MA Arts in Social Contexts

Master

In Glasgow

Price on request

Description

  • Type

    Master

  • Location

    Glasgow (Scotland)

  • Duration

    1 Year

To develop a student's skills in critical analysis and academic research, and to provide opportunities for them to apply these skills in the practical application and study of aesthetic practice as a social act. Suitable for: Arts graduates. Practising professional arts workers and practising artists with training to first degree level or equivalent. Practising arts workers without any formal qualifications but with demonstrable and quantifiable experience in the field. Youth Theatre Leaders, social workers, youth leaders or educators wishing to extend their arts practice within existing working contexts.

Facilities

Location

Start date

Glasgow (Glasgow City)
See map
100 Renfrew Street, G2 3DB

Start date

On request

Questions & Answers

Add your question

Our advisors and other users will be able to reply to you

Who would you like to address this question to?

Fill in your details to get a reply

We will only publish your name and question

Reviews

Course programme

MA Arts in Social Contexts

Introduction

The 21st century demands new ways of thinking about the arts, culture and creativity. This new thinking, whether in formal or informal learning, must help the people of Scotland become active and reflective participants in society and in their own learning.

(Scottish Arts Council, 2006)

This course is a response to these concerns which foreground issues of access, participation and partnership. The programme draws from a critical and activist tradition of participatory, celebratory and community oriented practice which seeks to demystify the role of the artist as privileged creator and to deconstruct the distinctions between the roles of artist and spectator.

The course seeks to create a multi-disciplinary learning community in which the student is supported towards developing an informed and socially-engaged working practice coupled with an understanding of new ways of analysing and critiquing their on-going involvement in the arts. Students will have the opportunity to develop advanced and systematic understandings of their field of study supported with practical skills in research methods while at the same time maintaining and enhancing their own professional arts practices.

Independent study and reflective practice is at the heart of our learning community and this course is structured around intensive periods of study comprising self-directed activity, block weeks, evening and weekend sessions designed to facilitate a flexible response to a student's needs so that it can therefore be undertaken in either full-time or part-time modes facilitating the incorporation of a student's existing and ongoing professional work into the student's programme.

In fact, one of the distinctive features of the Programme structure is a flexibility of choice in relation to both content and context that encourages students to study a wide range of cultural institutions, forms and practices, but also enables them to specialise in specific areas of their own choice. Current and recent projects include the creation of a community gospel choir; applied theatre in criminal justice settings; story-telling sessions with pre-school children and their parents; multi-disciplinary arts sessions in schools; youth theatre workshops and production work; arts in health care; Forum Theatre work with people living with epilepsy; field research into a comparative study of models for effective arts provision in urban and rural environments with Culture & Sport, Glasgow and Community Learning & Regeneration, Argyll & Bute Council; participatory, touring theatre utilising virtual reality, and holographic imagery.

The structure of the Programme therefore encourages students to interrogate their own practice as active and reflective practitioners towards greater professional autonomy. The Programme is designed to support students in developing broad-based, systematic and advanced understandings of the theories and historical underpinnings of their chosen field, and to acquire practical skills in research methods, coupled with significant opportunities to extend and consolidate personal practice in a variety of contexts.

Course Details

In detail, the Programme structure can be divided into two sequences of activity.

The first represents the specific aims of the compulsory introductory core modules comprising the first 60 Programme credits (Post-graduate Certificate level) which are to give students, with diverse practical and intellectual backgrounds and skills, a firm grounding in the different approaches to the analysis, making and evaluation of aesthetic practice, and its relationship to the specifics of context and audience. These practical and theoretical explorations are complemented by structured activities to help students develop essential library research skills in the gathering, organisation and deployment of evidence, data and information derived from a variety of primary and secondary sources. These first modules culminate in a student initiated and directed practical project in a context of the student's own choice.

The second reflects the level of choice open to students via the structure of the next 120 Programme credits (Post-graduate Diploma/MA levels). Here, again the student is free to choose the content and focus area of their main project work but they are also required to make a structured choice from within a set of Elective modules designed to enable students to deepen their knowledge in a focused exploration of particular aspects of a specialist field of study and at present students can select from the following areas:

  • Arts in Education
  • Theatre for Youth
  • Arts in Criminal Justice Settings
  • The range of Electives on offer is under constant review and new Electives will be offered as a perceived demand is identified.

From this point in the Programme onwards a student can link their pattern of study with the themes and content of the Elective modules and thereby progress towards a named degree route in these areas e.g. MA Arts in Social Contexts/Theatre for Youth etc. or should the student wish to graduate without linking their qualification directly to the focus area of the Elective module then they would be free to pursue other suitable project possibilities towards an award of the generic MA Arts in Social Contexts degree.

The final modules of the Programme are therefore centred on student choice and give opportunities for a student to demonstrate a broad understanding of artistic phenomena, and of a particular sub-field of the discipline at advanced level; and to produce a substantial piece of practice-led research on a topic of their choice.

MA Arts in Social Contexts

Price on request