Design: Product and Space & the Creative Economy Masters (MA)

Facts about Design: Product and Space & the Creative Economy

Qualification	MA
Duration	Full time: 1 year Part time: 2 years
Attendance	Two/three days a week
Assessment	A mixture of project work and formal assessments, including essays, case studies, reports and presentations, plus the final dissertation or business report (approx 15,000 words)
Start date	September only (week commencing 16 September 2013)
Course structure
For more information on all Creative Economy courses at Kingston University, please visit www.ourcreativeeconomy.com.

Choose Kingston's Design: Product and Space & the Creative Economy MA

The Cox Review of Creativity in Business (2005), commissioned by the UK government, cites design as "what links creativity and innovation, it shapes ideas to become practical and attractive propositions for users or customers".

If you are currently employed in or would like to develop a career in product or spatial design, the Design: Product and Space & the Creative Economy MA course is ideal. It will develop your creative skills while also giving you an overview of how to manage the industry effectively within the creative economy.

What will you study?

By the end of the course, you will be equipped with the leading-edge knowledge and practical skills needed to succeed in this area of the creative economy.

Will this course suit me?

If you are looking for a course where you can enhance your creative skills whilst acquiring practical, managerial and entrepreneurial skills this course is for you. We will help you find ways to connect creativity and business in a successful and meaningful way. Find out more...

Course structure

Please note that this is an indicative list of modules and is not intended as a definitive list.

For the core modules, you will study with students from across all the Creative Industries programmes. For the specialist modules, you will study alongside product and space fellow students.

Core modules

Design Thinking and Entrepreneurship in Practice
Design Thinking and Entrepreneurship in Practice

This corner-stone module provides you with 'hands on' experience of life in the creative economy through working together to create, design and manage a viable creative enterprise project.

This creative project will form the context for subsequent learning throughout the course.
Managing Creativity and Innovation
Managing Creativity and Innovation

This module aims to develop your entrepreneurial management behaviours, encouraging an approach to learning that copes with and enjoys uncertainty, risks and complexity.

The core curriculum of this module will underpin the knowledge and skills required for The Creative Economy module.
Leadership in the Creative Economy
Leadership in the Creative Economy

This module encourages you to learn experientially about leadership through performance and develop conceptual understanding of creative leadership and how it differs from more traditional approaches.

Where appropriate, you will apply your learning to leadership roles in the creative project developed within The Creative Economy module.
Contemporary Issues in the Creative Economy
Contemporary Issues in the Creative Economy

This module offers a range of optional learning experiences to complement the three core modules above. These include areas such as:
- consultancy practice;
- cross-cultural management communication;
- creativity and consumption; and
- critical appraisal of the creative economy.
Specific learning outcomes for each student will be agreed with the course director, and may involve taught sessions, work-based learning, or a mixture of both.

Specialist modules

Process
Process

This module aims to orientate you within the Faculty, School and course context. It exploits interdisciplinary study opportunities and establishes the masters-level expectation.

It will enable you to:
- research, explore, challenge and debate processes of creative endeavour within the field;
- develop and expand a sophisticated visual communication vocabulary;
- learn about design systems and creative and expedient technologies; and
- learn about the application to spatial design of processes of:
  - preconceived conceptualisation;
  - intuitive trial and error / experimentation; and
  - post-rationalisation and critical reflection.
Focus
Focus

This module aims to:
- identify and critically evaluate themes universal to diverse design contexts;
- access industrial, professional and academic research operations; and
- give you an insight into the nature of focused lines of enquiry within universal design context themes.
It will enable you to develop focus and specificity. You will also undertake an analytical and creative focus design study within a universal design context theme. You will learn to:
- critically evaluate a range of philosophical positions and see how they inform universal design themes; and
- initiate and realise a complex, innovative and focused practical design investigation within a universal design theme.
We will encourage you to establish constructive contacts with product designers at the forefront of their practice.