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Culture Industry at Goldsmiths, University of London - UCAS

Course options

2024 - 20252025 - 2026
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There are other course options available which may have a different vacancy status or entry requirements – view the full list of options

Course summary

‘Culture is a paradoxical commodity. So completely is it subject to the law of exchange that it is no longer exchanged; it is so blindly consumed in use that it can no longer be used. [...] The whole world is made to pass through the filter of the culture industry.’ –Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, ‘The Culture Industry’, 1947

  • Our MA Culture Industry will allow you to explore the interface between contemporary economics and culture, from the scale of a start-up or artwork, to that of governmental policy, a city, or the global marketplace. It will also provide the approaches in critical and theoretical analysis that will enable you to conduct further academic research in areas ranging from art history, to urban studies and critical theory.
  • In distinction from postgraduate programmes in the Cultural and Creative Industries, this Master’s programme focuses on the paradoxes and potentials of the relationship between culture and capitalism evoked by the term ‘culture industry’.
Taking full advantage of the UK’s leading role in the creative industries, and London’s status as a world city, this course creates opportunities for you to:
  • make projects
  • go on field trips
  • do placements
  • carry out academic learning and research
  • meet diverse creative practitioners and theorists
This will give you first-hand experience of the fast moving creative economy, as well as giving you indispensable skills in understanding that economy from a cultural, philosophical and political standpoint. By combining theoretical and practical approaches to study, the course will not only help you to prepare for a career in the cultural sector, but also to engage with it imaginatively, critically and tactically. Engage with the cultural sector
  • Within the accelerated climate of digital networks and globalisation, the forms and behaviour of culture are mutating, converting the workshop into the handheld device and the cinema and gallery into the bedroom. This course is aimed at creative practitioners, entrepreneurs and theorists wanting to experiment with these changes, and set them into a historically and discursively rich framework.
  • The Research Lab will help you develop analytical practices with which to study the culture industry in action. We undertake field trips which help you learn to relate first-hand experience to the theoretical ideas introduced by the course. We develop ethnographic skills with which to record, document and make sense of cultural and working practices. We think about ways to read and decode visual culture such as film, advertising and artworks. With these mixed methodologies, students are equipped to extend initial questions and observations into systematic research methods of their own design.
  • The Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies has been ranked 2nd in the UK for 'world-leading or internationally excellent' research (Research Excellence Framework, 2021) and 12th in the world (2nd in the UK) in the 2022 QS World Rankings for communication and media studies.

Modules

Compulsory modules Theories of the Culture Industry 30 credits Practices of the Culture Industry 30 credits MA Culture Industry Dissertation 60 credits Research Lab 30 credits Recommended option modules You take option modules to the value of 30 credits. Modules can be chosen from across Goldsmiths departments and centres. There are a number of Media modules, which are recommended for your programme. Other option modules by department You may prefer to look through the full range of option modules available across Goldsmiths departments: Anthropology Politics Sociology You can also choose modules from the Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship (ICCE) and the Department of Visual Cultures. For details of the modules available please email the relevant department at [email protected] or [email protected] Please note that not all the modules listed may be open to you. Your final selection will depend upon spaces available and timetable compatibility. Please note that due to staff research commitments not all of these modules may be available every year.

Assessment method

Essays; project report and documentation/placement report and documentation; research lab participation.

Entry requirements

You should have (or expect to be awarded) an undergraduate degree of at least upper second class standard in a relevant/related subject. It is highly desirable to have previous experience in studying and analysing contemporary theory, policy and sociology, especially as it applies to the creative and artistic fields. You might also be considered if you aren’t a graduate or your degree is in an unrelated field, but have relevant experience and can show that you have the ability to work at postgraduate level. If English isn’t your first language, you will need an IELTS score (or equivalent English language qualification) of 6.5 with a 6.5 in writing and no element lower than 6.0 to study this programme.

Fees and funding

Tuition fees

No fee information has been provided for this course

Tuition fee status depends on a number of criteria and varies according to where in the UK you will study. For further guidance on the criteria for home or overseas tuition fees, please refer to the UKCISA website .

Additional fee information

No additional fees or cost information has been supplied for this course, please contact the provider directly.
Culture Industry at Goldsmiths, University of London - UCAS