BA (Hons) Arts Management

This module aims to provide a solid grounding in the variety of ways that arts and culture are distributed, especially those forms that arts managers are likely to encounter in their careers.

Using London as an example city, the module covers organisations of different sizes (small, medium, large), status (commercial, state-funded, charities, social enterprises, volunteer-led and network) and access orientation (multi-disciplinary, sector-specific, specialist, with a focus on organisations that consider accessibility issues). Each of these forms poses a different set of challenges to the arts manager.

The module combines academic materials and classroom-based learning with site visits to arts organisations that operate in a wide variety of ways.

This course aims to give arts management students an introductory understanding of the history of arts and their cultural context. It is oriented around the Modern and Contemporary periods, exploring certain themes and trends in the history of arts which register and reflect larger trends and shifts in intellectual, political and popular culture. We will pay particular attention to the ways movements, practices and approaches arising in modernist contexts continue to influence art and media cultures through the contemporary era to the present day. The course looks at a range of visual, textual, physical and digital media and forms, and addresses contemporary phenomena such as the manipulation of the digital image, the selfie, augmented reality, and pop music video in the context of the cultural, artistic and conceptual histories that precede them, often reaching back to the nineteenth century. In pursuing these trajectories, students will gain a synoptic view of key trends in modern/contemporary history of arts, and an introductory understanding of some of the influential ways they have been theorised by practitioners, theorists and philosophers.

Money is a key ingredient in the production of the arts. Performances, exhibitions, and festivals need a financial base, as does the making of objects or audio/audio-visual recordings. Art produced or exhibited in or by formal organisations, as individual events, or by individual artists all require funds (or in-kind equivalent). A key skill set of an arts manager, therefore, is seeking and ensuring funding. In a competitive environment, these skills involve significant creativity and ingenuity.

Funding the arts falls into two main categories, earned income (from ticket sales/admissions or subsidiary activities) and fundraising. This module focusses on fundraising, covering grants, sponsorship and philanthropy, as well as donor development and a brief consideration of major gifts. The module considers approaches to government agencies, corporations, and individuals as well as digital approaches including crowdfunding. Earned income is briefly considered from the perspective of social enterprise business models.

The aim of this module is to introduce an understanding of visual culture and demonstrate the importance of visual culture in today’s society.

Visual culture includes such visual forms as painting, sculpture, photography, television, cinema, cartoons and manga, virtual reality and games, illustration and the internet. These forms have been studied using various approaches: hermeneutic, formal, Marxist, feminist, semiotic, psychoanalytic and anthropological amongst others. Settings, bodies and the built environment can also be studied with visual techniques.

The module requires you to analyse visual images from contemporary and historical periods, and to apply a variety of visual techniques and methods in order to strengthen your understanding of theoretical and methodological approaches to a topic, in this case visual culture, and to develop a richer appreciation of visual cultures and visual materials.

Indicative content includes:

• Visual culture defined
• Representation
• Visual Methods (for Images)
• Material Culture
• Lived Visual Culture (Built Environment)
• Living Visual Culture (Bodies)

The module provides knowledge, reflection and insights into the state of the field of arts management – definitions, historical development, dilemmas, the scope, possibilities and the future of the field. The focus of the module will be on project management in the arts. Through the module, students will be gaining knowledge relevant to managing events and projects in the culture and the arts. The focus is on the management of individual events and offers a “start to finish” view of all the steps necessary and desirable to manage a single event. A good deal of the material is however transferrable to the management of permanent cultural spaces (e.g. arts centres, theatres, galleries and museums) and also entertainment and corporate events such as conferences, fashion shows, promotions. Case studies, discussions, as well as references used, will be reflecting the diversity of practices in the field coming from different cultures, environments, countries and schools of thinking. Special attention will be placed on the questions of professional ethics, diversity, accessibility and inclusion in the field of arts management.

The module broadly covers 3 areas: Project Management; Marketing and PR; Project Financing. Students must select a Case Study event from 5-6 events preselected and introduced by the lecturers. Lecturers will select options which offer a range of art forms and scales, allowing students to follow individual interests if they so wish.

This module provides basic knowledge of the events management process, with a strong focus on cultural and artistic events. Through the module, students will learn about the specificities of different kind of events – music concerts, festivals, exhibitions, theatre performances. The module will be covering the basic principles of the project management in the arts, with a special focus on 3 areas: Arts Law; Touring; and Evaluation. Students will be exposed to international case studies from the field and will engage with relevant and leading professionals in the arts.

A good deal of the material is however transferrable to the management of permanent cultural spaces (e.g. arts centres, theatres, galleries and museums) and also entertainment and corporate events such as conferences, fashion shows, promotions.

This course examines key concepts of capital, and multiple different perspectives for examining these capitals. It explores the grounding of capital types in economic systems, societal norms, and their creative and cultural roles.
The module provides the theoretical foundations for students to understand the creation and interplay of intellectual, social, cultural, and economic resources.

This course addresses multiple capital types: physical capital (natural resources), social capital (bonding/bridging capital and strong/weak ties), human capital (education, skills, and investment therein), and financial capital (access to finance, operation of debt, equity and working capital). Over the spread of the module, students will develop their knowledge of these capitals alongside frameworks to understand their different forms, their flows and interdependencies.

The module examines how different forms of capital are acquired, maintained, enhanced and exchanged, and the role that networks, evaluation materials and legal systems play. By tracing the historical context of different societal mechanisms to create and distribute capital, students can appreciate how current theories of capital in our digital revolution age are constructed and contested.

In less than two decades web 2.0 technologies have changed the way we view, make and consume art and culture. A global pandemic has accelerated this move towards online, remote and digitally mediated forms of cultural production and consumption. Whilst these changes may seem rapid and revolutionary, this module situates these developments within a broader history of art and technology and will provide students with the ability to critically engage with new technologies and examine possible use cases for these technologies in the production, consumption and management of art. In doing so, this module explores ‘digital cultures’ – ways of living and working online within fields of artistic production – in order to develop ‘digital literacy’ – an understanding how we, as practitioners, can better understand and utilise these online platforms.

The module takes a broad view of digital practice and examines the trajectory from the taxonomies of museum collections, anthropological approaches to categorising culture to metadata, search and google page rank. Moving from categorising culture to tracking behaviours, we examine how data and algorithmic decision making is becoming an important curator and commissioner in the music industry and explore the challenges and opportunities this presents.

Having established the seminal role that digital technologies have within contemporary arts and culture, we look towards the politics of platforms, control and emerging forms of expression and experience in a digital world. Through the study and critical reading of digital-first experiences – such as online gigs for example - and online fan communities, students will have the opportunity to develop critical ways of viewing, and a working knowledge of digital ethnography for arts managers. Students on this module will utilise the critical framework established in class to develop their own digital content through a strategic and reflective prism.

This is a digital-first module and will be taught online only with a range of video lectures, video call seminars, and web-based digital activities.

This module focuses on audiences as a crucial focus of arts managers. The module offers a practical focus, with a theoretical introduction to the study of audiences. Topics include imagining audiences, marketing, branding and public relations, audience development, audience engagement and outreach, visitor behaviour, and evaluation research, including interviews, focus groups and understanding quantitative data.

The module starts with an introduction to understandings of audiences and introduces methodologies used to understand art audiences. This section of the module is assessed by a short essay. The module moves on to explore different techniques and tools in audience development, and applies these to case studies.

Students will work in groups to understand a problem-based case study and will need to make a presentation to pitch their solution. The module then covers more strategies for developing and understanding audiences, and students will work individually on a project on the topics covered.

Drawing on materials presented in Event Management (Level 4) and Managing Arts Organisations and Cultural Businesses (Autumn term of Level 5), this module presents opportunities for students to apply knowledge in professional settings.

Students will work in groups on a series of short-term projects that engage skills developed so far in the classroom setting. The module also provides a groundwork for the professional practice project at final year. The specific projects will vary across the portfolio of projects available.

The module consists of five lectures in the spring term and supervised projects that will run in spring and summer terms, with group tutorials. Assessment is based on successful completion of a portfolio of professional practice, a short report on each and an extended essay comparing the institutional arrangements and success, or otherwise, of the projects.

This module covers key issues in ‘cultural policy’ as applied to the arts, including debates over the meaning of ‘culture’, the differences between individual nations’ understanding of the term, and key contemporary debates around notions of cultural value. It contains a comparative component, examining approaches to cultural policy in the UK, USA and Europe, providing different models of cultural policy.

The module will equip you with knowledge of the key debates taking place in the field of cultural policy studies, and the contexts in which cultural policy-making takes place. You will also have an understanding of the economic, social and political theories necessary to study cultural industries, especially the supported arts sector.

The module has three main aims:

1. To introduce you to the main debates in the field of cultural policy studies and related disciplines
2. To help you understand how cultural policy is similar and different around the world, including comparisons between UK, USA and EU approaches
3. To encourage critical reflection on, and independent thought about the topics covered in the module