Course summary

Arts management plays a vital role in designing, shaping and supporting the arts, helping to ensure that access, freedom and equality are achieved across all aspects of the cultural sector. Our flexible Postgraduate Diploma in Arts Management is ideal if you are an arts manager already, and wish to develop your practice and deepen your understanding of the background, theories and principles of arts and cultural management. Alternatively, if you are contemplating a career in arts management and policy and aim to understand current trends and debates that inform the day-to-day running of arts organisations, it provides a comprehensive overview of the sector. For those who want to deepen their sector experience, we offer a placement module that encourages students to work on their own research interests within an arts organisation. Past students have had valuable experiences in organisations ranging from the Greater London Authority to the Hackney Museum, and from the Big Dance Project to the Wallace Collection. You start with a core module that introduces overarching topics such as cultural identity, creative labour and management structures, cultural diversity and leadership, cultural evaluation and big data applications in arts management. You then specialise through your own tailored pathway, selecting two modules that combine knowledge and experience related to art subfields (e.g. performing, visual arts) or specific groups and stakeholders (e.g. artists, audiences, pro-sumer or cultural organisations) via a chosen contextual approach such as power, identity, memory, digitalisation or learning. With a further option module choice you can complement your degree with, for example, legal knowledge, marketing and comparative cultural policies to fit your interests. This course is part of our new Birkbeck Flexible Master’s UK, which gives you the choice of how you want to study - on campus, online or via flexible learning, which combines both. Highlights

• Birkbeck was ranked as one of the top four universities in the UK for its Art and Design research in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework.

• You will benefit from links with arts and cultural organisations, including an optional work placement.

• The Department of Film, Media and Cultural Studies has established a growing international reputation combining cultural studies at Birkbeck with the latest ideas and techniques across film studies, journalism, screenwriting, arts management, digital media. You are welcome to attend events at BIRMAC (Birkbeck Interdisciplinary Research in Media and Culture) as well as the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image and the Vasari Research Centre for Art and Technology.

Course details