Project Management for Creative Practitioners MSc
Why choose this course?
Project, product, and design management, commercial and operational skills are an advantage to art and design graduates, along with a critical understanding of what it means to deliver value (beyond monetary value), can provide a boost for mid-career creative practitioners.
This course offers tailored opportunities to develop your knowledge and skills in design and project and product management. You will participate in designing projects, develop a portfolio of projects in response to live briefs and deliver a major project working with key stakeholders or on your own personal enterprise and development pathway. You will gain skills in areas such as entrepreneurship, funding, marketing, collaborative practice, resource management, risk assessment and, importantly for creative practice, agile work flow.
| Mode | Duration | Start date |
|---|---|---|
| Full time | 1 year |
September 2023 September 2024 |
| Full time | 2 years including professional placement |
September 2023 September 2024 |
| Part time | 2 years |
September 2023 September 2024 |
| Location | Kingston School of Art, Knights Park |
Reasons to choose Kingston University
- You will study and collaborate with creative professionals from the art and design economy.
- Our links to professional practice help ensure your studies are relevant to the workplace.
- You will have an opportunity to complete an Agile Business Consortiums and APMG accredited Scrum Master certification.
The Art School Experience
As part of Kingston School of Art, students on this course benefit from joining a creative community where collaborative working and critical practice are encouraged.
Our workshops and studios are open to all disciplines, enabling students and staff to work together, share ideas and explore multi-disciplinary making.
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 a 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
Professional placement year
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 of pitching, work flow management and basic accounting.
Core modules
Principles of Project Management
30 credits
This module examines and covers the key methods and approaches of project management such as agile, scrum, waterfall, and critical path analysis. It will set out the stages of project management, how projects are established and governed and the fundamental principles of management and control such as exception based reporting, the staged organisation of progress and task completion and measurement processes. The different approaches to project management will be explored and the principle of tailoring project management to suit different contexts will be examined. This module will include AgilePM training delivered by a specialist trainer and the award of AgilePM Practitioner level certification on successful completion.
The Human Problem: Working with and Managing People
30 credits
This module is based on the provocation that people are one of the key challenges when managing projects. Understanding and appreciating the complexity of people is fundamental to successful project management, their unpredictability, differing agendas, values and attitudes to work and notions of quality and purpose make people a challenging resource within the scope of project management. This is especially the case when managing people with creative sensibilities and identities built on notions of creative expression. The module will cover different sources of motivation, leadership and the notion of super-collaborators, and include the study of tasks such as establishing project teams, describing roles and conferring responsibilities. The skills developed during the module will include active listening, negotiation and the presentation of ideas.
Designing and Running Successful Projects
30 credits
This module develops knowledge and understanding of the resourcing of projects. It will consider aspects of project budgeting, the management of a risk register, types and requirements for governance, the stage-gate process, different options for project management software, business case analysis and formation, strategy, quality and legal assurance management. The module includes use of project management simulation software that gives students experience of the resourcing of projects and provides performance data to use when evaluating a project's completion.
The Creative Freelancer
30 credits
This module builds an effective, practical knowledge of the principles and best practices needed for a professional and ethical, freelance creative career. Students will learn how to answer a commercial brief, how to interact with a client, deliver a creative outcome and be remunerated for that work. An important part of the module is to create a working appreciation of how technology effects, shapes and can enhance their creative career. The module aims to build a self-directed working appreciation of the intellectual property and the wider legal and financial requirements needed to successfully operate as a freelancer, in a chosen field and geographical (country/region) area. Assessments and tasks throughout the module are designed to aid the launch of the student's individual commercial practice, by producing a targeted, industry relevant digital presence (website/blog), and the active forward planning of their freelance creative career.
Major Project
60 credits
This module forms the capstone of the degree offering students a real-life opportunity to put into practice the knowledge and skills developed in the previous modules. The module is based around a student-directed and managed project based exercise, involving the design, development and delivery of a portfolio of projects. The students will each design and project manage an aspect of the programme (a sub-project) such as organising the delivery of a launch event, creating the social media and online platform, and organising exhibition displays. The programme will be based on a social issue of their choice and students will build a business case, network with local stakeholders and design and organise fundraising to support the event. The physical programme events will be held at a suitable space in Kingston.
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
120 credits
The Professional Placement module is a core module for those students following a masters programme that incorporates professional placement learning, following completion of 120 credits. It provides you with the opportunity to apply your knowledge and skills to an appropriate working environment, and to develop and enhance key employability skills and subject-specific professional skills in your chosen subject. You may wish to use the placement experience as a platform for your subsequent major project module, and would be expected to use it to help inform your decisions about future careers.
Entry requirements
Teaching and assessment
Assessment is carried out through a blend of practice-focused written reports and reflections; presentations; role play; simulations; live project briefs; and, project portfolio development.
Who teaches this course?
This course is delivered by Kingston School of Art.
Kingston School of Art has its roots in the studio-based approach of Britain's art school system (the original School of Art was founded in the 1890s).
Today, for most courses, learning still takes place in our specialist studios, each subject area having its own fully-equipped studio, where you take part in classes, tutorials and critical reviews with fellow students. This strong studio culture also ensures regular interaction between students and tutors.
For non studio-based courses, learning takes place in classroom-based seminars, tutorials and lectures, alongside site visits to museums, galleries, auction houses and other creative professional environments.
- Our students are encouraged to engage closely with the diverse businesses that make London one of the most important centres for the creative industries. Our industry connections mean we provide unique study opportunities, such as:
- the chance to have your work seen by eminent members of your profession;
- 'live' projects, site visits and placements in prestigious companies or institutions; and
- project work and workshops with visiting lecturers and industry specialists.
Our excellent reputation means that industry leaders regularly visit our student shows to see the best of the new talent.
Fees for this course
Additional costs
Depending on the programme of study, there may be extra costs that are not covered by tuition fees which students will need to consider when planning their studies. Tuition fees cover the cost of your teaching, assessment and operating University facilities such as the library, access to shared IT equipment and other support services. Accommodation and living costs are not included in our fees.
Where a course has additional expenses, we make every effort to highlight them. These may include optional field trips, materials (e.g. art, design, engineering), security checks such as DBS, uniforms, specialist clothing or professional memberships.
Facilities
There is a wide range of facilities at our Knights Park campus, where this course is based. Kingston School of Art has recently completed an ambitious programme of investment, making significant improvements to our workshops and other resources, to ensure that students are exposed to as many creative pathways as possible. The workshops and studios at Knights Park are open for creative exploration and allow opportunities for students and staff to collaborate on projects and share ideas, whether they are studying or researching. There are many adaptable studio and workshop spaces, active breakout spaces and stronger vertical and horizontal connections. Our ground-breaking facilities include the following:
- 3D workshop, with ceramics, concrete, resin-casting, plastics, metalwork, woodwork and a bronze-casting foundry, as well as a Big Build space for Architecture, set design and large scale model making
- Animation and post production studios
- Digital Media workshop
- Fashion (knitting and sewing workshops), with digital and analogue facilities, plus a working dress archive which includes pieces from 1750 to the present day
- HackSpace (for collaborative, creative, solutions-focussed projects)
- Letterpress and printmaking workshop, with digital and analogue facilities, to experiment creatively
- Moving Image workshop, with studios, editing suite, and industry-standard equipment
- Photography workshop, including studios, colour, and black and white darkrooms, processing facilities. This professional-standard suite includes two new digital imaging areas, darkroom areas, two double height photography studios and a general preparation, finishing and demonstration area. There is also an extensive range of equipment for loan and students are able to purchase photography materials. The colour and black and white darkrooms provide extensive facilities for film processing.
All our facilities are open access, meaning you can use them whenever you want, whatever degree you're studying.
The University also has its own on-site galleries, including:
- Dorich House - the former studio home of the sculptor Dora Gordine and her husband the Hon. Richard Hare, a scholar of Russian art and literature. Now Grade II listed, the building was completed in 1936, to Gordine's design, and is an exceptional example of a modern studio house created by and for a female artist.
- Stanley Picker Gallery - one of the leading examples of a university gallery in the UK. Its public activities are dedicated to the research, commissioning and presentation of innovative new practice across the fields of art, design and architecture for general, academic and specialist audiences.
- Project spaces at Knights Park campus, which you can book for the exhibition of large-scale work.
After you graduate
Graduates have gone on to work as project and design managers, producers, creative freelancers and creative entrepreneurs.
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.
Course changes and regulations
The information on this page reflects the currently intended course structure and module details. To improve your student experience and the quality of your degree, we may review and change the material information of this course. Course changes explained.
Programme Specifications for the course are published ahead of each academic year.
Regulations governing this course can be found on our website.
