Performance Practices MA

Core modules:

Performance Company
Gives the opportunity to work with a professional practitioner/ artist relevant to professional level UK and international contemporary practice. You will work as an ensemble to develop interdisciplinary work for public performance. This work will enable you to develop artistic and collaborative strategies and methodologies. 

Research into Performance 
Engages specifically with critical, theoretical and methodological approaches to research into performance. It addresses strategies and methods used by practitioner-researchers; critical vocabularies; ethics; the purposes and contexts of research and the perspective of the researcher.

Perspectives 
Develops an approach to the study of performance in relation to a range of perspectives from C20 and C21 practitioners, theorists and philosophers. Areas of study are approached from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Performance Making 
Enables you as an artist to re-investigate your creative processes in studio/laboratory contexts. The module considers issues and practices key to current performance making

Taught modules that you can choose to study are:

Negotiated Study
Allows you to pursue a programme of self-directed study, which will be agreed with an individual supervisor via a learning contract. You can choose a relevant research topic to focus on, which further develops you as an independent practitioner or scholar.

Digital Media in Festival and Events
Focuses on the managing of local and community events using digital media arts. You will look at general practices and specific events, as well as the nature of local and community digital media art, in the globalised media world. You will be encouraged to critically analyse and apply theories of Cultural and Commercial Events Management.

Cultural Policy and Planning 
Provides definitions of cultural policy and explores its frameworks and applications. You will gain an understanding of instrumentalism, and will be encouraged to debate the uses of cultural resources across policy areas. 

Major Project 
Enables you to undertake independent study and research into an area directly related to your course of study and to produce either practical work with accompanying written documentation, or an all written submission.

Or

Work Based Projects
Provides the opportunity to develop and demonstrate skills acquired from modules on the programme, in a practical context – for example work within an arts administration, marketing, teaching/pedagogic context, or with a particular company or practitioner.

Note: All modules are subject to change in order to keep content current.

Overview

The course is delivered from both scholarly and practical perspectives to ensure that you develop an advanced understanding of current research across a range of theoretical and practical fields. You will be taught through a range of teaching, learning and assessment modes by an energetic research-active team with international profiles in their specialist field. You will engage in independent study that involves practical research and rehearsals; viewing, reading and writing. The diversity of assessment includes practice-based work; written assignments; oral presentations and viva voces. There is an increasing emphasis upon autonomous learning throughout the modules.

Contact hours
In your first two terms you will normally attend around 3-8 hours of timetabled taught sessions hours (depending on your choice of option module in Term 2) including lectures, tutorials and studio sessions each week, and be expected to undertake at least 27-32 hours of independent study each week. Your third term will be pre-dominantly self-directed (including meetings with your supervisor), during which you can expect to undertake 35 hours of independent study each week. 

Part-time study is normally undertaken on a half-time basis.