Inclusive Arts Practice
Introduction
- Our Inclusive Arts Practice MA at the University of Brighton is aimed at artists or individuals with an arts background who are working in the arts, health, education or community sector.
- The course aims to equip students with the necessary skills to initiate and manage truly inclusive arts projects with diverse and marginalised groups.
- Inclusive Arts Practice at Brighon aims to explore key issues in the inclusive arts debate by collaborating artistically with marginalised community groups such as the learning disabled Rocket Artists or those experiencing exclusion due to economic or health reasons.
- Past students have worked with a diverse range of individuals and participant groups including people with learning disabilities, children, young people, elders, those experiencing homelessness, asylum seekers and the youth offending teams.
- There are opportunities to work in a diversity of settings that have, to date, included schools, galleries, artist studios, design studios, day centres, photographic studios, FE colleges.
- Students have made partnerships locally in and around Brighton as well as international projects taking place in countries including Romania and Ukraine.
- We value and encourage work across a range of art-forms including and not exclusively visual art but, for example, design, illustration, performance, film and photography.
Overview
Summary
- Work on real-life projects such as Access 2 Arts.
- Explore key issues in the inclusive arts debate alongside marginalised community groups.
- Develop professional skills to initiate inclusive arts projects.
- Support from specialist arts practitioners and professionals for collaborative working with diverse groups.
- Visiting lectures from the arts, health and voluntary sectors.
Introduction
This course is aimed at artists or people with an arts background who work in the arts, health, education or community sector. The part-time structure of the course is designed to support and enhance your current work practices and assist the development of new opportunities.
This course is unique in that it enables students to carry out practice-based arts research whilst working on real-life projects in such areas as learning disabilities and a variety of community groups. Support for working collaboratively with diverse groups is provided by specialist arts practitioners and other professionals. Students explore key issues and debates around working with vulnerable and marginalised people and the arts while gaining practical skills enabling them to independently initiate, seek funding for and deliver collaborative and inclusive arts projects, and develop their own professional practice.
Course structure
The course runs over two years with 30 weeks in each academic year. Students generally spend one day per week in experiential workshops or art studio-based learning with the opportunity for practice-based research. Throughout the year seminars, group and individual tutorials and visits are delivered on one further afternoon each week to support their theoretical research.
Students also spend the equivalent of a further day per week engaged in independent study. Students' pattern of attendance on and off campus varies according to individual circumstances and we aim to cater, in a reasonable manner, to their differing needs.
Areas of study
Studies are based around a core of experiential work-related learning, integrated with theoretical studies. The course is designed to support participants' development and creativity as art practitioners within the contexts of inclusion, learning disability and marginalised community groups. Students work alongside diverse groups of people in a workshop setting, sharing experiences as partners in the process of learning.
Syllabus
Working Together: introducing practical collaboration
Issues and Debates: introduction to inclusive arts practice
Developing and Documenting Inclusive Arts Practice
Research in Progress
Action Research: making it visible
Looking Ahead: continuing professional development
Option
Entry requirements
For non-native speakers of English:
IELTS 6.5 overall and 6.0 in writing.
Other:
All applicants will be invited to interview.
Degree and/or experience:
Normally an honours degree in a relevant discipline, or a recognised equivalent professional qualification.
Career and progression opportunities
The course provides a progression route for students completing programmes in art, photography and design. It may also provide opportunities for students in related fields such as health and social care or historical and critical studies. It is also suitable for those who are currently employed as arts workers in disability, social care and educational settings and whose employers are seeking to support relevant training and development opportunities for their staff.
On completion of the course, students are ideally placed to seek employment in a range of visual art/disability/community settings. The course would also make a significant contribution to an artist's independent studio practice.
Key facts
UCAS code
Duration 
Part-time: 2 years
Typical entry requirements
individual offers may vary
Location Grand Parade and Phoenix Arts
Fees
The fees listed here are for full-time courses for the upcoming academic year only. Further fees are payable for subsequent years of study.
The tuition fee you have to pay depends on a number of factors including the kind of course you take, whether you study full- or part-time and whether or not you already have a higher education qualification. If you are studying part-time you will normally be charged on a pro rata basis depending on the number of modules you take. Different rules apply to research degrees - contact the course team for up-to-date information.
Visit www.brighton.ac.uk/money for more information, including advice on international and island fee paying status, and the government's Equivalent or Lower Qualification (ELQ) policy.
Syllabus
Image: 'Inclusive Schools' project, a Brighton and Hove City Council funded project enabling inclusive learning workshops with schools
The course is delivered through a series of seven units of study over two years:
Working together: introducing practical collaboration
This unit is a practical introduction to Inclusive Arts Practice to explore processes of collaborative working and art facilitation skills. Students undertake a series of supported arts workshops in local artists studios working alongside the learning disabled Rocket Artist Group. Students establish key philosophies and practices of inclusive practice suitable for transference to other community groups later in the course and their future practice.
Issues and debates: introduction to inclusive arts practice
This unit introduces and interrogates the ideas and practices of inclusive arts practice through key readings, tutor-facilitated workshops and peer discussion. Including issues and debates around the similarities and differences between Disability Arts, Art Therapy, Occupational Therapy and Inclusive Arts Practice, and other approaches to collaboration and inclusion.
Developing and Documenting Inclusive Arts Practice.
This unit is an opportunity to further develop the artistic and technical skills needed to ethically plan, participate and document examples of collaborative inclusive practice through still and moving image.
Research in progress
This unit is designed to support students in the development, implementation and completion of their individual research projects. A series of work-in-progress seminars and workshops run alongside the delivery of students’ ongoing practical art projects.
Action research: making it visible
This is the main unit of the second year and runs in parallel with the Research in Progress unit, whereby students capture and present their research findings through to public exhibition, performance or otherwise to demonstrate good practice and impacts of Inclusive Arts Practice.
Looking ahead: continuing professional development
This unit is designed to enhance the professional practice of arts practitioners and equip students with the skills and contacts to manage their future career paths. Covering areas such as working with museums and galleries, funding, public programming, Health and Safety, budget management, partnership development and marketing.
Option unit
Students can choose one option unit of study from across the wider Arts and Media masters programme. To be negotiated with the course leader.
Assessment
Units are usually assessed by presentations, seminar discussions, practical work and workbooks. The final research is assessed through exhibition, being a practice based course there is no dissertation.
Careers
Image: 'Consequences' drawing project
The course provides a progression route for students completing programmes in art, photography and design. It may also provide opportunities for students in related fields such as health and social care or historical and critical studies. It is also suitable for those who are currently employed as arts workers in disability, social care and educational settings and whose employers are seeking to support relevant training and development opportunities for their staff.
On completion of the course, students are ideally placed to seek employment in a range of visual art/disability/community/health/education settings. The course would also make a significant contribution to an artist's independent studio practice.
Past students have gone on to develop new partnership projects including work with Pallant House gallery, apply for independent funding, working in schools, colleges and arts settings.
Student research
Image: 'Art on the Downs' project in which University of Brighton art students collaborated with a women's art group from a local council estate
A key feature of Inclusive arts practice research is that it is mutually beneficial, supporting knowledge creation and exchange rather than knowledge transfer. This places the artist practitioner in the more radical role of collaborator or framework holder/facilitator and proposes a shift away from the more traditional notion of ‘worthy works’.
"Arts-based inquiry is uniquely positioned as a methodology for radical, ethical and revolutionary research that is futuristic, socially responsible, and useful in addressing social inequities." (Finley, 2009)
In Year Two of the course, students undertake their own research project through to public exhibition. Student research projects include working in a diverse range of art-forms, contexts and participant groups.
Here are some examples of research undertaken by students on the course:
- ‘How can the researcher facilitate a process, which enables a balanced artistic collaboration to transpire between an artist with a learning disability and herself, using a combination of photography and text as the stimuli?’
- ‘What strategies need to be in place in order for an artist with a learning disability to participate in the creative industries?’
- ‘Exploration of how a visual arts programme might bolster and build resilience in young people with complex learning disabilities. Developed over a series of 10 art workshops applying a Resilient Therapy (RT) framework, focusing on three of the 'compartments' of RT: Belonging, Learning and Core Self.’
- ‘How can two people communicate what collaboration means to them within creative environments through an exploration of non-verbal communication? ‘How can photographic and new media practices support a group of young people reflect on their own lives in a rural, Ukranian village in 2010?’
Meet the students - Sue Winter"I’ve really valued the practical opportunities on the course," Read more...
