Curating Contemporary Art

The programme explores both the theory and practice of curating and programming. Through talks and lectures by visiting curators, readings, seminars and workshops, you will engage with topics informing contemporary curating, such as globalisation and migration, the digital and networked culture, urbanisation and use of space, and changing understandings of publics. Meanwhile, site visits offer insight into the complex and diverse range of spaces and places, galleries, museums and organisations in which curating and programming occurs.

You will learn to work collaboratively in peer groups on a live project brief set with an external partner. You will build skills in writing curatorial proposals, commission artists, designers and programmers and understand the role and value of project research and planning, presentation, mediation, and advocacy. In the final term, you will work in groups to curate a display of your project proposal and deliver a public-facing event, designed to generate audiences and critical debate.

Term 1

Curatorial Thinking (30 credits)

Curatorial Thinking introduces you to current and dominant positions and histories within curatorial studies, whilst exploring how the curatorial may be understood as a broader cultural phenomenon, as well as an approach to critically engaging with our contemporary moment. The aim of this unit is to develop your critical analytical skills, so you can establish your own understanding of what curating might mean as a practice, approach and way of thinking in and of our time. Taught through lectures, seminar discussion and the close reading of texts, assessed by a comparative textual analysis and thematic essay, the unit aims to develop your confidence in approaching theoretical texts and applying theory to the analysis of practice and vice versa.

Ecologies of Curating (15 credits)

Ecologies of Curating enables you to develop an understanding of the contemporary arts ecology, equipping you in the process with the skills to critically examine the inter-relation between curating, programming and the spaces and places in which contemporary art is generated, displayed, mediated and promoted. Focused on specific typologies of practice, organisations and platforms you will think through in groups how the conditions in which these exist determine and define what is produced and curated, and who for. The unit runs in parallel with unit 1, ‘Curatorial Thinking’, allowing a further insight to the relation between theory and practice.

Terms 1&2

AcrossRCA (30 credits)

Across terms 1 and 2, you will participate in AcrossRCA. This unit aims to support you to meet the challenges of a complex, uncertain and changing world by bringing you together to work collaboratively in cross-programme interdisciplinary teams. In your team you will develop a self-initiated themed project, informed by expertise within and beyond the College. These projects will challenge you to collectively use your intellect and imagination to address key cultural, social, environmental and economic challenges. In doing so, you will develop and reflect on the abilities required to translate knowledge into action, and help demonstrate the contribution that the creative arts can make to our understanding and experience of the world.

Term 2

Urgency of the Arts (15 credits)

In term 2, School of Arts & Humanities Master’s students will participate in a School-wide unit The Urgency of the Arts. In this unit we ask how arts and humanities research and practice can engage with our current socio-political climate, and how might it shape, be necessary and essential in contemporary cultural debates.

The unit introduces you to a diverse range of perspectives, approaches and methods relevant to contemporary practice and thought in the arts and humanities. The delivery, predominantly based on workshops and featuring specialist presentations by leading artists, aims to assist you in recognising, questioning, expanding, and reevaluating your own artistic practices and disciplinary assumptions. Through interactions with staff and students from across the School, as well as through a variety of methodological approaches, you will develop an understanding of the contemporary concerns that shape and influence artistic practice. You will be encouraged to reflect on these as a means to articulate the potential of your own work within the context of broad cultural landscapes and urgent cultural debates.

Curating in a Collaborative Context (30 credits)

Curating in a Collaborative Context aims to develop your research-based and practice-orientated curatorial skills of analysis, conceptualisation and communication through collaborative, group project work. Responding to a specific project brief set by an external partner arts organisation, you will work with your peers to develop a curatorial proposal to Shortlist / Feasibility Stage of sector standards for presentation and feedback to your external partner. The unit follows the stages of proposal development from analysis of the project brief, research into context of the brief, identifying curatorial and programming opportunities towards commissioning, context analysis, audience projection, visualisation and documentation, presentation and advocacy.

Term 3

Independent Research Project (60 credits)

The final unit provides you with the opportunity to curate a public display of a collaboratively created curatorial proposal and programme a public event that tests the ideas of the proposal. Aiming to extend your understanding of the relationship between critical reflection, practice and research, you will individually explore an element of your proposal through an extended piece of research.

This MA is delivered over 45 weeks.

AcrossRCA is a compulsory 30-credit unit which is delivered as part of all MA programmes.

Situated at the core of your RCA experience, this ambitious interdisciplinary College-wide unit supports you in responding to the challenges of complex, uncertain and changing physical and digital worlds. Developed in response to student feedback, AcrossRCA creates an exciting opportunity for you to collaborate meaningfully across programmes.

Challenging you to use your imagination and intellect to respond to urgent contemporary themes, this ambitious unit will provide you with the opportunity to:

• make connections across disciplines
• think critically about your creative practice
• develop creative networks within and beyond the College
• generate innovative responses to complex problems
• reflect on how to propose ideas for positive change in local and/or global contexts

AcrossRCA launches with a series of presentations and panel discussions from acclaimed speakers who will introduce the themes and act as inspirational starting points for your collaborative team response.

Delivered online and in-person across two terms, the unit has been designed to complement your disciplinary studies and to provide you with a platform to thrive beyond graduation.

2021 Graduate Projects

Visit the CCA Graduate Projects 2021 portal.

Furtherfield, We are just animals, humans, and machines getting on together in specific lifeworlds

Gasworks, Fulfilment Services Ltd.

Camden Art Centre, In the meantime…

British Library, Notes on Play

Gasworks, Hear the Light

2020 Graduate Projects

Visit the CCA Graduate Projects 2020 portal.

Empathy Loading

So remember the liquid ground

Nothing gentle will remain

Sets and Scenarios

Quincunx

2019 Graduate Projects

Gasworks

Nottingham Contemporary

Photographers’ Gallery

Pump House Gallery

Fragmented Folies

For the time being

Unexpected beautiful phrase

Re over everything which exists under sky

2018 Graduate Projects

LUX Partnership, 4717

Gasworks Partnership, Who cares? A radio tale

Stanhope Partnership, Every Second In Between

The Design Museum partnership, Alt-Age: Designing Belief

2017 Graduate Projects

Doing It In Public

Itinerant Assembly

Open House

Turn The Tide

Read the CCA Graduate Projects 2017 press release.