MA Performance and Environment

Research Methodologies 2

This module will emphasise independent research leading up to your Developmental Project (Dissertation). You will select an area of investigation in the arts, related to cultural identity and contemporary performance, with the advice of tutors and fellow students. This module is designed to facilitate your development as a researcher through the formulation and realisation of a self-directed research project into theoretical research into your own practice with reference to the work of other theatre practitioners. You will be expected to contextualise your work in the light of contemporary developments in arts practice, arts research and cultural identity.

This module will take the learning from Research Methodologies 1 and deepen and develop this in relation to your own artistic practice. Radical, innovative and current modes of research and study will be investigated relating to your own practice. A refinement and deepening of methods and methodologies will be encouraged and will be applied to your learning and analysis of your own work in relation to the themes of culture and identity that you are interrogating.

Practical Research Project/Dissertation

This module is the core intellectual research activity pursued and serves as the dissertation module.

This module also intersects critically with other modules throughout the duration of generating, defining and refining researched ideas, culminating in the individual praxis.

As a ‘hub’ module, it is designed to be broad enough to compliment and support any topic/subject-specific methodology from ‘spoke’ arts programmes, but to serve and build on the wider learning experience. It employs two key approaches: practice-led research in the arts and a traditional ‘thesis’ exercise.

The developmental project engages you with an independently driven research processes in practice and reflexive engagement on critical/cultural development to inform a critically engaged written dissertation.

Ecological Performance Practice

A performance-making module. You will conceive, produce and present a new, public-facing, performance, driven by your distinctive approach to performance and (the) environment.

Medium, duration and presentation format is negotiable and concomitant with your critical and practical interests and ideas. You will be given the opportunity to engage with local partners with specific relationships to the management and preservation of local ecologies.

In this module, you will produce a public-facing performance work, and companion publication (an “artist’s book”), which documents and contextualises the project’s critical and creative practice, process and outcome.

Eco-Ethical Engagements

This module explores how ecological theory can be used to innovate contemporary performance-making praxis. The course emphasises politically and ethically engaged performance practices through creative analysis of contemporary cultural concerns and political events. In these terms, approaches to performance, ecology and ethics will be developed through refining unique qualities in research-driven approaches to critical and creative praxis.

This module integrates and deepens skills and knowledge in ecology, environmental politics and protest, preparing students for a range of (graduate) roles in climate action, sustainability, ecological awareness and related fields such as theatre, arts and sustainability, outdoor arts, policy advising, event management and self-employment trajectories.