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Study Details: One year full-time (45 weeks)
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.
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.
We select applicants according to potential and current ability in the following areas:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Start your creative future at University of the Arts London About University of the Arts London (UAL) University of the Arts London (UAL) is hos...
