MA Events & Experience Management

This module is set to equip students with a broad understanding of events and events management in the 21st Century. The module introduces students to the scope and breadth of the event and live media industry, enabling them to get a broad understanding of the wider event landscape where various micro and macro factors affect both the internal and external event environment.

The module provides an overview of the events industry and explores in depth how events are utilised in strategic city branding and urban development, providing students with a critical understanding of the significance of events for the management and branding of cities. Events play an increasingly important role in city branding strategies – including tourism planning, creative and cultural industries mobility and regeneration – which have led to a “festivalisation” trend. The module will be both local and international in scope and acknowledges globalization as a driving force in the “eventfulness” of cities and regions.

This module will examine contemporary issues impacting upon the event industries, with an emphasis on art-related events. It will, for example, analyse events as a tool in sustainable arts management practice, and students will be able to investigate how museums and cultural institutions make use of events – and how events have become more and more central in the everyday running of these types of institutions, both to market themselves towards existing and emerging audience groups and to supplement their more traditional income streams. At the heart of this will be a discussion of audiences and publics for art events, with an emphasis on value creation in the experience economy.

The Events Industry module will provide students with a strategic and theoretical foundation needed for successful and sustainable events planning, as well as an understanding of the importance of events from a social, economic, cultural and environmental perspective. The module will consist of lectures, seminars and workshops but there will also be an emphasis on speakers from the industry who will offer insight through their experience.

The module introduces students to a range of approaches and techniques for researching events in diverse settings, and the assessment programme enables students to research and analyse a particular aspect of the events industry.

This module will require you to design and pitch an event idea. You'll gain experience in a real industry setting and apply theory through practice. You'll follow a live brief from an arts organisation and develop an events proposal that demonstrates the creative and practical skills needed to plan a successful event that meets the objectives of the organisation.

You'll examine theoretical perspectives alongside practical skills and techniques for creating and managing events, giving you a chance to create memorable and integrated experiences. You'll explore key concepts of experience management such as coherent events design and interaction, and learn the importance of putting the audience at the heart of the planning process.

This module takes a critically analytical approach to festivals, and the planning, organising and marketing thereof. London hosts a broad range of festivals, making it the perfect location to study this topic but the module will also discuss art festivals from an international perspective, making use of examples of festivals abroad as well as local festivals that are celebrating different cultures and manifesting international traditions from around the world. 

You'll develop a critical understanding of key practical elements of festival and events planning and management through lectures and guest talks and/or workshops led by industry professionals.

The Festival Management syllabus will include many practical elements such as feasibility studies, licensing agreements, budget overviews, health and safety regulations, risk assessments, market research, marketing plans, organisational charts, evaluation strategies, action plans, planning schedules, run sheets, and contingency plans.

The Dissertation is an extended piece of written work of 12,000 words, more or less 10%, on a research topic of your choice (but subject to approval). It is undertaken during the Spring and Summer terms. The dissertation comprises a critical review of the literature and/or original analysis of documentary and/or other evidence on a chosen topic within the fields of your programme. The dissertation is intended to assess the full range of students’ abilities and to apply a range of learning outcomes, which the programme enables students to develop. In particular it enables assessment of the ability to design, develop and write an advanced research project using primary and/or secondary materials appropriate to the topic and according to the necessary conventions of scholarly work. It requires independent motivation and self-directed learning, under supervision, and enables students to demonstrate competence for critical analysis and sustained persuasive argument.

This module critically analyses the growth and character of cultural and creative tourism and the growing relationship between the creative industries and cultural tourism. We'll discuss notions of the creative class, the creative city, and the experience economy, which have been used to underpin strategies in cultural tourism development. Ideas about the growing sophistication of cultural tourists and their changing tastes suggest that travellers wish to move beyond consumption to ‘prosumption’. We'll connect directly with the way how economies change and how it makes imperative the definition of new touristic products, services, and experiences. 

With increasing competition between tourism destinations, the development of timely, attractive, and innovative tourism products has never been more necessary – whether using the historic environment in creative ways or exploiting contemporary cultural forms and/or tourism resources. 

This module looks at the governance of cultural tourism at different levels (from UNESCO to local government and local partnerships), best practices in destination management, and the development of new tourism products. The geographic spread of cultural tourism and the greater diversity of products, necessitates the examination of issues related to contested meanings, authenticity, ethics, and sustainability which has become increasingly significant in the sector.

In this module, you'll explore the relationship between culture, tourism, and regeneration. Tourism has long played a role in the economic, social and physical transformation of towns, cities and rural areas.  However, in recent decades the nature of tourism, particularly city tourism, has changed, and concerns with sustainability have become of utmost importance. 

You'll analyse the growth and increasing diversity of cultural tourism, the role it plays in urban centres and their regions and the ways in which cities, regions and rural areas, have reinvented and rebranded themselves as centres of leisure and recreation consumption using major cultural infrastructure investment, heritage commodification, events, and festivals.

Recent research in Asia has questioned the widely held assumption that tourism arose in the UK during the mid-19th century as a result of Thomas Cook’s introduction of the ‘package’, a combination of the cost of travel and another service.

It has been shown that travel and leisure existed in early Han Dynasty China as scholars and priests explored mountainous areas giving rise to one of the civilizations most enduring art forms, the landscape painting. Travel and leisure also seem to have gone hand in hand with that other widespread phenomenon, the pilgrimage, with the attendant development of hostelries, storytelling and souvenir production.

Industrial forms of tourism were introduced to Asia by European colonial powers in the late 19th and early 20th century with the development of hilltop stations to provide relief for officials and merchants working in tropical areas. Grand hotels were introduced with the Sarkies brothers opening up famous establishments in Myanmar (Burma), Singapore and Indonesia (Dutch East Indies). The inter war cruise ship industry made Asia accessible to wealthy Europeans and Americans with perceptible impacts on Asian hospitality traditions and visual and performing arts.

Western artists used the opportunities provided by tourism to open studios in Asia, notably Bali, often working alongside indigenous artists to create hybrid and highly creative art forms. The post-war era opened up parts of Asia to Western mass tourism, notably the so-called ‘rest and recreation’ of the US military in Thailand.

Tourism was also used as a nation building strategy by Asian leaders such as Suharto in Indonesia to encourage his countrymen to travel and to get to know their country and to project a tourist friendly external image of stability.

As the Asian economies developed, countries like Japan became major sources of outbound tourism with accompanying impacts on Western retail practices, especially with regard to fashion and luxury. By 2014 China had become the largest outbound and inbound tourism market with the introduction of China-friendly hotel ranking systems in Europe, such as the 5-dragons scheme, began to be experimented with in Europe.

Indian outbound tourism also became significant with some novel characteristics, such as an interest in the hybrid Indian-British culinary tradition of the ‘curry house’. Tourism is also one of the drives that has spread Asian culinary traditions around the world.

In our increasingly globalised world, the traditional cultural representations and relations of countries are being challenged to incorporate a multidimensionality of identity and a plurality of actors.

This module will introduce you to the major theories and ideas within international cultural relations and will provide insight into its practice by a wide range of actors (governments, international organisations, corporations, non-governmental organisations and individuals). The role of the arts, their practitioners and mediators is highlighted in relation to their importance in the establishment of relations between the peoples of different countries. 

Topics include learning about the history and theory of international cultural relations, discussing the notions of cultural diplomacy and public diplomacy, analysing the relation between the arts and diplomacy, investigating the concepts of cultural diversity, intercultural dialogue, mutuality, cultural and linguistic human rights, soft power and hegemony, and connecting these with contemporary developments in areas such as communication technology, transport and economic flows.

This module places emphasis on the discussion of current themes and issues at policy and practice level in this transdisciplinary area. It fosters a reflexive and entrepreneurial approach to international cultural relations, by encouraging students to actively engage in the area by developing their own research and projects, relating them to wider debates. The module thus allows for the development of critical, creative, practical and reflexive skills complementing other elements of the MA Cultural Policy, Relations and Diplomacy programme.

The module covers a range of trans-disciplinary contemporary issues that concern those researching and practicing in the areas of cultural relations and diplomacy. It will consider key questions faced by countries, regions, cities, organisations and individuals in creating and delivering policy and projects. The topics are broad and changeable responding to the current issues concerning policy makers, practitioners and the public engaged in the field – an indicative list of topics to be covered in the sessions is provided below.

While providing space for student led education through individual and collaborative presentations, the module works around topical and geographical sessions, each representing a contemporary issue and/or area of current interest in cultural relations and cultural diplomacy. These include for example: culture and international development policies and practices; the role of the cultural and creative industries in cultural relations and diplomacy; migration and (transnational) cultural citizenship; language, communication and identity in international cultural relations; international cultural policies and cultural co-operation; sessions with a geographical focus e.g China’s cultural diplomacy, EU strategy for culture in external relations; project planning, monitoring and evaluation for cultural relations and diplomacy.

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.

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.

 
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.

The module introduces you to the principles of managing music creatively and critically, covering a variety of musical contexts and industries: popular music, jazz, western art music and the sonic arts, with contributions from industry specialist guest lecturers. The module focuses on the relationship between creative practice and creative management, of taking control of your work within rapidly changing arts, economic and social environment. You’ll explore finance and funding streams as well as gain practical experience of the necessary skills and considerations the module teaches by undertaking a real-world music management project.

Key topics will include:

• curation and entrepreneurialism in the music industry
• developing a project plan and researching your business model and method
• researching your musical field
• honing and pitching your idea or story, including publicity
• audiences and marketing
• event planning and production e.g. gigs, performances, launches
• finding the right venue or space
• maximising the potential of your idea through evaluation, problem solving, creative and lateral thinking

Project Management involves all aspects of defining, designing, delivering, and supporting organisational initiatives and product development. These aspects include planning and controlling for scope, time, cost, quality, HR, communications, risk, procurement, and their integration. It involves all activities from initiating projects to managing, directing, controlling, and closing them. This module will address all of these areas in a rigorous and structured way, using three dominant methodologies currently active in operational environments. It will provide students with an active skillset in project management and prepare them to pursue certification in any of these three methodologies. The curriculum will use lectures, activities, case studies, group work, role-play scenarios, and presentations. Students will be taught in a single lecture environment each week before breaking off into smaller groups for project management tools and software training in labs in five of the weeks.