Kingston University

MSc in Project Management for Creative Practitioners

What you will study

The course is multi-disciplinary and practitioner-based. You will study with creative professionals and practitioners from across the creative practice (e.g. art and design) economy. Throughout your studies, the emphasis is on learning by doing/making/production/application: you'll develop a portfolio of projects, culminating with a substantive major project. You'll develop your project management skills relevant to creative practice, leading to professional certification in Agile Project Management.

Incorporated in the curriculum are general transferable skills including team building, collaborative practice, resource and stakeholder management, risk assessment, legal strategy and budget management. The key application is agility in project management for creative sector projects. The focus is on understanding both the language of management and leadership relevant to creative practice environments. While this will include the 'hard' skills of budget management, scheduling and legal strategy, there will be an important focus on understanding qualitatively, people; cultural context(s); and, the meaning of project 'outputs' and 'success' factors.

Please note that below is an indicative list of modules on this course. This is not intended as a definitive list. Those listed here may also be a mixture of core and optional modules.

Modules

You'll develop a pragmatic understanding of the political, social and economic contexts of project management for creative practice. Areas of study and practice include people management, communication management, process management and business case development.

You will study established project management techniques and approaches that will improve your ability to manage and lead creative projects. The course includes a module on freelancing as a creative practitioner, which develops skills in pitching, workflow management and basic accounting.

Core modules

• Principles of Project Management
• The Human Problem: Working with and Managing People
• Designing and Running Successful Projects
• The Creative Freelancer
• Major Project

Professional 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 4 visa.

Optional modules

• Professional Placement

Please note

Optional modules only run if there is enough demand. If we have an insufficient number of students interested in an optional module, that module will not be offered for this course.

After you graduate

This course equips graduates with the skills, knowledge and confidence (plus industry recognition) to work on creative projects as a team member or project manager.

Links with business and industry

You'll have opportunities to be involved with organisations outside the University across the whole of the creative sector (such as work with the creative agencies, design studios and firms, charities, creative sector competitions and award bodies; professional bodies such as APMG and Scrum Inc).

Our links with professional practice (D&AD; Design Studios and Firms: Creative Agencies) provide a real-world base for our courses, ensuring your studies are up-to-date and relevant to the workplace.

The course includes a live project during which you'll work with businesses and organisations to design and deliver a programme of events.

Members of staff on this course are professional practitioners, with experience across the creative industries, which keeps your learning cutting-edge.