Plymouth College of Art launches full-time MA Creative Education

New for 2022, Plymouth College of Art, an independent university-sector art school, has launched a full-time (12 month) MA in Creative Education, to explore the contemporary role of creativity and making in education, putting emphasis on the ways people understand and interact with the world: cognitively, emotionally, aesthetically and somatically.

Also available as a part-time (24 month) route and appropriate for a wide range of subject specialists, MA Creative Education is suited to teachers at all levels from primary to higher education, managers and support workers in formal education, current and aspiring lecturers in higher education, as well as creative and community practitioners.

Dr Natalia Eernstman, MA Creative Education Subject Lead at Plymouth College of Art, said:

“Studying education at an art college means that we use the arts as a lens through which to re-imagine education. It extends learning from something that mostly takes place in formal education, to a creative and generative process that happens throughout our entire lives, in communities, libraries, museums, nature, workplaces, social and health care, and the third age.”

The new full-time 12 month route opens up this course to non-UK students who want to relocate to Plymouth, Britain’s Ocean City, and for people who want to apply the MA directly to their professional context. The full time course is a dynamic and immersive year, facilitating rapid development of ideas alongside fellow students, with the ability to realise the potential of projects in a supportive and research-intensive environment.

The MA will provide students with the critical skills, resources and creative space to question existing educational arrangements, to seek out alternative approaches, apply pedagogies and explore their own practice as an artist, designer and educator.

Past MA Creative Education graduates have gone on to work with young people in Shanghai as part of the international FutureLab Art and Design Education Expo, constructing an immersive art school experience for local students, teachers and members of the public to explore the interaction between art and everyday life, as well as working in Tate engaging visitors to consider the role of creative education in society. Alumni have secured jobs in Higher Education and community organisations, enhanced their existing teaching positions in schools with an expanded creative practice, and established careers as freelance artist-educators delivering projects in a range of contexts.

Dr Stephen Felmingham, Academic Dean at Plymouth College of Art, said:

“We encourage diversity in thinking and making, fully acknowledging the potential in material exploration, collaborative working and cross-fertilisation of ideas. Critical inquiry and practice-based exploration are central to all of our postgraduate programmes, helping students to make dynamic and challenging work that resonates and reflects their key concerns in light of current national and international dialogues.”

Plymouth College of Art is a specialist independent Higher Education Institution (HEI) run by artists and designers for artists and designers, offering a distinctive kind of creative community for postgraduate study. Founded in 1856, Plymouth College of Art offers a range of Undergraduate, Postgraduate and Pre-Degree study across art, design and digital media specialisms, combining over 160 years of history with up-to-the-minute thinking and cutting-edge facilities. Its two city centre campuses are home to MIRROR and Fab Lab Plymouth and offer a range of short courses, masterclasses, and a programme of Young Arts activities that includes the college’s decades-old Saturday Arts Club and strong affiliation with the National Saturday Club.