Master of Arts [M.A] [Social Sculpture and Connective Practice] From Oxford Brookes University

The programme enables you to explore strategies of engagement, agency and the relationship between imagination and transformation. The programme also makes special reference to the proposals and legacies of Joseph Beuys, Schiller and Goethe, as well as other pedagogies of transformation such as Joanna Macy's and Paulo Freire's. It introduces theoretical and philosophical frameworks, with a special emphasis on phenomenology and experiential knowing; explores the relationship of social sculpture to ecological sustainability and offers practice-based research methodologies and creative strategies as the basis for developing individual and collaborative social sculpture processes, interdisciplinary expanded arts and reflective social practice.

The MA is Social Sculpture is, with the MA in Sound Arts, one of two taught postgraduate courses for socially-engaged artists, composers and transdisciplinary practitioners currently offered by the School of Arts at Oxford Brookes University. These MAs share two core modules in Creative Strategies and Phenomenological Methods of practice-based work. These shared modules enable cross-pollination and potential for collaboration between social sculpture and connective practice practitioners and those working in the field of sound arts. The MA in Social Sculpture is linked to the Social Sculpture Research Unit and is part of a thriving post-graduate research culture. There are opportunities to volunteer in social sculpture projects like University of the Trees: Lab for an Eco-Social Future.

Our teaching methods include:

• seminars and lectures on interdisciplinary creative practice, practice-based research, phenomenological root methodologies and social sculpture
• team teaching in group seminars, involving research methodologies for practice-based research
• feedback from staff and students during group feedback sessions, in which you receive constructive feedback on your work
• staff-led group discussions arising out of practical presentations
• regular individual tutorials that address your research concerns
• introductions to creative strategies for generating and making practice-based social sculpture and other forms of connective cultural action and reflective social practice.
• introductions to the School of Arts technical facilities
• induction sessions with subject librarians.

In this unique programme graduates develop excellent creative capacities and new ways of thinking that enable them to identify and develop interdisciplinary arenas and contexts for public engagement with specific communities, organisations and other constituencies.
A strong aspect of the programme is the way it enables graduates to return to existing professions and contexts in new ways: as interdisciplinary practitioners with insightful understandings, with a greatly enhanced capacity for imagination and a knowledge of new forms of reflective and interdisciplinary connective practice.
Many Social Sculpture graduates continue as social sculpture practitioners or eco-cultural activists, whilst others develop careers related to their knowledge, expertise or interests, for example within organisational change, social enterprise programmes, festival management, tertiary education, agro-ecology, arts administration; arts and music teaching, medical humanities, educators and practitioners in arts for health, promoting ecological citizenship, community cross artform work and as sustainability activists. These diverse career possibilities have much to do with the close relationship between the content and the pedagogic approaches offered on the MA Social Sculpture programme with its focus on experiential knowing, active citizenship and connective practices.
Combining the rigour of a traditional academic programme with innovative practical and vocational components makes graduates well placed for roles as practitioners as well as for further research in territory that includes the arts and sustainability, ecological citizenship, individual and community change processes, cultural and ecological activism and the field of contemporary social sculpture and connective aesthetics.