University College London (UCL)

Creative and Collaborative Enterprise MA

Teaching and learning

You will learn through lectures, interactive seminars involving critical discussion, practical exercises, personal listening and independent directed and self-directed reading.

You will have the opportunity to attend complementary workshops led by creative practitioners and lectures given by leading entrepreneurs.

While planning and producing your final project, you will benefit from one-to-one academic supervision. Where appropriate to the final project, students may also be supported by an industry mentor, who may help you to forge links with and gain access to relevant professional organisations.

You will be assessed through a series of formative (exercises for which you will receive feedback but do not count toward the degree) and summative exercises (exercises for which you will receive feedback and do count toward the degree), including essays, presentations, take-home exercises including critical evaluations, your project portfolio and your final project.

For full-time students, typical contact hours are around 12 hours per week. Outside of lectures, seminars, workshops and tutorials, full-time students typically study the equivalent of a full-time job (five days or 40 hours per week) using their remaining time for self-directed study and completing coursework assignments. In terms one and two full-time students can typically expect between 10 and 12 contact hours per teaching week through a mixture of lectures, seminars, workshops, and tutorials. In term three and the summer period students will be completing their own dissertation research project, and keeping regular contact with their dissertation supervisor or mentor.

Modules

Full-time

You will undertake eight taught modules and a research dissertation project.

You will take four compulsory modules in each term (4 modules in term 1 and 4 modules in term 2). The term 1 compulsory modules provide a grounding in creative enterprise, social theory, and applied ethnography. The term 2 compulsory modules introduce social and collaborative practices to shape the development of your enterprise.

Dissertation planning begins in term 2, with the research and writing conducted in term 3 and over the summer.

Part-time

You will undertake eight taught modules and a research dissertation project.

In year 1 you will take 2 compulsory modules in terms 1 and 2 modules in term 2, these provide a grounding in creative enterprise and social theory,

In year 2 you will study 2 compulsory modules in term 1 and two modules in term 2. These include applied ethnography, social and collaborative practices to shape the development of your enterprise.

Dissertation planning begins in term 2, with the research and writing conducted in term 3 and over the summer.

Compulsory modules

• Creative Enterprise
• Applied Ethnography
• Customer Development and Lean Startup
• Collaborative Enterprise
• Creative Product Development
• Dissertation
• Everyday Ethics in Enterprise
• Social Creativity
• An Introduction to Social Theory - a foundation course

Please note that the list of modules given here is indicative. This information is published a long time in advance of enrolment and module content and availability are subject to change.

Students undertake modules to the value of 180 credits. Upon successful completion of 180 credits, you will be awarded an MA in Creative and Collaborative Enterprise.

Fieldwork

You will spend the summer term researching and writing your dissertation, for which you can choose to conduct ethnographic, archival and/or library-based, original research or complete an enterprise development project, with many students choosing to undertake self-funded fieldwork-based projects in the UK or abroad.

The scope and nature of fieldwork is formulated in discussion with your appointed supervisor, and subject to departmental approval.

What this course will give you

You will learn to initiate a creative enterprise project, to apply creative arts and ethnographic practices to business activities, to think critically about the relationship between ethos and delivery when starting a business, to utilise the skills of effectual entrepreneurship needed to initiate, grow and establish a new enterprise and to critically assess and reform enterprise activities and their context.

You will learn creative and collaborative practices, and follow customer-funded business models, providing you with the understanding, critical abilities and skill set to develop innovative, desirable and distinctive new products or services, and to start-up value-rich, ethos-driven enterprises that will take those products to market and thrive in the contemporary world. There is access to additional entrepreneurial support for students through UCL Innovation and Enterprise.

You will also develop demonstrable practical competencies transferable to any profession, including complex problem solving through critical thinking and creative initiative, effective oral and written communication, including the ability to interpret and present complex data to diverse audiences, effective independent and team working, leadership and time and project management.

The foundation of your career

Graduates of the Creative and Collaborative Enterprise MA have gone on to pursue careers in a range of industry sectors, including:

• Teaching
• IT, Technology and Telecommunications
• PR, Advertising and Marketing
• Performance and the Creative arts
• Manufacturing

Graduate job titles have included:

• Marketing professionals
• Public relations professionals
• Arts officers, producers and directors
• Business and financial project management professionals
• Management consultants and business analysts

(Graduate Outcomes survey 2017-2022)

Employability

The creative sector now accounts for around 10% of the UK's GDP (Creative Industries Council). In recent years, employment in the sector has grown four times faster than the workforce as a whole (Creative Industries Council).

You will graduate well-versed in developing and harnessing creative and collaborative techniques, with the skills to recognise, initiate and develop enterprise opportunities. You will have acquired a range of essential business skills and be able to contextualise your initiatives within socio-cultural phenomena.

Networking

As a student in the Department you have access to many opportunities to help further your career:

• You will become part of the department's Public Anthropology section, learning from and networking with leading internal and external industry practitioners through a weekly seminar series and regular masterclasses.
• You will have access to UCL Innovation and Enterprise resources including extracurricular courses in starting and growing a business, entrepreneurial networking and entrepreneurship advisors.
• You will be encouraged to attend complementary departmental seminars given by active researchers in environmental, evolutionary and social anthropology and material, visual and digital culture throughout your studies.
• You will be encouraged to take advantage of the broader enterprise communities at UCL, our neighbouring institutions and across London more widely, including attending and participating in seminars, conferences, exhibitions and research partnership opportunities to help you establish industry connections and extend your professional networks.
• You will be encouraged to engage with the department’s active careers support activities and initiatives, which include regular career development seminars and networking events.

All students are encouraged to host and/or participate in a Reading and Research Group (RRG), which are open spaces to exchange ideas on themes of mutual interest and welcome staff and student participation from across UCL and our neighbouring institutions.

The department's central London location presents a range of opportunities to work, volunteer and carry out fieldwork in relevant organisations.

The department also houses London's global non-fiction film festival, Open City Documentary Festival, which all students are invited to volunteer to support to network with non-fiction film industry leading professionals.