MA Arts Administration & Cultural Policy: Music Pathway

This module will address a range of issues relevant to cultural policy and practice in the UK and other European countries. We will discuss the relationship between cultural production and policy and deal with issues of ‘what is culture’ in different cultural contexts and countries. The module has two distinct elements: the first will deal with post-war arts policy and practice within the UK, exploring the main developments that have contributed to the evolution of current policy. It will examine the interrelationship of the many functions and responsibilities of the Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS), the Arts Councils of, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and their regional offices, and how policy is managed at a national, regional and city level. This section of the module will also map the relationship of the ‘cultural industries’ to the economy of access, accountability and cultural/national identity will be explored as well as specific areas of arts and tourism, arts and regeneration, arts education and the globalisation of culture. In general the module will concentrate on policy in relation to the performing arts although reference will be made to visual arts and the heritage sector. 

The second section of the module will provide an introduction to cultural policy models and cultural policies in other European countries, and the structures and priorities that govern arts support. It will look in particular at the situation in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland as well as the specific issues facing arts policymakers in Central and Eastern Europe. Reference will also be made to the role of the European Union in cultural policy development.

 
Through presentations, discussions and group work, considers a range of strategies and practical tools and processes that can be used in a range of disciplines and cultural contexts.

This is a non assessed module aimed to develop your skills.

This module considers the ethical and operational issues involved with fundraising, taking you through both fundraising processes and the development of strategy, from research, approach and delivery to monitoring and evaluation.

This module is not assessed and is aimed to develop your skills.

In this module you will have the opportunity to discuss with senior members of the cultural management profession how policies are reflected in their organisations. To deliver this module the programme works with some of our ‘Partners in Learning’.

This module will introduce students to models of management and professional practice appropriate to arts organisations. It will examine the relationship between arts management practice and the culture in which that practice is situated. The module is in two parts, the first through presentations and seminars will equip students to develop a critical approach to both general management policy and practice and to practice has been developed to meet the characteristics and requirements of the arts sector. Students will be introduced to key ideas in organisational management from Weber to Handy and Belbin and current writing on leadership. Students will also be introduced to different forms of legal structures for organisations and basic issues relating to employment.

In the second part through undertaking a placement with an appropriate arts organisation students will be able to observe, account for and analyse contemporary management practice. Placements will take into account the particular specialised interests of students. Students will prepare a placement report that concentrates on evaluating the appropriateness of management policies and practice in relation to the organisation's stated mission. Assessment through a placement report will concentrate on analysing and commenting on the ‘culture’ of management in the organisation framed by an understanding of theory organisational culture. Work placements while being tailored to student needs and that of the host organisations will be of roughly 3 months duration for 2-3 days a week. 

Normally work placements relate to particular projects within an organisation therefore the most appropriate level of attendance can be negotiated with the organisation on a case-by-case basis with tutorial support. As the course enjoys considerable goodwill within the profession there is normally a suitable placement to develop the interests of each student. A further period of placement may be available at the end of the taught section of the course. Care is taken to match the individual with a suitable organisation, in relation to their overall academic ability (reading, writing and speaking). All students submit an application and shortlisted candidates will be interviewed. You will be participating in the organisation and therefore representing them so they have to be assured you can communicate well. 

Please Note

We cannot guarantee a placement with any specific arts organisation, but we take you through a supportive process to gain a placement with an appropriate arts organisation. Care is taken to match the individual with a suitable organisation, in relation to their overall academic ability (reading, writing, and speaking). All students submit an application and shortlisted candidates will be interviewed. You will be participating in the organisation and therefore representing them so they have to be assured you can communicate well.

This module will introduce you to a model for producing a business/strategic plan for an arts organisation. This is the key document required by all arts organisations, particularly those within the subsidised sector and those wishing to join it. It is currently common practice to write a business plan that considers a three-year period, which is then rolled forward on an annual basis. It is a document that should have an external and internal purpose (i.e. be suitable to send to funders, businesses, banks etc), in addition to being a reference point for staff, and board members. It should refer to all aspects of an organisation’s activities, including the artistic and educational programming, management and staffing, location and resources, finances, marketing and development.

All students will write a Dissertation on an aspect of Arts Administration and Cultural Policy. You start preparing your dissertation in term one with sessions on study skills. These are followed by a series of seminars, primarily with practitioners, which introduces you to key issues of how policy is implemented in practice. Sessions are normally two hours long, initiated by a presentation that outlines the history, remit and policy of an arts organisation followed by a discussion on the key areas of current concern. You will then be able to discuss (in timetabled discussion groups and on Virtual Learning Environment forums) and expand on the issues raised and make connections with the policy areas studied in Cultural Policy and Practice (CP&P). These seminars also introduce you to a range of specialist practice that is only briefly covered in CP&P, such as reminiscence theatre or gallery education programmes.

Writing the dissertation will draw on areas studied throughout the three terms. You are encouraged to explore current issues through research, analysis and debate and will be supported by tutorials. You are also encouraged to be resourceful in researching areas where there is little published material and interviews with practitioners and policymakers may be a primary resource.

This explores contemporary approaches in ethnomusicology. The focus is on contemporary theoretical issues in the field, although current concerns will be situated within the history of ethnomusicological discourse. The module will address a range of topics and issues, such as globalisation and diasporas, the “world music” phenomenon, ethics, urban ethnomusicology, cognitive approaches, musical experience and phenomenology, music technology, and issues of gender, sexuality, and ‘race’. During the module, you will gain familiarity with the connections between ethnomusicology and related disciplines such as anthropology, and with debates concerning disciplinary boundaries within music studies.

This module does not require prior knowledge of ethnomusicology. 

This module offers an overview of the formative debates in musicology over roughly the past three decades. Through a series of thematised readings each week, students will be introduced to a variety of issues that have permeated recent musical discourse, including gender, sexuality, race, canon, technology, performance, analysis and notation.

As well as investigating topics in art music, popular music and ethnomusicology, this module will consider other fields that have influenced musicological discourse, such as anthropology, philosophy and sociology. Throughout, students will be invited to debate the ways in which the history of music has been written: how certain music and musical cultures have entered into or been excluded from canons; how recent writing on music has attempted to redress such exclusions; and what the future of musicology might hold.

With this in mind, students will be encouraged to write essays that innovatively apply the concepts and issues explored during the module to a topic of their own devising. They will also complete two or three short reviews of a mixture of recent musicological articles and presentations given in the Music Research Series. Students should come away from this module not only with a firm understanding of the field, but also with the methods by which it has been (and is being) researched.

Through lectures, discussions and tutorials – including reference to core theoretical concepts in sonic art as well as current thinking concerning studio-based composition and artistic practices using sound – the module develops a theoretical framework for practice. Pivotal historical developments in the application of audio technologies in sonic art are presented, placing compositional techniques in their wider context. The issues and genres considered include: theoretical underpinnings of musique concrète, elektronische musik, futurism and fluxus; interactivity and live electronics; silence and noise; post-digital aesthetics; sampling and plunderphonics; utterance and text-sound composition; audiovision; acoustics and architecture; perception and interpretation; acoustic ecology and phonography. The factors that gave rise to these issues and genres and the artistic results are considered. This understanding provides a basis for experiment and critical evaluation through creative work and subsequent theoretical investigation. 

In the twenty-first century, scholars and performers of music no longer have to rely on published scores, but can work directly from digitized originals or create their own editions.

This module delivers the expertise to do both, and illuminates the processes, both historical and contemporary, through which scores are prepared. Students are trained to work with scholarly resources and all manner of music sources, from manuscripts to digitized autographs to early recordings. Skills are absorbed in lectures and workshops that explore different editorial methods, and the rationales and biases that undergird them. Private tours to London collections, and seminars on cutting-edge editorial projects, complement lectures and workshops. Students learn to command specialist terminology, to assess an edition’s quality, and to use and critique sources of all kinds.

The course offers provides a series of case studies addressing entrepreneurial practices and modes of production. You will cover essential topics in music management and music in the creative industries. 

You will deal with creative sector issues and case studies within this discipline, taking into account the cross-over with other areas. As well as studying producing companies, this also includes consideration of creative agencies. 

Topics covered include: ensemble management; orchestral management; concert programming and curatorial work; education and public outreach; film, TV, music for games; record production and record labels; copyright, PRS, publishing; social media and music; freelance perspectives: marketing and publicity.

This module provides a critical appraisal of the philosophical, conceptual and methodological limitations of existing approaches to researching popular music, whilst exploring ways of overcoming these and finding new research directions. The module surveys a cross section of studies that have been conducted in different contexts, with varied methodologies informed by contrasting agendas: This includes scholarship focussing separately on industries and production, texts and meaning, reception and consumption and scientific research on music. You think across disciplinary boundaries, informed by an oft-repeated maxim; that innovative and significant research entails the art of asking the right questions. Hence, you ask new questions of old research, and set up new questions for potential future research. The module will complement musicological techniques by drawing from methods deployed across the arts and humanities, business and the sciences when exploring methodological techniques for researching such questions.

This module explores the development and deployment of critical discourses on popular music, focusing on the ways in which commentators – journalists, academics, bloggers, consumers – have used words to represent sound and to construct systems of meaning and value for the music they have loved and hated. Spanning the 20th-century but focusing on present-day practices, the module will address discourses on jazz, rock, dance and pop in which commentators have attempted to articulate the excitement and anxiety these musics inspired as they came into being. Although much critical work has been done in print, the module will also consider how other media (radio, television, the internet) have shaped their own descriptive and evaluative practices. Students will be encouraged to think about the relationship between critical listening and critical languages; between popular and academic discourses and modes of evaluation; and about the changing place and status of the popular music critic and scholar. 

To take this module you should be familiar with various styles of popular music, and have the ability to research and write in a critical manner. Knowledge of music theory is neither assumed nor necessary.

Everyone has philosophical ideas about music. They tend to come to the fore when we want to dismiss certain works as ‘noise’ (the ‘definition’ problem), or bypass historical context by claiming an interest in ‘the music itself’ (the ‘ontological’ problem), or assert a belief in the profundity of music, or the embodiment of emotions in music, or the parallels between music and language (these are semantic and epistemological problems). They arise too when we defend ourselves by saying that all values are relative (except, apparently, that one, which is supposed to be a universal truth), and that non-western cultures and subcultures have every right to make a claim on the notions of art and the aesthetic.

And philosophical issues also lie at the heart of the ethical decisions that arts administrators and politicians have to make about the distribution of funds in a world of scarce resources – should we allow ourselves to weep at Tosca whilst ignoring tragedy in the streets?

This module provides a gathering-point for discussion and examination of the many concepts that play a role in the ways in which we define, understand, evaluate and justify music. Its aim is to say things so clearly that we can tell when we are talking nonsense, and it does this by analysing ideas systematically in relation to the writings of important figures in the field (see the bibliography on learn.gold).