MA Arts Administration & Cultural Policy

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.

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 module will explore Disability Theatre in the UK, focusing on the role that theatre and drama play in the development of a more inclusive society. Students will study the context in which Disability Theatre takes place and develop an understanding of the distinction between the “social” and “medical” models of disability and how this impacts on practice. The module will examine how a range of theatre and performance practices can address the barriers faced by people with physical, sensory and communication impairments, people on the autistic spectrum and people with learning disabilities. Students will develop critical frameworks to study a range of practices; topics covered include: the aesthetics of access, multi-sensory work for children with profound and multiple learning disabilities, participatory arts, outdoor performance and institutionalisation. Students will be encouraged to engage with contemporary practice and debates and there will be two guest speakers, Tim Webb (Artistic Director, Oily Cart) and Jenny Sealey (Artistic Director, Graeae) - both leading practitioners in Disability Theatre.

Radical Performance attempts to probe the creative innovations in theatre, performance, and live art practices that intersect with notions of 'radicality'. The topic is approached through an examination of the various creative elements that have underpinned theatrical experiments, challenges, and resistances. Drawing on a wide range of theoretical and philosophical aspects, this course aims to enhance students' abilities to critique the ethics and efficacy of radical performance.

This module will introduce students to a range of business modelling tools, and provide insight in to the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs and enterprises. The module has evolved from NESTA’s Creative Pioneer Programme and will use the Modelling Techniques that were designed and have evolved from The Academy and Insight Out which provide approaches to commercialising creativity.

It will critically review the key characteristics of successful enterprises, entrepreneurs and leaders, within the cultural and more commercially focused creative industries. It will look at the range of business models that exist and review how best to build a financially sustainable organisation.

The students will be introduced to a range of techniques:

1. Relationship Modelling – this will assist students to understand the range of business models in the creative industries, and to create the most appropriate route to market; it will consider the relationship that the originator of the creative idea has to the production, distribution and the audience/customer/client; it uncovers the student’s relationship to “reward”.

2. Evidence Modelling – this model uses Marshall McLuhan’s Tetrad Model to review the likely impact of the idea; it helps makes the enterprise tangible and to ensure that the entrepreneur remains in control of the effects of their ideas. Using the modelling technique helps students to articulate their values and the benefits of their ideas.

3. Blueprint Modelling – an approach to creating an operating plan which will move their idea to market, articulating all of the activities and responsibilities required.
Consequence Modelling – using all of the knowledge from the modelling techniques, this will uncover the financial consequences of the decisions made. It will introduce them to basic financial modelling concepts, and ensure they are comfortable with the financial language of creative entrepreneurs.

Although art museums use the words interpretation, education and communication as a way of differentiating between individual departments and the type of responsibility staff members have, there are important fundamental differences inherent within each term that are rarely examined or explained. This module will seek to explore these differences, and look closely at each of the three main concepts: interpretation, education and communication.

Individual sessions will examine the way in which art museums define their relationship to content, meaning and context, how they communicate their message, their interest in creating a suitable brand and image, the role of library and archive, development, fundraising and conservation.
There will be an emphasis on examining education and learning, the importance of access, diversity and the range of activities museums develop to attract new visitors and address the diversity and needs of an increasingly large visiting public.

The module tutor will introduce theories which relate to the writing of interpretative text, and consider how the experience of looking at art might be different if text were not available. There will also be a discussion regarding the role of the aesthetic in art education and the range of expectations visitors have from a museum visit.

This module explores the relationship between culture, tourism and regeneration. Tourism has long played a role in the economic social and physical transformation of towns and cities in cities famed for their proximity to coast or spectacular scenery – from the centres of the grand tour, to spas, coastal resorts and cultural centres. However in recent decades the nature of city tourism has changed. This module explores the growth and increasing diversity of cultural tourism, the role it plays in urban centres and their regions and the ways in which cities have reinvented and rebranded themselves as centres of leisure and recreation consumption using major cultural infrastructure investment, heritage commodification, events and festivals.

Underlying this transformation are the planning strategies that use culture as a means of transforming urban economies in the face of industrial change. With decline, reorganisation and new technologies transforming traditional manufacturing industries and services, cities have been searching for new strategies that promise to deliver investment, jobs and prosperity. The need to tackle not just employment but housing, social, physical, and environmental problems has necessitated an approach to tackle multiple problems in a single strategy – regeneration.

Contemporary Issues in Cultural Policy explores a range of trans-disciplinary topics that concern those researching and practicing in the areas of cultural policy. The module will consider key questions faced by all countries, regions and cities in creating and delivering policy. As globally most cultural ministries and their agencies are also responsible for a range of areas of policy often including international cultural relations, tourism, information and broadcasting and sport and also cross over with other ministries responsible for foreign affairs, education and creative industries the scope of the module will be broad.

Those topics will be addressed in a rigorous and structured way using methodologies conducive to student in depth and collaborative learning. Learning will be delivered through lectures, seminars, case studies, group work and presentations. Students will be taught in a single lecture environment each week before breaking off into smaller groups to conduct topical seminars, discussions or group work.

The discourses of contemporary 'Leadership' and 'Enterprise Theory' are, much like the wider discourse of Management Theory itself, in a state of critical transformation. The authority, validity, and appropriateness of that type of scientifically influenced or 'positivist' thinking that informed so much of the early 'Taylorist' and 'Fordist' influenced work of the so-called 'first age' (Snowden, 2005) of Management Theory has been thrown into disrepute, as have many of the premises of that more contextually aware and 'constructively' influenced work that informed the so-called 'second age'.

Undermined by both the universalising and de-contextualising tendencies of that type of thinking that defined the 'first age', and the still latent problems of the 'implementation' or 'internalisation' (Nonaka, 1995) of the insights of that thinking that defined the 'second age,' we are now in a position in which – in what is increasing being recognised as the 'third age' of Management Theory – all of the principal discourses of Management Theory from Knowledge Management, to Organisational Theory, Enterprise Theory, Innovation, and Leadership, are having to come to terms with the difficult question of how they can still deal with their various objects of analysis, whether that be the essential nature, qualities, or conditions of successful Leadership, Enterprise, or Innovation, in a relatively organized, structured, and predictable way, and yet a way that does not undermine, foreclose, or delimit the essential 'complexity', unpredictability, and 'emergent' qualities of these phenomena and the contexts in which they arise. This is a problem that has seen a pronounced emphasis in recent years on the analysis of the role that the individual 'creative', 'entrepreneurial', or 'self-actualising' subject plays in the 'narrative' construction of their own relationships to those contexts in which they exist, innovate, lead, or learn (Tsoukas, 2005).

This module will introduce students to all of the main theories that have contributed to the evolution of this discourse from the early scientifically orientated, 'positivist', and 'essentialist' theories of Frederick Winslow Taylor in The Principles of Scientific Management (1911), to Joseph Schumpeter’s work on Innovation as “creative destruction” (1934), to Gordon Allport (1921) and Kurt Lewin’s (1935) early work on 'Trait Theory' and 'Situational' theories of personality as they have been applied to Leadership, to Ralph Stacey (2001, 2003, 2010), and Henry Chesborough’s (2003, 2006, 2010) recent work on 'Organisational Complexity' and 'Open Innovation', to more recent 'Transactional', 'Transformational', and 'Organic' Theories of Leadership, to Ikujiro Nonaka’s (1995) and Hubert Dreyfus’ (1997) 'ontologically' orientated theories of Innovation, and Roger Martin (2009) and Armand Hatchuel’s (2010) recent work on the value of various 'design thinking' lead creative research methodologies to the articulation of how we can most ‘productively’ act, think, innovate, and lead, within the ever increasing 'complexity' of current business environments.

The principal objective of this archaeological analysis of the history of the evolution and development contemporary Management Theory, and particularly as it has been applied to the discourses of contemporary 'Enterprise' and 'Leadership' Theory, is to enable students to develop a comprehensive understanding of not only the history of the discourse but also how the insights of these theories can be practically applied to the conceptualisation and analysis of their own projects—thus overcoming the much debated 'relevancy gap' in so much contemporary Management Theory and education.

Particular emphasis will also be placed on the 'cross-cultural' significance of this work in relation to both Gert Hoftstede (2001) and Richard E. Nisbett’s (2005) work on the differing 'dimensions' of cultural belief, value, and understanding.