Skip to main content
Postgraduate

MA Applied Imagination

Applied Imagination Festival 2017, Culture and Enterprise Programme, Central Saint Martins | Photograph: Jolly Thompson
College
Central Saint Martins
Start date
January 2025
Course length
One year full-time (45 weeks)

This course will teach you how to realise your ideas in the creative industries.

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.

MA Applied Imagination will help you become a problem-finder and change-maker. You will apply your imagination and question existing assumptions in the creative disciplines. This course is part of the Culture and Enterprise programme.

Why choose this course at Central Saint Martins

  • Festival of Applied Imagination: You will participate in the course festival, presenting your final project outcomes to your peers, professionals and to the public.
  • Interdisciplinary approach: You will work collaboratively through the interdisciplinarity and cultural cross-fertilisation that the Culture and Enterprise programme provides.
  • Experienced feedback: You will be given the opportunity to investigate your ideas through a series of interventions and obtain feedback from end users and key practitioners.
  • Independent research: The course structure allows for an extended period of independent research. You will be encouraged to use this for testing projects with external partners and stakeholders. This feature will develop your strengths in self-directed study and creative work, as well as building skills in creative networking.

Open days

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

Recordings

Watch a recording of the recent MA Applied Imagination open day.

Scholarships, bursaries and awards

Course overview

MA Applied Imagination is a non-disciplinary, student-centred course directing your development as a confident and responsible creative practitioner capable of achieving change.   

We are an active course community who recognise the cross-disciplinary nature of contemporary global challenges. Students engage in original, self-directed research journeys, forming their own external networks and experimenting with new forms of knowledge production. Starting from problem solving and provocation, the course asks you to pose questions that spring from your individual concerns and sit across or outside traditional disciplinary boundaries. These may be questions that challenge the dominant parameters of our cultural, economic and political landscape. In forming new connections and networks and applying your skills and knowledges, you will gain an enhanced sense of agency over your creative and professional future.     
 
We are committed to developing ethical applied imagination practices. To achieve this, we are working to embed UAL's Principles for Climate, Social and Racial Justice into the course.  

What to expect

  • A transformative learning journey: built around curiosity, research, testing, reflection, action and external verification from experts and other stakeholders. 
  • Empowerment:  you will establish your own external networks and develop your professional courage as you surface and invest in your chosen creative imperative 
  • Direct creative engagement with society: growing your capacity to conceive and create change, and practice with professional confidence and capability.  

Industry experience and opportunities 

The external research process is scaffolded by a network of supporting structures: a multi-disciplinary course team of creative practitioners; a diverse cohort of visiting academic and industry experts; a dynamic global alumni network, and established relationships with organisations and pressure groups engaged in professional practice, social entrepreneurship, activism and trans-disciplinary learning.
 

Course units

MA Applied Imagination uses a four-step strategy to enable you to develop and apply your new creative knowledge. Unit One is designed to open and inform your imagination, using both individual projects and teamwork. You will work with your peers in rotating groups, responding to projects devised to stimulate and reinvigorate the imagination. Unit Two provides opportunities for co-operation and collaboration with students from other postgraduate courses. In Unit Three you will commence your personal research journey. Unit Four comprises the conclusion of this project, your reflections on your learning, and the steps you take to share your outcomes with others.  

Unit 1: Imagination 

In Unit 1, you will be immersed in a series of short, individual and team-based projects, designed to interrogate contemporary global agendas. Your peers will act as primary sources of knowledge and you will develop your skills through interaction with external experts and other collaborations. The projects in this unit pose questions that defy predictable answers – for example, we might ask you to construct and test a fully operational time machine. The projects are intended to take you outside of the familiar conventions of creativity and to investigate your potential for changemaking through the lenses of social justice, climate crisis, health and wellbeing, identity and technology. This “unpacking” process helps to locate resistance to change, often established through specific disciplinary backgrounds and cultural conditioning. We build awareness of personal and collective resistances which may inhibit the creation of new paradigms. The unit concludes with your drafting of a research proposal, to be further developed into your personal project during Units Three and Four.

Unit 2: Collaborative Practices for Common Good 

This unit is nested within Unit One and addresses the theme of collaboration through co-operation with other postgraduate courses within the University. 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 the MA Applied Imagination learning journey.  

Unit 3: Application 

In Unit 3, you will start to develop your research proposal into a viable project. You will also be required to establish networks for stakeholder engagement and external verification. You will be expected to demonstrate an understanding of the methodologies of action research and testing via intervention, in order to embody your research question and obtain new knowledge. You will plan and carry out your research in an ethical and inclusive way and be responsive to questions of social justice.  In this unit, the course team will support you in finding your way forward, without predicting or prescribing your next steps. 

Unit 4: Applied Imagination 

Unit 4 requires you to complete the external verification of your research question. The unit comprises the completion of, and reflection on, your research outcomes as well as their presentation for assessment.

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

MA Applied Imagination 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 learning and teaching methods devised for this course include: 

  • Unit and project briefs 
  • Tutorials (individual and group) 
  • Lectures, seminars and workshops 
  • Peer learning and peer-led assessment sessions 
  • Facilitated interaction with external stakeholders 
  • Team working, including external speaker presentations and debates, facilitated by students 
  • Immersive ‘Labs’ and hacks: intensive project incubation workshops
  • Visiting Practitioner and alumni mentor input 
  • Use of the library and other College facilities as a critical resource 
  • Independent research 
  • Learning log and reflective journal keeping 
  • Development and iterative external testing of action research interventions 
  • Reflection and self-evaluation of testing process and evidence gained 
  • The development of an appropriate form of presentation 

Meet the Course Leader and students

Staff speaking at Relogia Arts-Science-Technology Conference

Graduate Showcase

Explore work by our recent students on the UAL Showcase

  • Retrace’98
    Retrace’98, Kanya Pratita Wanaditya, 2021 MA Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries, Central Saint Martins, UAL
  • An Exclusive Bridge for Artisans to Fashion and Film !
    An Exclusive Bridge for Artisans to Fashion and Film !, Vanshaj Kumar, 2021 MA Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries, Central Saint Martins, UAL
  • My Graduate Showcase
    My Graduate Showcase, Sidi CHENG, 2021 MA Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries, Central Saint Martins, UAL
  • Room I: Transmedia narrative and cognitive
    Room I: Transmedia narrative and cognitive, Jin Duan, 2021 MA Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries, Central Saint Martins, UAL
  • Stitching Around The Gender Gaps
    Stitching Around The Gender Gaps, Jojo Lee, 2021 MA Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries, Central Saint Martins, UAL
  • Mind's Eye VR: Impressionist VR- Mindfulness
    Mind's Eye VR: Impressionist VR- Mindfulness, Sam Mukherjee, 2021 MA Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries, Central Saint Martins, UAL
  • News Food: Unfortune Cookies
    News Food: Unfortune Cookies, Ho Yee Chan, 2021 MA Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries, Central Saint Martins, UAL
  • Inter.work
    Inter.work, Brenda Hernandez Gonzalez, 2021 MA Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries, Central Saint Martins, UAL

Culture and Enterprise stories

  • 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

  • Screenshot of Sparking Creativity

    Remedies and Translations

    In their final year, students from MA Arts and Cultural Enterprise collaborate on an online intervention. This year the projects ran from “audio remedies” for the global pandemic to exploring the impact of live-streaming improvised performance.

  • Sophie Huckfield, Break the Frame, MA Material Futures

    Class of 2020: Work

    We take a look at the 2020 graduating students exploring the meanings of work.

  • Damilola Ayo-Vaughan, BA Culture, Criticism and Curation <br>Home For Now, 2020

    Class of 2020: Damilola Ayo-Vaughan

    Graduating from BA Culture, Criticism and Curation, Damilola Ayo-Vaughan talks to us about his photographic practice which synthesises personal and collective memory.

Facilities

Staff

Course Tutor: Zuleika Lebow

Tutor: Sasha Damjanovski
Tutor: Diana Donaldson
Tutor: Jasminka Letzas
Tutor: Cecilia Mezzi
Tutor: David Mills 
Tutor: Georges Sidaoui 
Tutor: Elizabeth Wright

Fees and funding

Home fee

£12,700 (Full time)

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 (Full time)

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
  • 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 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:

  • Self-motivation, ambition, courage, and a commitment to the postgraduate programme
  • A readiness to engage with trans-disciplinary interactions with a wide variety of peers, experts and external stakeholders 
  • A readiness to engage in transformative self-directed learning, and in externally-targeted action research

What we are looking for

MA Applied Imagination is aimed at graduates with a background in any creative discipline. This includes all the established areas of design, the fine arts, performance art, curation and art business, journalism, advertising and marketing, management, economics, as well as science and technology. We are looking for talented, ambitious and open-minded students who enjoy working with others, but who are also capable of planning and completing a major self-directed project, working and researching across and outside traditional disciplinary boundaries.

Above all, we are looking for courageous and creative thinkers and changemakers who are ready to channel their talents to achieve their personal goals – and are ready to accept the challenge of a student-centred curriculum in which they define and pursue their own programme of study. 

Our cohort reflects this, and represents a very broad cultural, educational and professional mix.

Apply now

Application deadline

Deadline

Round 1:

Not applicable

Round 2:

25 October 2024

Decision outcome

Round 1:

Not applicable

Round 2:

12 December 2024

Round 1
Round 2
Deadline
Not applicable
25 October 2024
Decision outcome

Not applicable

12 December 2024

All applications received by 25 October 2024 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 2024

Decision outcome

Round 1:

Not applicable

Round 2:

12 December 2024

Round 1
Round 2
Deadline
Not applicable
25 October 2024
Decision outcome

Not applicable

12 December 2024

All applications received by 25 October 2024 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

Start your application
or

Apply with a UAL Representative

Based across the world, our local UAL representatives can support you with your application from your home country. Check to see if there is a representative available in your country currently.

Find your representative

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 and CV.

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.

Written task advice

In 500 words, explain how you think creativity can make the world a better place and how the course will help you achieve this.

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

Students graduating from MA Applied Imagination have taken up employment in almost every part of the creative sector in the world economy. Our alumni have diversified to become actors, architects, broadcasters, creative managers, entrepreneurs, film-makers, inventors, journalists, musicians, social innovators, web designers – and academics. Many have also moved on to PhD programmes. Others have returned to – or entered for the first time – fields such as advertising, curation, exhibition and museum design, film and television, fashion design and retailing, graphic design, marketing, product design, public relations, publishing (both print and digital), and web design.

The course has links with outstanding practitioners across the spectrum of the creative sector. These include: architecture and interior design; advertising and branding; design against crime; film; fashion design; furniture and textile design; graphic and communication design; the music business; photography; product design; museums and galleries; television.

Numerous leading international companies and institutions have been collaborators with, or sponsors of, MA Applied Imagination. These include: AiG; The Big Issue; Calvin Klein; Camberwell College of Arts and Design; Cosmopolitan; Camden Council; Cranfield University; The Design Museum; Dolce & Gabbana; Gloss Interior Design; Ideo; Jam Design; Kingston University; Nokia; Pentagram; PKF International; RIBA (The Royal Institute of British Architects); St Lukes; Swatch; Tangerine Design – and many others.