MA DANCE & CREATIVE ENTERPRISE

Type: Postgraduate Taught Masters

Qualification: MA Dance & Creative Enterprise

Duration: 1 year full-time (Home & Overseas students)

Validated by: University of Kent

The MA in Dance & Creative Enterprise enables you to advance and re-imagine your practice as a maker, whilst helping you to develop key professional and business skills to boost your creative practice.  It includes opportunities to:

  • Explore your choreographic practice and artistic voice, guided by established artists and teachers
  • Learn the key tools of arts project management, business planning, fundraising and marketing
  • Test your ideas using industry-standard facilities, with opportunities to showcase your work at our on-site venue, Riley Theatre and site-specific locations
  • Join a network of dance makers, performers and professionals

APPLICATIONS FOR 2024 ENTRY ARE OPEN 
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Course overview

MA in Dance & Creative focuses on developing your artistic identity as both a maker and producer.  Throughout the programme you work individually and collaboratively on projects, developing your entrepreneurial skillset.  The course includes a number of opportunities to showcase the work you create, enabling you to put into practice the skills you develop as both a creator and project manager, culminating in the annual MA Showcase – an opportunity for you to share work created over the course of the year in a live format, for a public and invited audience. Through mentorship and guidance, you present a portfolio of work across the building, including Riley Theatre, the Lighting Studio, Courtyard and studios.

The course is taught by lecturers who are actively making work, and who have a successful track record of securing funding. They are ideally placed to guide you in developing your career, empowering you to best promote yourself and your practice.

What will I study?

The course is comprises the following modules:

  • Creative Practice
  • Arts Project Management & Fundraising for Creative Industries
  • Technique and Embodied Practices
  • Marketing, Public Relations (PR) and Digital Representation
  • Final Research Project

These modules are designed to equip you with the specific skills needed to be successful as a creative artist. Each module explores the subject area both practically and theoretically, giving you the opportunity to put your ideas into practice.

View modules

Who is it for?

MA Dance & Creative Enterprise is for emerging and established choreographers, movement-based artists and performers looking to develop their voice as makers and producers.  It is open to graduates of two/three-year dance training programmes at Higher Education level, or to dance/movement artists with some professional experience and equivalent vocational training.

The course recruits a diverse student body and is popular with international cohorts. We welcome applications from the UK and overseas.

Student profiles

TEACHING AND LEARNING

Teaching at NSCD is tailored to the nature of the modules being taken, often combining practical and theoretical learning to best prepare you for the demands of the industry. Teaching methods include practical classes and workshops, rehearsal and performance, placement activity, lectures, seminars and tutorials.

Taught hours for each module reflect the nature of the module and current professional practice. For example, creation and rehearsal modules have intensive contact and studio time, whereas research projects combine lectures, workshops, tutorials with the independent study time needed to develop your research practice. Consequently, study time varies, but average contact time is normally between 16 and 24 hours per week during directed teaching activity.

FACILITIES

Students have access to our wide range of excellent industry-standard facilities to develop their practice, carry out research and test ideas in a supportive, creative learning environment:

  • Riley Theatre, our on-site performance venue
  • 8 large dance studios
  • Lighting Studio
  • video and sound editing suite
  • arts and dance library
  • fully resourced Bodywork Studio
  • Pilates equipment
  • NSCD VLE (Virtual Learning Environment)
Explore our facilities

ARTS PROJECT MANAGEMENT

This course allows you to focus on topics that interest you. Modules are geared towards helping you further develop your ideas in both academic and real-world contexts.

Arts Project Management enables you to put forward a proposal and take steps to make it happen, taking into account operations, budgeting, strategy and marketing in parallel to artistic content. Example projects from students who have studied on the course include:

  • BAYT (HOME), an intercultural arts event in Milan comprising a symposium and performance around migration, asylum and integration.
  • York’s first ‘pay as you feel’ performance festival – SLAP York, bringing high-quality dance, theatre and live art to new audiences and reducing barriers for access and engagement
  • Movement Artists Meeting Point (MAMP)- a three-day workshop and cabaret event providing professional development for movement-based artists and networking opportunities for dancers, circus artists and physical theatre actors.
  • An immersive two-day retreat designed to support participants in learning through social activism about Global Warming.

RESEARCH

In the final term, students undertake a substantial major research project on a topic of their choice. Recent students’ research topics include:

  • Editing, Drama, Hype and Hyperreality. Performance of Self in a Post-Internet World.
  • The Multi-Self: Using interdisciplinarity as a narrative approach in order to perform multi-facets of myself.
  • Dance as an act of protest against ‘Modern Iran’ after the Islamic Revolution
  • Masochistic Contract: investigating the relationship between artist, audience and the body
  • Location, location, location: ‘stratified awareness’ in performance and personal development contexts, and the value of Life Coaching methods in the education and creation of dance. 
  • Traditional forms reimagined; how traditional dance from Scotland and Spain can be dovetailed through contemporary performance to discover a new movement and music vocabulary.

WHO CAN APPLY?

We welcome choreographers, movement-based artists and performers looking to develop their voice as a maker and/or producer. Above all we are looking for ambition and commitment to your practice.

The MA in Dance & Creative Enterprise is open to graduates of two/three-year dance training programmes at higher education level, or to dance or movement artists with some professional experience and equivalent vocational training at an appropriate level.

We welcome applications from EU, EEA and International applicants. Students with English as a second language will need a 6.5 ESOL level (with a minimum of 6.0 in reading and 5.5 in speaking and listening)

Entry is through online application, the submission of a showreel, and a video interview.

NSCD Value for money

We are committed to providing a holistic experience for our students. Based on a comparison with other courses of an equivalent price, we typically offer the following as ‘value added’:

  • Enrichment classes, some of which are free to NSCD students – these have included Gaga, pointe work, fitness, men’s ballet vocabulary, yoga, percussion, lighting for dance and gymnastics for dancers
  • Access to visiting artists’ and practitioners’ talks
  • Reduced-price theatre tickets and deals
  • On-site injury intervention and support
  • On-site counselling service
  • On-site learner support
  • On-site English language support
  • Access to additional rehearsal spaces
  • Access to projects and research run by staff and our network of partner organisations