Course summary

MA Global Collaborative Design Practice builds dialogues and projects between international communities and contexts. It aims to interpret and respond to social and environmental challenges through the exchange of distinct perspectives. The course is co-hosted and co-designed by University of the Arts London (UAL) and Kyoto Institute of Technology (KIT) in Japan. You will join a studio community that spans locations and cultures and work collaboratively with fellow students over 2 years. These interactions take place both physically in-person and remotely online. Your projects grow from time spent together in each city and through exploring the possibilities of digital interactions over distance. You will receive 2 Master’s awards upon graduation. A Master of Arts from UAL and Master of Engineering from KIT. The course helps you frame social and environmental challenges through global perspectives, comparing key frameworks and texts such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary. Equally, it helps you frame challenges at a local scale by comparing first-hand experience of distinct locations, communities and cultures. This global/local approach is an exploratory, inclusive, ongoing group activity. It helps the course shift and evolve its own perspectives and approaches over time. UAL and KIT bring complementary strengths in the arts and in science, technology, engineering and mathematics to the course. We come together through shared understandings of design practice as being rooted in hands-on, user-centred making and testing. We are committed to positive engagement with social and environmental challenges through our faculties and communities. Our dual studio, labs, workshops, and curriculum help you ‘make to communicate’ in diverse teams and ‘make to test’ ideas in distinct locations and realities. We welcome applicants from across design disciplines and from fields such as the sciences, engineering and humanities. The design process is used as a meeting point and shared working language between these different skills and standpoints. You will explore various modes of interaction, collaboration and making together over 2 years. By doing so you can establish the fundamentals for practice in cross-cultural and interdisciplinary roles directed towards the societal challenges of our time.