Postgraduate Studentships - Search for funding opportunities.
Postgraduate Studentships - Search for funding opportunities.
Study Details: MA 1 year full-time
MA Culture, Criticism and Curation is a course directed towards critical enquiry and mindful change-making in the fields of culture, curation, art, design and creative production. To equip practitioners with tools that will enable them to actively find their way through a variety of institutional and cultural situations, the Course offers an overview of cultural history and curatorial theory alongside opportunities to acquire skills in research, writing, curating and production.
On this Course we address the present moment and pressing questions faced by cultural producers, policy makers, curators, artists and researchers. Approached through interdisciplinary and intercultural enquiry, you will learn to engage with the in-between places where new knowledge is developed via an integration of theory and practice. Through the lens of activism, we explore with you the ways in which culture, criticism and curation can contribute to change, through accumulative small steps or actions.
The curator is positioned as a figure able to act intentionally, bring in agency and make change in a variety of frameworks, within and without the world of the creative industries. Curating makes meaning and contributes new, critical perspectives on existing scenarios. The Course asks you to think reflectively—with others—about the forms that art and culture take, identify where and how hegemonies develop, keep hold and challenge them.
The Course prioritises interrelations between people as well as ideas and objects, and will help you develop your capacity to collaborate with empathy and through dialogue. Through skilling in mindfulness and active listening, you will build up sensitivity as well as working practically within networks of collaborators and audiences.
We encourage you to test and engage with emerging digital tools and communication platforms to undertake research, experiment with forms and collaborate equitably.
We recognise how new generations of professionals are prepared to redefine and renegotiate traditionally defined roles within industry, and who are keen to direct themselves proactively. The Course works with you to develop research-led, experimental, creative and critical curatorial practices to enable you to engage with and make an impact in changing situations, in professional work or through further study.
We are committed to developing ethical cultural and critical practices. To achieve this, we are working to embed UAL's Principles for Climate, Social and Racial Justice into the course.
The standard entry requirements for this course are as follows:
AP(E)L – Accreditation of Prior (Experiential) Learning
Exceptionally, applicants who do not meet these course entry requirements may still be considered. The course team will consider each application that demonstrates additional strengths and alternative evidence. This might, for example, be demonstrated by:
Each application will be considered on its own merit but cannot guarantee an offer in each case.
For fees and funding information, please see website
The course will prepare graduates to work in the creative and cultural industries and/ or for doctoral work in Humanities subjects.
Within the cultural and creative industries there is increasing demand for people who have curatorial, research and writing skills and can work within this interdisciplinary sector. Employers now expect that MA graduates will be able handle intellectual, creative and practical projects, and demonstrate an enquiring mind.
Unit 1: Curatorial Playground
Unit 1 is the entry point to the Course and is a composed of a series of intensive workshops, seminars and discussions that set the base for curatorial thought – that is, thought that emphasises the interrelations between disciplines, cultures and knowledges. The Unit is centered on hands-on experiences that get you familiarised with the atmosphere and environment of CSM as a creative space. You will learn how to respond to a creative brief and this will help you find your creative voice and set up your goals and aspirations for the year. Key themes of the Unit are experimentation, inter-cultural exchange and conversation within the cohort.
Unit 2: Collaborative Practices for Common Good
This Unit addresses the theme of collaboration through co-operation with other Masters’ courses in the college. By working co-operatively with fellow students from parallel and contrasting courses, you will experience at first hand the value of cross-disciplinary thinking and problem-solving that is central to developing a curatorial practice.
Unit 3: Curatorial Positions
Through group work, individual research and a collection-based curatorial project, this Unit helps you establish and develop a sense of your position: in relation to your subject interests and practice area, in terms of social identities and institutional spaces. This is expressed through the production of curatorial and written work. The collaborative research and learning element of the Unit helps you establish a basis of knowledge around different definitions of culture, the relationship between culture and technology and the ethics of representation, collection and preservation.
Unit 4: Curatorial Incubation
This Unit spans the summer months and is dedicated to deepening your research on your Dissertation and extending your curatorial practice by beginning a second group project, in collaboration with an external partner. It is based mostly on independent learning with support via online classes, synchronous and asynchronous. It is an essential period of independent work and student-directed study that you undertake both as an individual and in small groups.
Unit 5: Curatorial Responsibility
Unit 5’s theme of Curatorial Responsibility signals the ethical, practical and conceptual components of a well-developed curatorial practice. Your work during this unit will be dedicated to coming to define your practice through your work and the ways it sits in relation to others — your peers, your communities, your collaborators, your readers and audiences. The Unit will prompt you to reflect on your professional development and position yourself in relation to your chosen career pathway.
Important note concerning academic progression through your course:
If you are required to retake a unit you will need to cease further study on the course until you have passed the unit concerned. Once you have successfully passed this unit, you will be able to proceed onto the next unit. Retaking a unit might require you to take time out of study, which could affect other things such as student loans or the visa status for international students.
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