based on creative research, analysis, and a deep understanding of the value of the cultural economy to the wider economic, political and social environment in which it is located.

This means that to achieve the Masters qualification your learning is timetabled across 90 weeks over two full calendar years. To achieve the PG Cert takes 30 weeks’ study, over a nine-month period, and for the PG Dip, it takes 60 weeks’ study, over an 18-month period. Both PG Cert and PG Dip are offered as an exit award only.

In this mode, individual units can be undertaken over a maximum five-year registration period. Unit one is compulsory and must be taken as the initial unit. Units two to six can be taken in any order thereafter. Unit seven can be undertaken only when units one to six have been passed.

In either mode, the MA award is based solely on the achievement in unit seven.

The course has been designed to enable you to pursue your studies whilst also undertaking employment or care responsibilities. The course operates a blended-learning delivery model, combining face-to-face and online teaching.

Whilst completing units one-six, candidates will be expected to attend in person for three days (Friday afternoon – Sunday evening) approximately every 10 weeks (once per unit). During unit seven (the dissertation or live project), candidates will need to attend in person twice over an eight-month period.

The intensive face-to-face teaching takes place at CSM’s King’s Cross campus, London, which is a contemporary hub for the cultural industries. Lectures will be supported by guest speakers from the cultural sector, and experts in the field of arts management and cultural production. The weekends will also include visits to important cultural venues and events.

The advanced virtual learning environment offers candidates the opportunity to engage with tutor-led live seminars, discussion groups and webinars. Candidates are also expected to engage frequently in self-directed peer communication. The latter can help strengthen the strong networking opportunities afforded by the programme.

Course begins January 2018

Please note that teaching will regularly take place over long weekends, in evenings and outside of UAL term dates, including during standard student Easter and summer breaks.

Course structure

The course starts with Unit one: Researching Arts and Cultural Enterprise, in which you are introduced to key concepts of cultural production as well as the research, writing, analysis and evaluation skills essential for postgraduate study. You begin to work together as a group, learning to negotiate, agree ground rules, communicate and share ideas and, importantly, learn how to approach and resolve difficulty and conflict.

Unit two: Practice, Policy and Markets engages you in the macro analysis of the realm of cultural and artistic production and dissemination. It enables you to develop an understanding of cultural production in both the commercial and the public realms.

Unit three: Contexts – Local and Global Challenges looks at the impact of contemporary values and discourses on the future. It interrogates globalisation as a challenge as well as an opportunity, and facilitates an understanding of enterprise in uncertain contexts.

Unit four: Arts Entrepreneurship explores the ways in which creativity, innovation, problem solving and entrepreneurship intersect. It employs real-world examples to enable you to think about business model innovation, new markets, new experiences and services, new ways of communication and new organisational models.

Unit five: Business Models and Finance is the core business unit of the course. It introduces you to the basics of general business processes and developing strategies around short and longer-term challenges. Teaching includes theoretical approaches, and case-study-based learning.

Unit six: Focus: Social Impact and Innovation engages with the overarching principles of social responsibility, ethical behaviours, social innovation and theories of socially-engaged practices, and challenges you to form an understanding of how cultural events and activities can support engagement with innovation and innovative practices.

Unit seven: Dissertation or live personal project is the final, Masters-specific 60-credit unit, which enables you to reflect critically on theories and critical skills encountered previously in the course, while proposing new approaches to cultural production, in a self-directed dissertation or major personal project. The dissertation is an individual academic study, based on models and theories discussed throughout the course; the live project puts strategies of cultural production into practice. This unit culminates in you working together to organise an online exhibition of your work.

MA Arts and Cultural Enterprise Programme Specification 2017/18 (PDF, 619KB)

Industry collaborations and projects

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

• Library

  Find out more about our Library services.

• LVMH Lecture Theatre

  Find out more about the LVMH Lecture Theatre.

Staff

Programme Director/Co-Course Leader:Charlotte Bonham-Carter
Co-Course Leader: Andrew Marsh

Tutor:Stephanie Dieckvoss
Tutor:David Griffiths
Tutor:Paul Sturrock