
Kingston upon Thames, United Kingdom
DURATION
2 years
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
Full time, Part time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
Request application deadline *
EARLIEST START DATE
Sep 2025
TUITION FEES
GBP 22,800 / per year **
STUDY FORMAT
On-Campus
* there is no application deadline for postgraduate courses
** for international full-time | international part-time: 12,540 GBP/year | home full-time: 13,500 GBP/year | home part-time: 7,425 GBP/year
Key Summary
Introduction
Prepare for a career in gallery design and curation.
This degree is a collaboration between Kingston School of Art and The Design Museum. Since its inception, this MA degree has grown into one of the world's foremost programmes for design curators.
Taught by top curators and designers, the course blends critical thinking with creative practice to address today’s fast-changing world. You’ll curate live projects and build your professional profile through The Design Museum and partnerships with institutions like the British Council, Gallery Fumi and the Royal Academy of Arts.
The course develops skills in curating exhibitions, public programmes, and alternative formats. You’ll reflect critically on curatorial practice, collaborate across disciplines, and articulate your ideas on contemporary design.
Why choose this course?
You will develop creative and practical skills for curating design exhibitions, public programmes and alternative curatorial formats. You will learn to reflect critically on curatorial practice. Importantly, through discussion of geopolitical, social, and economic concerns, you’ll learn to speak and write about contemporary design and curatorial practice. We encourage students to work in a trans-disciplinary fashion, to develop responses to the complexity of the world today.
This course is delivered by Kingston School of Art's academics, visiting lecturers, guest speakers and through industry connections, allowing you:
- The chance to engage with the most recent discourse in the field;
- A possibility to share your work with eminent members of your profession;
- Access to 'Live' projects, site visits and placements in prestigious institutions;
- To explore project work and workshops with visiting lecturers and industry specialists.
Your course will focus on project work, with briefs set by leading curators, designers and critics. Your research will address real-world issues and ask for critical responses. In doing so, you’ll develop skills in research, analysis and experimentation.
Optional study visits throughout the year bring you in contact with design and curatorial studio practice. You will also visit museums, galleries and alternative curatorial spaces and formats in London. There is also the option for students to take an international study trip. Previous students have visited New York, Berlin, Lisbon and Amsterdam.
The Design Museum
The Curating Contemporary Design MA is run jointly with The Design Museum. Students have access to inspiring curators and experienced museum staff, as well as The Design Museum's collections, library, archives and a changing programme of exhibitions and events.
Admissions
Scholarships and Funding
For students interested in studying the Curating Contemporary Design MA at Kingston, there are several opportunities to seek funding support:
- The Sino-British Fellowship Trust
- Inspire the Future Scholarship
- International scholarships
- Progression Scholarship
- Discounts for Kingston University alumni
Curriculum
Course content
Through a rigorous framework and practical experience students will engage with contemporary discourse that responds to the complexities and urgencies of today's world. Acknowledging design and curatorial history, you will engage with those contemporary concerns through transdisciplinary collaborations in theory and practice, and will develop stimulating creative interventions and critical writing.
Throughout the year, students will work on a major live project with external partners, which will allow them to gain first-hand curatorial experience. The final presentation will be shared with the general public at The Design Museum. Students are currently working on a collaboration with Parsons The New School, New York and HEAD Geneva, which started with a symposium on Design and Film at Dorich House Museum.
The course is structured into five modules. Typically, students must complete 180 credits and will gain 30 credits with each of the four core modules, plus 60 credits in the Major Project.
Modules
You will be equipped with the creative, theoretical and practical skills necessary to curate design exhibitions and other curatorial formats, including devising briefs, conducting primary and secondary research, selecting exhibits and curating public programmes.
A carefully composed curating visits programme runs alongside the taught modules and includes visits to exhibitions, studios and alternative sites of curatorial and design practice and critique.
The dissertation and/or creative project provides an opportunity to realise independently a body of work which demonstrates an original and creative approach in the field of design curation. With the ambition to develop professional practice and theory, the dissertation has the potential to be developed for research at higher degree level.
Core modules
- Curatorial Skill Sets
- Theories of the Contemporary Object
- Curatorial Formats
- Politics of Display
- Major Project
Optional placement year
Many postgraduate courses at Kingston University allow students to do a 12-month work placement as part of their course. The responsibility for finding the work placement is with the student; we cannot guarantee the work placement, just the opportunity to undertake it. As the work placement is an assessed part of the course, it is covered by a student's Student Route visa.
Optional modules
- Professional Placement
Program Tuition Fee
Career Opportunities
Our graduates have developed careers in museums, galleries, creative agencies and cultural organisations around the world. These include:
- The Design Museum - London
- M+ - Hong Kong
- Korean Institute of Design Promotion - Seoul
- ARoS Aarhus Art Museum & Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences - Sydney
- RMIT University - Melbourne
- National Gallery of Zimbabwe
- Shanghai Art Museum
- Victoria and Albert Museum - London