MA Arts in Social Contexts

One year full-time or up to a maximum of four years’ part-time study
Postgraduate Certificate
Postgraduate Diploma
Master of Arts

*Please note that MA Arts in Social Context is not running Academic Year 2011/12.

The 21st century demands new ways of thinking about the arts, culture and creativity. This new thinking, whether in formal or informal learning, must help the people of Scotland become active and reflective participants in society and in their own learning.
(Scottish Arts Council, 2006)

This course is a response to these concerns which foreground issues of access, participation and partnership. The programme draws from a critical and activist tradition of participatory, celebratory and community oriented practice which seeks to demystify the role of the artist as privileged creator and to deconstruct the distinctions between the roles of artist and spectator.

Rooted in practical project work where the student is expected to operate as a creative artist, the aims of the MA Arts in Social Contexts Programme are to develop a student’s skills in critical analysis and academic research, and to provide opportunities for them to apply these skills in the practical application and study of aesthetic practice as a social act.

The course seeks to create a multi-disciplinary learning community in which the student is supported towards developing an informed and socially-engaged working practice coupled with an understanding of new ways of analysing and critiquing their on-going involvement in the arts. Students will have the opportunity to develop advanced and systematic understandings of their field of study supported with practical skills in research methods while at the same time maintaining and enhancing their own professional arts practices.

Independent study and reflective practice is at the heart of our learning community and this course is structured around intensive periods of study comprising self-directed activity, block weeks, evening and weekend sessions designed to facilitate a flexible response to a student’s needs so that it can therefore be undertaken in either full-time or part-time modes facilitating the incorporation of a student’s existing and ongoing professional work into the student’s programme.

In fact, one of the distinctive features of the Programme structure is a flexibility of choice in relation to both content and context that encourages students to study a wide range of cultural institutions, forms and practices, but also enables them to specialise in specific areas of their own choice.  Current and recent projects include the creation of a community gospel choir; applied theatre in criminal justice settings; story-telling sessions with pre-school children and their parents; multi-disciplinary arts sessions in schools; youth theatre workshops and production work; arts in health care; Forum Theatre work with people living with epilepsy; field research into a comparative study of models for effective arts provision in urban and rural environments with Culture & Sport, Glasgow and Community Learning & Regeneration, Argyll & Bute Council; participatory, touring theatre utilising virtual reality, and holographic imagery.

The structure of the Programme therefore encourages students to interrogate their own practice as active and reflective practitioners towards greater professional autonomy. The Programme is designed to support students in developing broad-based, systematic and advanced understandings of the theories and historical underpinnings of their chosen field, and to acquire practical skills in research methods, coupled with significant opportunities to extend and consolidate personal practice in a variety of contexts.