Course units
Studying this course embeds intercultural awareness as a basic stance and intercultural co-operation as its fundamental practice.
The course is structured in three sections. Units 1, 2 and 3 challenge you to initiate discoveries for yourself, deconstruct existing interpretation and explore ethics from applied perspectives. Units 4 to 8 focus on reflection and reflective encounters that support engagement with transcultural themes. Unit 7 and 8 prioritise processes and strategies for both making and impact.
Unit 1: Curiosity and Place
This first unit explores place and context through active searching and sharing, or foraging. Foraging is a branch of behavioural ecology that references searching and discovery specific to time and place; it frames an individual's association to the time of an event with the place of an event. It is the starting point for making beyond the studio. This unit is primarily taught through seminars and workshops supporting student led and centred enquiry.
Unit 2: Stuff of Cultures
Progressing from Unit 1, Stuff of Cultures asks you to appraise your own situation as a creative practitioner, maker, and producer. It begins with an exchange of material. Using shared materials, and without relying on a workshop or studio, the unit invites you to deconstruct context and its relevance. This unit promotes a sense of mutual understanding and empathy; sharing the co-ordinates of one’s own cultural environment provides triggers and promotes curiosity in others.
Unit 3: Consideration
The initial focus for this unit is the consideration of ethical practices and intention. The premise is thoughtfulness, care, reflection, and analysis; and thinking relating to ethics. The purpose is that you generate theory for testing through applied methods and lay the foundations for further exploration and experiment.
The unit is introduced through a series of interactive lectures, seminars, and reading groups. Practices formed here will prepare you for the final units of the course.
Unit 3 includes an intensive in-person residential workshop; normally 2 weeks duration.
Unit 4: REBEL (Options: Unit 4A, Co-operative Practices; 4B, Analysis and Application; 4C, Making and Production; 4D, Communication and Connectivity; 4E, Enterprise and Innovation; 4F, Initiative and Creativity; 4G, Process and Responsibility; 4H, Skills and Application; 4I, Curiosity and Enquiry)
Through reflective practice and self-analysis, you will start to determine your own future learning. You will select one of nine options for qualities and outcomes against which you wish to be assessed. The unit supports you in building a portfolio of experience drawn from personal projects, intensive workshops, and intercultural learning exchange. Core teaching is shared across all of the options and encourages you in gathering experience and evidence of learning from independent enquiry (practice) and from engagement with transnational sharing.
Unit 5: Collective Memory
Teaching on this unit is focused on group work, new explorations, and storytelling in rich media. Considerations of collective memory extend over much of the course. This unit frames the relevance of collective memory in relation to storytelling and the authentication of knowledge through inter-relational aesthetics.
Exploration refers to experiment with unfamiliar tactics and practices of making. The activity is student-centred and individually focused. You will be supported through group tutorials and workshops. The theme for the unit is experimentation rather than completion and success; the focus is on process not product. As such, your brief is to initiate and expand your practices into unfamiliar and untested areas. Failure is a welcome reality of process and helps you to build resistance into your practice.
The final Master's component is principally concerned with processes and strategies of making, dissemination, and impact.
Unit 6: Putting it into the World.
This unit supports you in presenting your practice or study and making your content public. Experiences from all the other units contribute to this moment of production and making culminating in sharing your practice publicly. Students will consider means of locating a new audience beyond the place of encounter. You will explore methods of feedback and interaction with your audiences.
Unit 7: Strategy and Dynamics
In this unit, you may be pursuing independent projects but will still be working closely with your peers, through collective discussion and review. The final major project is forward looking and propositional, consolidating the intercultural base of the course. As a cohort, you will build and maintain networks and connections developed through your time on the course.
The early stages of this unit includes the in-person intensive residential, focussing on habits of reflective practices and future practices.
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 Intercultural Practices is delivered through distance learning with some low-residency in person or intensive workshops. It is a part-time course over 84 weeks covering 22 months. The majority of the course teaching and learning will be experienced fully online with some campus-based residential workshops. They are typically 2 weeks duration held on-site at CSM. They are intensive in that they cover weekdays and weekends for the duration of the residential.
Other than the in-person residentials the teaching and learning engagement takes place through online platforms. You will be expected to commit 20 hours per week, which includes teaching time and independent study.
The course supports a dispersed community of students that may be based at distance and across global regions. Online delivery works successfully by managing student groups in relation to time zones and by developing records and documentation from teaching and co-operative learning. Carefully timed synchronous sessions are supported with asynchronous materials. Intensive periods of residential and online workshops are staged at regular points for community building and consolidating learning. In addition, in-person residential workshops offer the opportunity to share cultural influences and complexity.
The digital platforms and applications used for teaching on the course are best supported by a cable connection. Our platforms have been selected to suit medium band width.
Credit and award requirements
The course is credit-rated at 180 credits.
On successfully completing the course, students will gain a Master of Arts (MA degree).
Under the UK Framework for Higher Education Qualifications, an MA is Level 7.
The classification of the final award is based on assessment outcomes form Units 6 and 7.
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.
