Course summary

Mobilise your art practice: from production to encounter. You’ll get to work in our on-campus studio spaces and project spaces, hosting public exhibitions and exploring new forms of public engagement. You will be supported to build meaningful professional relationships with local and global communities and audiences and encouraged to work on off-site projects. This dynamic MA in Contemporary Arts Practice will equip you with transferable and industry-relevant skills, including end-to-end creative project management, enabling you to become resilient and independent as a practitioner. The course is ideal for students with visual arts backgrounds, but also relevant to other arts-related disciplines. You’ll have scope to use a diverse range of materials, processes and approaches, and will benefit from working in a trans-disciplinary environment. There will also be plenty of opportunities to spark critical artistic discourse and explore cultural contexts by creating work through public encounters. Artists are instrumental in rethinking social and physical environments, helping to build cultural infrastructure through critical thinking. On the MA you will draw on issues you feel passionate about as a ‘citizen-artist’. The MA encourages you to investigate the vital relationships between the local and the global in the contexts of contemporary culture and society. Other forms of public engagement include connecting with groups and organisations in Stoke-on-Trent and London through fieldwork and residencies. On campus, you will have your own individual studio space, and access to our full range of workshops, enabling you to engage with digital and analogue processes and materials. You will work alongside our highly-skilled technicians and academic staff, who engage a range of interdisciplinary topics and are national and international artists and researchers. On successful completion of study, we will issue the following award: MA Contemporary Arts Practice