MA Arts and Cultural Enterprise

MA Arts and Cultural Enterprise acknowledges that we are living in a fast-changing, globalised world, which presents a great number of opportunities and challenges for cultural innovation. This Masters Programme takes these changing conditions as a starting point to engage you in developing new knowledges and skills in order to manage cultural projects globally. It has been developed specifically in response to an increasing need for multi-skilled individuals who can both generate the ideas for original arts and cultural events, as well as provide leadership for the teams that realise them. These individuals will be dynamic, responsive, and fluent in public and private sectors, and have the ability to collaborate and develop networks.

The course addresses a contemporary shift within the cultural economy towards experiences and events, and away from the artefact. It is a response to multiple new forms of artistic and creative practice (interdisciplinary, time-based, socially-engaged, etc.), which demand new, hybrid forms of cultural management and organisation, and in turn, a new pedagogical approach from higher education institutions.

MA Arts and Cultural Enterprise takes as a starting point a definition of enterprise as engaging with projects that are new, challenging and complex, in order to create a valuable difference to specific stakeholders. It aims to enable you to gain a unique skill and knowledge set to become active creators in cultural management and production, be it as entrepreneurs, or within existing cultural organisations, anywhere in the world. The course is aimed at graduates with some years of work experience who wish to challenge themselves by gaining a critical understanding of our world today as well as skills in the design, planning and production of creative events in the broadest sense. 

The course operates through a blended-learning delivery model, by means of face-to-face and online teaching, in either a two-year part-time, or up to five-year flexible mode (UK only). This mode of learning supports those of you who are already established in your careers, and who may be travelling from afar to join the course.

Intensive in-person teaching takes place at Central Saint Martins’ King’s Cross campus for the students enrolled in the London-based cohort, and at HKU SPACE’s Hong Kong campus for the Hong Kong-based students. For the UK cohort in-person teaching takes the form of 8 weekends (Friday-Sunday) over the duration of the 2-year part- time mode. In Hong Kong in-person teaching is spread over evenings and weekend throughout each unit to accommodate the local working culture. 

Both cities are contemporary hubs for the cultural industries in their regions, and also rich sources of historical innovation across a wide range of cultural sectors, including museums, galleries, performance, festivals, and educational institutions.