Public Art and Performative PracticesMA

Professional Focus 1: Public Art, Funding and Commissioning

This module provides a practical and industry-orientated exploration of the competences needed to propose, produce and develop art commissions and public-facing projects across art disciplines. It draws on real-life knowledge and current practices in the professional sector and is designed to equip students with key skills to sustain a career in the industry.

In doing so, the module aims to:
- promote an insight into how art projects in public and institutional contexts are initiated and carried through;
- develop an understanding of the funding systems and commissioning programmes behind public art;
- draw on real-life case studies to foster a direct understanding of the subject;
- outline best professional practices and apply these to the students’ individual projects.

Professional Focus 2: Project Managing Public Art

This module equips students with the practical and professional skills necessary to project manage public experiences. It prepares students for key practices, such as risk assessment and public liability. Alongside providing technical knowledge, it encourages a creative exploration of how to manage, predict and encourage public interactions in artworks. It progressively develops into curatorial organisation and project management, with a specific focus on logistical and pragmatic solutions.

In doing so, the module aims to:
- provide an insight into the formal safety requirements in public art experiences;
- inform students on formal and legal regulations in terms of public access, inclusion and safeguarding;
- provide exploratory and creative strategies to complement logistical needs;
- provide students with an understanding of project management in staging and curating public experiences.

Public Art Project

The Public Art Project module represents the culmination of the students’ journey on the MA Public Art and Performative Practices: it is thus designed to bring together creative, methodological, professional and academic skills developed in previous modules, applied to a context of work chosen by the student. Up until this point, projects worked on across the course will have been typically based on tutor-led briefs; in this module, the brief is now completely open for students to independently develop their creative and professional practice, according to their own interests and preferred contexts of work.

Already in modules like FA7057 Public Art: Creating and Curating, students will have been given opportunities to envision what work they may want to lead in the Public Art Project, so that this module is used as a reference point throughout the course for the students to work towards, as a stepping stone in progressing their careers as a result of the MA.

While the nature of the Project is intentionally open, this will typically consist of a range of artistic and/or curatorial outputs, activities and creative experiments, presented as one cohesive body of work, according to a chosen area of research. Through mentoring by the tutor, such outputs may be in any medium and may take place in any location chosen by the student during the Summer Term, to then be presented or documented in an exhibit as part of the Postgraduate Show in September.

The modules aims to:
• provide students with the opportunity to realise a major self-initiated and self-directed project;
• facilitate the development of professional skills and competencies in doing so;
• explore artistic, methodological and ethical questions in conjunction with the work pursued;
• encourage dialogue, exchange and experimentation in creative practice;
• develop confidence and rigour in independent creative practice and research.

Public Art: Creating and Curating

This module establishes the core narrative of the MA Public Art and Performative Practices and is designed to provide you with a conceptual and practical journey through artistic, cultural and ethical considerations in creating and curating works of public art, performative and participatory practices. The module directly references the London and International art scenes, with a variety of off-site activities to public art sites, galleries and institutions.
In doing so, the module aims to:
- provide a practical and cultural framework in public art and performative practices, to be applied across the MA
- encourage an interdisciplinary approach to public art, based on both creative practice and cultural inquiry
- directly relate to case studies within the art scenes in London and internationally
- draw on current discourses in the subject of public art and performances, exploring artistic, cultural and ethical questions

Public Art: Research for Practice

This module focuses on research methodologies inherent to the fields of public art, performative and participatory practices, and curating public programming. It is designed to provide students with the necessary theoretical knowledge in order to frame their creative practice academically, drawing on the study of contemporary concerns and established and emerging practices in these fields. A particular emphasis is placed on the notion of ‘practice-as-research’.

In doing so, the module aims to:

provide a critical framework for the student’s own work

establish academic rigour in creative practice as research

foster an understanding of scholarly research, in terms of research questions, methodology, ethics, findings and impact

mentor the students on their developing practice, leading to the theoretical proposal of the project to be realised in their Summer Studies Period (FA7P02).