Intercultural Practices

Overview

Practice based inquiry between spaces, places, and disciplines.  

This is an MA by project. Study on the course prioritises making, action research and intercultural dialogue. The unit structure builds from your context and experiences to lead you in the development of your own personal project with potential extensions that might bring about change.  

As an applicant, you will already have a sense of what it is that you are seeking to achieve or change through higher level study. Your work on the course will relate to one or more of five broadly based thematic areas connecting to the Shared Campus network: 

• Cultures, histories, and futures; 
• Social transformation;
• Critical ecologies;
• Pop cultures; 
• Tools and technologies. 

Global themes are best understood and acted on from multiple cultural and disciplinary perspectives. This course encourages the sharing of these perspectives to develop your agency as an artist and cultural producer.  The opportunity to engage with Shared Campus activities means that you will be able to access a broader network of academic interest and practice, from beyond the course community, offering transnational experiences and intercultural conversations framed through these thematic lenses.

UNESCO supports interculturalism as a practice and approach that leads to a deeper understanding of the other’s global perception. As interconnection across and between societies grows, and cultural diversity is increasingly recognized as an inescapable reality of modern life, it is essential that practitioners are equipped with the capacities and knowledge to positively respond to difference and pluralism. This course prepares the next generation of creative practitioners for future careers where intercultural co-operation and the sharing of knowledge through practice is essential. The course proposes a reflexive consideration. of our relationship with both site and history and generates co-operative learning and an exploration of collective memory, evolving new traditions and relational politics. Study on the MA engages with transnational, intercultural and co-operative learning, giving you individual agency within your chosen field while engaging fully with emerging global priorities affecting you and your wider context.

This is a part-time course delivered online through a blend of teaching, intensive workshops, international teaching exchange, and independent projects. The anticipated student community will have a broad international reach. The course encourages you to draw from your communities of practice and interests and engage with wider transnational networks through the Shared Campus. Shared Campus is an international network of specialist art and design universities established to overcome barriers to cultural exchange. It is structured around 5 themes:   

• Cultures, histories, and futures: genealogies, traditions, and visions of the future; reflections on post-globalised identities through artistic lenses to sharpen intercultural sensitivity.
• Social transformation: change for and about the self and / or those people, organisations and systems that are nearby.
• Critical ecologies: response to ecological emergencies through artistic and political actions, convening multiple voices, for the sake of sustainability and agency.
• Pop cultures: the driving force in the globalisation and innovation of cultures. Pop is a sphere where politics, identities, and social questions are negotiated.
• Tools: creative technologies and methods of making and remaking that provide the primary focus for creative discovery, representation, or craft. 

Starting with your place and context, the course explores creative processes of interweaving and entanglement that are the practices of interculturalism and intersectionality.