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Postgraduate

MA Culture, Criticism and Curation

A sign outside a gallery
Inside/Out exhibition in various Walworth locations, South London. This was part of a student project with Artists Studio Company, November 2017). Photo: Glenn Michael Harper
College
Central Saint Martins
Start date
January 2025
Course length
One year full-time (45 weeks)

Through critical writing and curating, MA Culture, Criticism and Curation provides a framework for engaging with historical and contemporary culture.

Applying for more than 1 course

You can apply for more than 1 postgraduate course at UAL but we recommend that you apply for no more than 3. Find out more in the Apply Now section.

This course will teach you how to become an innovative practitioner and researcher, with the skills to communicate to specialist and general audiences alike. It is part of the Culture and Enterprise programme.

Why choose this course at Central Saint Martins

  • Crossing disciplines: MA Culture, Criticism and Curation places emphasis on interdisciplinary thinking and enquiry. Our students and staff come from a variety of subject backgrounds, placing diverse experiences in dialogue with one another.
  • Industry experience: On the course, group projects make use of the College’s links with external organisations. These provide opportunities for you to build their individual practice and professional experience.
  • Social engagement: MA Culture, Criticism and Curation engages with social and political issues. It positions curation as an influential agent of change.
  • Collections and archives: The course has strong links with the Central Saint Martins Museum and Study Collection and UAL’s Archives and Special Collections Centre. Alongside access to specialist knowledge, these can offer you the potential for site-specific project work.

Open days

There are currently no open days scheduled for this course, please check back at a later date.

Scholarships, bursaries and awards

Related content

Course overview

MA Culture, Criticism and Curation is a course directed towards critical enquiry and mindful change-making in the fields of culture, curation, art, design and creative production. To equip practitioners with tools that will enable them to actively find their way through a variety of institutional and cultural situations, the Course offers an overview of cultural history and curatorial theory alongside opportunities to acquire skills in research, writing, curating and production. 

On this Course we address the present moment and pressing questions faced by cultural producers, policy makers, curators, artists and researchers. Approached through interdisciplinary and intercultural enquiry, you will learn to engage with the in-between places where new knowledge is developed via an integration of theory and practice. Through the lens of activism, we explore with you the ways in which culture, criticism and curation can contribute to change, through accumulative small steps or actions.

The curator is positioned as a figure able to act intentionally, bring in agency and make change in a variety of frameworks, within and without the world of the creative industries. Curating makes meaning and contributes new, critical perspectives on existing scenarios. The Course asks you to think reflectively—with others—about the forms that art and culture take, identify where and how hegemonies develop, keep hold and challenge them. 

The Course prioritises interrelations between people as well as ideas and objects, and will help you develop your capacity to collaborate with empathy and through dialogue. Through skilling in mindfulness and active listening, you will build up sensitivity as well as working practically within networks of collaborators and audiences. 

We encourage you to test and engage with emerging digital tools and communication platforms to undertake research, experiment with forms and collaborate equitably. 

We recognise how new generations of professionals are prepared to redefine and renegotiate traditionally defined roles within industry, and who are keen to direct themselves proactively. The Course works with you to develop research-led, experimental, creative and critical curatorial practices to enable you to engage with and make an impact in changing situations, in professional work or through further study.

We are committed to developing ethical cultural and critical  practices. To achieve this, we are working to embed UAL's Principles for Climate, Social and Racial Justice into the course. 

Course units

MA CCC promotes a community of practice which is central to students’ development. The Course offers an open space for you to develop independent research and practice and a flexible framework for student-led and student-directed learning. In our vision, theory and practice work hand in hand within curatorial work, and we explore the different relationships between these two modes of knowledge production.

Culture is studied through lectures, seminars, tutorial groups and reading groups led and co-designed by tutors and students. The curriculum is responsive to changing interests and priorities. Often interdisciplinary, the Course encourages an integrated approach to critical, practical, peer-to-peer, group and independent work. Events at programme, college and university level encourage students to engage with a wider culture of research and innovation and connect with others using curatorial thinking and the practice you are developing.

The main independent work over the 45 weeks of study includes a Dissertation and two group curatorial projects. The Dissertation helps you deepen your knowledge in an area of your choice. It can be written as an academic essay (10,000 words) or divided into a portfolio of work to reflect individual professional or creative goals. The group projects ask you to engage with different models of curatorial practice: the first is around a collection / archive and is aligned with the University’s work in response to current social issues, such as decolonisation, anti-racism and decarbonising; the second, in partnership with external organisations, emphasises critical and conceptual approaches to collaboration, audience development and redefining ways of supporting, expressing and commenting on culture. 

Students learn to engage with and develop both group and individual practices. 

Projects and professional partnerships

Working collaboratively with organisations – small and large, independent, and well-established – offers students significant professional experience within the curriculum, leading to work that is supported to be experimental and ambitious. Previous examples of external partnerships include The Guardian, vFd Dalston, Flat Time House, NEoN Festival, David Roberts Art Foundation, South London Gallery, Institute of Digital Fashion, Tate Exchange, Liverpool Biennial, Centre for Investigative Journalism, The Common Room and the Institute of Psychoanalysis. The Course has two ongoing collaborative projects, Project Credit (https://project.credit/) and UQ Journal (https://uqjournal.net/).

Student Journey:

Unit 1: Curatorial Playground 

Unit 1 is the entry point to the Course and is a composed of a series of intensive workshops, seminars and discussions that set the base for curatorial thought – that is, thought that emphasises the interrelations between disciplines, cultures and knowledges. The Unit is centered on hands-on experiences that get you familiarised with the atmosphere and environment of CSM as a creative space. You will learn how to respond to a creative brief and this will help you find your creative voice and set up your goals and aspirations for the year. Key themes of the Unit are experimentation, inter-cultural exchange and conversation within the cohort. 

Unit 2: Collaborative Practices for Common Good  

This Unit addresses the theme of collaboration through co-operation with other Masters’ courses in the college. By working co-operatively with fellow students from parallel and contrasting courses, you will experience at first hand the value of cross-disciplinary thinking and problem-solving that is central to developing a curatorial practice.

Unit 3: Curatorial Positions

Through group work, individual research and a collection-based curatorial project, this Unit helps you establish and develop a sense of your position: in relation to your subject interests and practice area, in terms of social identities and institutional spaces. This is expressed through the production of curatorial and written work. The collaborative research and learning element of the Unit helps you establish a basis of knowledge around different definitions of culture, the relationship between culture and technology and the ethics of representation, collection and preservation. 

Unit 4: Curatorial Incubation

This Unit spans the summer months and is dedicated to deepening your research on your Dissertation and extending your curatorial practice by beginning a second group project, in collaboration with an external partner. It is based mostly on independent learning with support via online classes, synchronous and asynchronous. It is an essential period of independent work and student-directed study that you undertake both as an individual and in small groups.

Unit 5: Curatorial Responsibility

Unit 5’s theme of Curatorial Responsibility signals the ethical, practical and conceptual components of a well-developed curatorial practice. Your work during this unit will be dedicated to coming to define your practice through your work and the ways it sits in relation to others — your peers, your communities, your collaborators, your readers and audiences. The Unit will prompt you to reflect on your professional development and position yourself in relation to your chosen career pathway.

Important note concerning academic progression through your course:

If you are required to retake a unit you will need to cease further study on the course until you have passed the unit concerned. Once you have successfully passed this unit, you will be able to proceed onto the next unit. Retaking a unit might require you to take time out of study, which could affect other things such as student loans or the visa status for international students.  

Mode of study

The course is offered in full-time mode which runs for 45 weeks over 12 months. You will be expected to commit 40 hours per week to study, which includes teaching time and independent study. 

Credit and award requirements

The course is credit-rated at 180 credits. 

On successfully completing the course, you will gain a Master of Arts (MA degree). 

Under the Framework for Higher Education Qualifications, an MA is Level 7. All units must be passed in order to achieve the MA but the classification of the award is derived from the mark for the final unit only. 

If you are unable to continue on the course, a Postgraduate Certificate (PG Cert) will normally be offered following the successful completion of 60 credits, or a Postgraduate Diploma (PG Dip) following the successful completion of 120 credits. 

Learning and teaching methods

The following teaching and learning methods are employed to support the integrated achievement of the course outcomes. These will be delivered in a combination of on-site and online:

  • Inductions, Unit and project briefings 
  • Tutorials (individual and group) 
  • Lectures, seminars and workshops 
  • Peer learning 
  • Facilitated projects with external partners
  • Working in groups
  • Peer group support
  • Visiting Practitioner and alumni mentor input 
  • Visits 
  • Use of the library and other College facilities as a critical resource 
  • Student-led presentations  
  • Independent research 
  • Developing and testing appropriate forms of presentation 
  • Oral and written presentations  
  • Journal keeping 
  • Reflection and self-evaluation
  • Critical reviews (Crits)

Meet Course Leader Alison Green and students

Students discuss the value of arts education

Student work

  • MA-CCC-5-Year-Anniversary-04.jpg
    Five year anniversary party for alumni, December 2017. Photo: Glenn Michael Harper
  • MA-CCC-Inside-Out-023.jpg
    Inside/Out exhibition in various Walworth locations, South London. This was part of a student project with Artists Studio Company, November 2017. Photo: Glenn Michael Harper
  • MA-CCC-Inside-Out-04092.jpg
    Inside/Out exhibition in various Walworth locations, South London. This was part of a student project with Artists Studio Company, November 2017). Photo: Glenn Michael Harper
  • MA-CCC-5-Year-Anniversary-26.jpg
    Five year anniversary party for alumni, December 2017. Photo: Glenn Michael Harper
  • MA-CCC-Inside-Out-056.jpg
    Inside/Out exhibition in various Walworth locations, South London. This was part of a student project with Artists Studio Company, November 2017). Photo: Glenn Michael Harper
  • MA-CCC-5-Year-Anniversary-25.jpg
    Five year anniversary party for alumni, December 2017. Photo: Glenn Michael Harper

MA Culture, Criticism and Curation stories

  • Mel Calman, 1996

    Art and psychoanalysis: emotion, intimacy and the unconscious

    Exploring work from the Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection, alumni and assistant curator Siyan Zhang looks at emotion, intimacy, trauma, relationships, desire and unconscious.

  • The Great Unwashed, , Adriana Cobo Corey (Photo: Catarina Heeckt)

    (In)Visible Processes: Adriana Cobo Corey

    In this conversation, Adriana Cobo Corey shares her PhD research on taste, space and power. See her work in (In)Visible Processes at the Lethaby Gallery curated by MA Culture, Criticism and Curation students. The exhibition shares recent PhD

  • Lois Innes, Closer to Home, M ARCH: Architecture

    Collected conversations

    In a new series of podcasts, Terrence Phearse, MA Culture, Criticism and Curation alum, explores recent additions to the Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection. These works, by 2020 graduates, reflect on social justice, mental health and

  • London Grads Now, Saatchi Gallery (Photo: Justin Piperger, image courtesy of Saatchi Gallery, London)

    London Grads Now at Saatchi Gallery

    Saatchi Gallery invited the College to take part in its celebration of the 2020 class graduating from London’s art schools. We speak to students Mazzy-Mae Green and Greta Voeller who took on the challenge to produce an exhibition in a matter of

Staff

Course Tutor: Dr Caterina Albano
Course Tutor: Dr Louise Garrett
Course Tutor: Nathalie Khan
Course Tutor: Nick Kimberley
Course Tutor:
Andrew Marsh
Course Tutor: Dr Colin Perry
Course Tutor: Professor Roger Sabin
Course Tutor: James Swinson
Course Tutor: Judy Willcocks, Director, CSM Museum and Study Collection

Fees and funding

Home fee

£12,700

This fee is correct for entry in January 2024 and is subject to change for entry in January 2025.

Tuition fees may increase in future years for new and continuing students on courses lasting more than one year. For this course, you can pay tuition fees in instalments.

Home fees are currently charged to UK nationals and UK residents who meet the rules. However, the rules are complex. Find out more about our tuition fees and determining your fee status.

International fee

£25,970

This fee is correct for entry in January 2024 and is subject to change for entry in January 2025.

Tuition fees may increase in future years for new and continuing students on courses lasting more than one year. For this course, you can pay tuition fees in instalments.

Students from countries outside of the UK will generally be charged international fees. The rules are complex so read more about tuition fees and determining your fee status.

Scholarship search

Entry requirements

The standard entry requirements for this course are as follows:

  • An honours degree in a humanities, social science or art and design subject
  • Or an equivalent EU/international qualification.

AP(E)L – Accreditation of Prior (Experiential) Learning

Exceptionally, applicants who do not meet these course entry requirements may still be considered. The course team will consider each application that demonstrates additional strengths and alternative evidence. This might, for example, be demonstrated by:

  • Related academic or work experience
  • The quality of the personal statement
  • A strong academic or other professional reference

Or a combination of these factors.

Each application will be considered on its own merit but cannot guarantee an offer in each case.

English language requirements

IELTS level 7.0 or above, with at least 6.0 in reading, writing, listening and speaking (please check our main English language requirements webpage).

Selection criteria

We select applicants according to potential and current ability in the following areas:

  • Capacity for independence in learning
  • Motivation to develop research skills
  • Interest in developing collaborative or cooperative practices
  • Interest in cultural & curatorial studies, and affinity to the field’s critical discourse
  • Interest in developing creative, activist and/or experimental approaches to writing and to curatorial work
  • Preparedness to support others in the learning community. 

Apply now

Application deadline

Deadline

Round 1:

Not applicable

Round 2:

25 October 2023

Decision outcome

Round 1:

Not applicable

Round 2:

End of December 2023

Round 1
Round 2
Deadline
Not applicable
25 October 2023
Decision outcome

Not applicable

End of December 2023

All applications received by 25 October 2023 will be treated equally. If there are places available after this date, the course will remain open to applications until places have been filled.

Read more about deadlines

Apply now

Application deadline

Deadline

Round 1:

Not applicable

Round 2:

25 October 2023

Decision outcome

Round 1:

Not applicable

Round 2:

End of December 2023

Round 1
Round 2
Deadline
Not applicable
25 October 2023
Decision outcome

Not applicable

End of December 2023

All applications received by 25 October 2023 will be treated equally. If there are places available after this date, the course will remain open to applications until places have been filled.

Read more about deadlines

Apply to UAL

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How to apply

Follow this step-by-step guide to apply for this course

Step 1: Initial application

You will need to submit an initial application including your personal statement, CV, study proposal and written task.

Personal statement advice

Your personal statement should be maximum 500 words and include:

  • your reasons for choosing the course
  • your current creative practice and how this course will help you achieve your future plans
  • any relevant education and experience, especially if you do not have any formal academic qualifications.

Visit our personal statement page for more advice.

CV advice

Please provide a CV detailing your education, qualifications and any relevant work or voluntary experience. If you have any web projects or other media that you would like to share, please include links in your CV. If English is not your first language, please also include your most recent English language test score.

Study proposal advice

Please provide a summary of your study proposal (800-1,000 words).

It should:

  • outline your plan for a cultural research project based upon an archive or collection
  • summarise your direction of research and your rationale for choosing this theme/topic
  • reflect your personal interests within the cultural field
  • demonstrate your ability to conceptualise and plan project work
  • illustrate your critical engagement and creative thinking within the cultural field
  • include any relevant images or other media.

Please note, your proposal serves to inform your application and we understand that your ideas will inevitably develop and change throughout your studies.

Written task advice

Please submit a written assignment alongside your initial application (3,000 – 5,000 words).

It should:

  • be an academic essay or a piece of published or unpublished writing
  • reflect your academic and professional interests
  • demonstrate your ability to write and your interest in and understanding of history, culture and arts and design.

Step 2: Interview

You may be invited to an interview following our review of your application. All interviews are held online and last 15 to 20 minutes.

For top tips, see our Interview advice.

You also need to know

Communicating with you

Once you have submitted your initial application, we will email you with your login details for our Applicant portal.

Requests for supplementary documents like qualifications and English language tests will be made through the applicant portal. You can also use it to ask questions regarding your application. Visit our After you apply page for more information.

Applying to more than 1 course

You can apply for more than 1 postgraduate course at UAL but we recommend that you apply for no more than 3 courses. You need to tailor your application, supporting documents and portfolio to each course, so applying for many different courses could risk the overall quality of your application. If you receive offers for multiple courses, you'll only be able to accept 1 offer. UAL doesn't accept repeat applications to the same course in the same academic year.

Visas and immigration history check

All non-UK nationals must complete an immigration history check. Your application may be considered by our course teams before this check takes place. This means that we may request your portfolio and/or video task before we identify any issues arising from your immigration history check. Sometimes your history may mean that we are not able to continue considering your application. Visit our Immigration and visas advice page for more information.

External student transfer policy

UAL accepts transfers from other institutions on a case-by-case basis. Read our Student transfer policy for more information.

Alternative offers

If your application is really strong, but we believe your strengths and skillset are better suited to a different course, we may make you an alternative offer. This means you will be offered a place on a different course or at a different UAL College.

Deferring your place

We do not accept any deferral requests for our postgraduate courses. This means that you must apply in the year that you plan to start your course and you will not be able to defer your place to start at a later date.

Application deadlines

For postgraduate courses at UAL there are 2 equal consideration deadlines to ensure fairness for all our applicants. If you apply ahead of either of these deadlines, your application will be considered on an equal basis with all other applications in that round. If there are places available after the second deadline, the course will remain open to applications until places have been filled.

Careers

The course will prepare graduates to work in the creative and cultural industries and/ or for doctoral work in Humanities subjects.

Within the cultural and creative industries there is increasing demand for people who have curatorial, research and writing skills and can work within this interdisciplinary sector. Employers now expect that MA graduates will be able handle intellectual, creative and practical projects, and demonstrate an enquiring mind.