Arts and Education Practices - MA

Enhancing your employability skills

Studying an MA will help you to pursue or develop your career in a range of related professions across the educational sector and creative industries. This course will help to enhance your skillset and employability and either progress in your existing role or achieve your career ambitions in a new direction.

Many of our graduates have achieved regional, national and international recognition as professional artist educators and professionals in the creative industries sector.

Several modules on this course have been specifically designed to equip you with valuable transferable skills, for example Contemporary Curatorial Practice; Small Arts Business Set Up and Creative Publishing and Public Dissemination. These transferable skills include:

• Thinking in a creative, imaginative and speculative manner
• Demonstrating communication and presentation skills in practical, written and verbal forms
• Demonstrating adaptability and flexibility in a range of contexts
• Reflecting and communicating in an articulate, informed, confident and effective manner
• Working independently while demonstrating initiative and self-reliance
• Demonstrating motivation, organisation, planning and effective strategising skills
• Showing a capacity for good time management
• Actively linked with up-to-date local and regional opportunities.

We maintain excellent connections with major city centre institutions such as Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery (BMAG), Selfridges, Birmingham City Council, New Art West Midlands and Digbeth First Friday to name but a few.

Placements

Placements are one of the possible ways of fulfilling your modules and many of our students have chosen this route. There is scope for placements with a number of organisations in the city and beyond, however it is your responsibility to plan and organise your placement with the organisation you wish to work with.

Placements are a great opportunity to gain insight into how an organisation works and your reflection on their activities can be useful to them as you develop your research. Placements also give you the chance to meet and network with people in the education sector and creative industries. Our tutors are available to guide you through this process. 

Navi Kaur
Artist and Teacher of Art at Nishkam High School

"Studying on the MA Arts and Education Practices programme was a great privilege as the course allowed me time and space to reflect upon and revisit my art practice, as well as research my developing interest in faith schools and alternative arts education, particularly within gallery settings and Punjabi schools situated in Gurdwaras (Sikh temples). Over the course of the year, I experimented with various materials and processes and felt the independence of the programme was integral to achieving success, as this encouraged me to approach galleries and organisations in the local arts community to share and experiment new works. This led to my first solo show at The GAP Arts Project and a number of student-led collaborative shows both at Margaret Street and an interim show at the CET Building in Coventry. The malleability of the course meant that I was able to balance my practice alongside my writing and was supported by my tutors to take up a research trip to Punjab - this developed into a short documentary film (Finding Space in Faith, 2018,), in which I explored my developing relationship with faith and family. This work was presented as my final project and exhibited as part of the end of year Masters degree show, Turn Out.

"After completing the course, I was fortunate enough to be supported by various arts organisations including Grand Union Gallery and Studios, with whom I am now a studio holder as part of their year-long BCU Graduate Residency Programme. 

"Finding Space in Faith was widely shared across various platforms including on The White Pube's website as their November web resident. This led onto a collaborative exhibition at Stryx Gallery with a small number of my fellow Masters graduates, my second solo show at Recent Activity and more recently, exhibiting work at the UK's first Asian Woman Festival and becoming a member of Black Hole Club's 2019 cohort. 

"Also after completing the course, I began my Initial Teacher Training and am currently working towards QTS with Staffordshire University on their PGCE Art and Design programme and am very privileged to be the newly appointed Teacher of Art at Nishkam High School from September 2019. I endeavour to be a positive role model for young people of colour in the community and create opportunities for them that were not accessible for me."

Laura Onions
Artist, Lecturer in Fine Art and Gallery Assistant at Grand Union.

"Having the space and time to identify how I wanted to practice as an artist through the contexts of education was important to me in selecting this MA. The expanded nature of the course enabled me to play within a critical framework that supported and challenged my practice and thinking. The most powerful aspect of this course was developing an educational ethos that has affected the way in which I interact and make decisions in my work with communities, galleries and teaching in Higher Education."

Melanie Woodhead
Course Leader of the Foundation Degree Fine Art & Contemporary Craft at Malvern School of Art.

"The MA Arts and Education Practices course was my ideal programme of study because it gave me fresh perspective on my position as an experienced Fine Art lecturer in Further and Higher Education, and in my role as a freelance art educator. As an artist it also challenged and shifted my creative identity towards unfamiliar territory. Since completing the course, I have started a new job as Course Leader of the Foundation Degree Fine Art and Contemporary Craft at Malvern School of Art, a role in which I constantly draw and reflect upon my experiences at BCU."

We offer part-time temporary positions within the University. This allows you to work while you study with us, fitting the job around your course commitments.