Arts Management MA
2 years part-time
Part-time
£14,000 (INT) *
We’re planning to teach through a flexible combination of online and face to face learning for the first few months of the new academic year. If you’re thinking about starting with us in autumn 2020 or spring 2021, check back for more detail on arrangements for this course in July and August, and see our current plans for teaching and learning.
Overview
This course will now start in January 2021 as we've changed some of our teaching arrangements in response to the coronavirus outbreak. You'll get the same great learning experience with lots of support to do your best with this later start date.
This course is no longer accepting applications for 2020 entry. The next entry is January 2021
Arts Management is a complex and exciting discipline. Once mastered, it provides you with skills that can be applied to many areas of the arts and reach audiences in evermore innovative ways. Explore strategic, collaborative, and pioneering approaches with this challenging MA, which will equip you with the contemporary knowledge, research skills and business acumen you need to succeed worldwide.
Why study MA Arts Management at Middlesex University?
At Middlesex, we recognise that there are a wide range of career paths and further study options for those with an interest in Arts Management. That's why we developed our course to be flexible and interdisciplinary, with options to tailor your MA to suit your individual interests and needs, whether that's arts marketing, events, communications, entrepreneurship or further study beyond this programme.
You’ll be taught by leading practitioners and academics from our Business School and Media and Performing Arts departments, with opportunities to collaborate with students across a range of disciplines and tasks. Through a combination of theoretical and practical learning you'll develop a critical understanding of arts management in practice and the impact of research on audiences and industries worldwide
Course highlights
- The management skills you’ll be developing will enhance your employability in a competitive industry whilst the design of the programme allows you to develop your own unique specialisms across the field
- As part of the course, you’ll experience field trips and access to key arts organisations across London and the UK, such as Kings Place, the Roundhouse, Shakespeare’s Globe and the Southbank Centre
- You’ll be taught by academics who are actively engaged in industries and research, ensuring that you have access to original findings, emerging theories and contemporary debates
- You’ll be able to enjoy our well-established evening series of performances, lectures and masterclasses from leading academics and practitioners the creative industries
- As a student of this course you'll receive a free electronic textbook for every module.
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Course content
What will you study on the MA Arts Management?
MA Arts Management covers key subjects related to the management and structure of the arts and cultural industries, with a particular focus on the relationships between creativity and management.
There are three compulsory modules on this course and a range of additional module options covering more specialist areas of Arts Management. To complete your MA you will take a 60 credit Independent Project module, with guidance from a supervisor you will produce a research or practical project of considerable depth and complexity.
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Core modules
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Arts Management in Practice (30 credits) - Compulsory
This module aims to introduce the internal and external environments for arts management practice, including shifting global trends and the arts ecosystem. You will study organisational structures and cultures and how this impacts up arts management. This module is taught in Terms 1 and 2
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Arts and Music Marketing and Finance (30 credits) - Compulsory
This module deals with the changing ways arts organisations raise income to support activity, and it covers commercial, public and philanthropic income and how to communicate and build relationships with these different funders, investors and customers. This module is taught in Terms 1 and 2.
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Independent Project (60 credits) - Compulsory
This is a double module that allows high level enquiry into your chosen area of arts management practice through traditional academic research or practice-based enquiry. This might include a practical project or placement inside an arts organisation. This module is introduced from Term 1 and formally taught in Term 3 for full-time students (Term 6 for part-time), with a deadline in early October of your final year of study.
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Optional modules - choose two modules from the following:
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Creative Events Management (30 credits) - Optional
This module is designed to introduce the practice and theory of arts event management to those with no prior experience. This module is taught experientially and will involve running two or more live events during the year through team work, and therefore may be most suitable for full-time students.
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Directions in Creative Technology and Digital Media (30 credits) - Optional
This module is highly practical involving product design and is most suitable for students with a design background. It is studied with students on the interactive media programme. It is taught intensively in Term 1.
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Working with the Creative Industries (30 credits) - Optional
This module is studied jointly with interactive design students and examines the nature of work in the creative industries and how to work as a freelancer. It involves developing a business plan for one of the assessments. It is taught intensively in Term 2.
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Creative Start-ups (30 credits) - Optional
This module is jointly taught with the Creative Entrepreneurship programme that focuses on understanding the process of developing and starting a creative business. It will include a combination on contextual and practical study and is most suitable for students who are planning a venture in the near future (perhaps for your Independent Project).
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Media and Creative Industries (30 credits) - Optional
This module is studied jointly with Media Management students and is a theoretical and contextual module that explores contemporary shifts in the wider creative industries and how this impacts upon practice in our field. It is taught intensively in Term 1.
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Digital Marketing (15 credits) - Optional
This module and the Strategic Marketing Communications module (below) must be studied as a 30 credit pair across Terms 1 and 2. These modules are delivered by the Business School and are studied with Marketing students, they explore aspects of marketing communications, including using emerging digital approaches.
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Strategic Marketing Communications (15 credits) - Optional
This module and the Digital Marketing module (above) must be studied as a 30 credit pair across Terms 1 and 2. These modules are delivered by the Business School and are studied with Marketing students, they explore aspects of marketing communications, including using emerging digital approaches.
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You can find more information about this course in the programme specification. Optional modules are not offered on every course. If we have insufficient numbers of students interested in an optional module, or there are staffing changes which affect the teaching, it may not be offered. If an optional module will not run, we will advise you after the module selection period when numbers are confirmed, or at the earliest time that the programme team make the decision not to run the module, and help you choose an alternative module.
Teaching
How will the MA Arts Management be taught?
As a student on our MA Arts Management you’ll be learning with our expert and diverse team through a blend of industry masterclasses and tutorials as well as the following methods:
Seminars
Interactive seminars and problem-based learning are at the heart of the approach on this MA. You will take an active learning approach in class, discussing your reading and project work with your fellow students and tutors, analysing case studies and applying theoretical approaches to real world problems
Tutorials
Specialist staff will work with you to develop your independent practice and vocational skills.
Team working
This essential skill for succeeding in a highly networked industry is embedded in most of the modules on the MA. Teams work with arts sector clients and contacts to develop professional projects, and build your professional network from the moment your begin your MA study
You will be taught by practitioners, academics, and industry professionals from a range of creative industries and departments across the University. With a growing reputation for world-leading research in media, the arts, business, law and performance, you’ll benefit from our teaching staff’s influence in the industry, with regular guest-lectures from high-profile creative business leaders and access to the very latest theories and debates on professional practices in Arts Management.
Assessment
There are no exams on the MA Arts Management. Instead assessment prepares you for work in the cultural industries, including developing research skills, report writing, delivering presentations, working in teams and completing practical projects. The Independent Project module can be completed through dissertation or through a combination of written and practical work, for example an internship or completion of a practical industry project.
Entry requirements
Fees and funding
Careers
How can the MA Arts Management support your career?
Our graduates are highly attractive to employers across the entire spectrum of arts and creative industries worldwide. Our graduates go onto work in such fields as management, marketing, outreach, production and fundraising. Last year our graduates took up roles running theatre outreach, doing interactive marketing and planning creative projects.
Work placements
Work placements are proven to increase your success in the job market, as well as being a fantastic experience. Work placements can be built into your Independent Project Module Last year our students were offered work placements at the Courtauld Gallery, London Chamber Music Society and Brick Lane Gallery providing them with first-hand experience whilst being supported by one of our dedicated Placement Officers throughout the process.
Staff profiles
Dr Zuleika Beaven
Programme leader
Dr Beaven joined Middlesex University Music Department in 2014, bringing more than two decades of experience in the creative industries. Previously, she was a senior lecturer in Arts Management at the Arts University Bournemouth, teaching on the MA in Cultural Management at the University of Winchester and was a researcher in the Cultural Management Applied Research Group at the University of Greenwich. Her arts management experience ranges across a variety of art forms and both larger organisations such as the music venue Blackheath Halls and over many years as a freelancer working on events and projects with the Museum of London, Barbican, Common Ground and BBC Radio 4. Drawing on her research focus of work in the music business, Dr Beaven's PhD was a longitudinal study of musician start-ups. She also has an interest in the effects of technology on the industry and is carrying out a Research Council-funded case study of a Kickstarter-supported album recording and release.
Dr Alix Slater
Dr Slater leads the module on Arts Marketing and runs a specialist arts management consultancy. Recent clients include Darlington Theatre, The Audience Agency and York Bishop’s Palace.
Julia Haferkorn
Senior Lecturer in Music Business and Arts Management
Julia Haferkorn joined Middlesex University in 2014, after having worked in the music industry for 20 years. Initially at classical music publisher Peters Edition, she promoted the music of John Cage, Mauricio Kagel and Brian Ferneyhough. She founded the artist agency Haferkorn Associates Ltd (1998) and, with Ed McKeon, the production company Third Ear Music Ltd (2010). She has worked with a range of new music artists, including the Arditti Quartet, Apartment House, Matthew Herbert and Icebreaker, and has set up concerts and tours all over Britain and world-wide. In 2014 she was appointed Co-Artistic Director of the British Composer Awards. She has given talks, tutorials and/or lectures for Sound and Music, at the Cheltenham International Music Festival’s Composer Academy, the Finnish Institute, the University of Kent, and the Royal Academy of Music, London.
Peter Fribbins
Director of Music Programmes
Dr Fribbins is a composer whose music is performed, broadcast and recorded internationally. He studied with the German composer Hans Werner Henze and at the Royal Academy London, Royal Holloway and Nottingham universities. He has produced more than thirty concert works for a range of ensembles and orchestras, much of it widely performed and recorded, and principally published by Music Haven. He also directs a weekly series of concerts at Kings Place, London.
Student profiles
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