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10043 - BA (Hons) Performance: Design and Practice Programme Specification - 201920

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BA (Hons) Performance: Design and

Practice Awarding Body University of the Arts London

College Central Saint Martins

Programme Performance (L035)

Course AOS Code 10043

FHEQ Level Level 6 Degree

Course Credits 360

Mode Full Time

Duration of Course 3 years

Teaching Weeks 90 weeks

Valid From September 1st 2019

QAA Subject Benchmark

Dance, drama and performance

UAL Subject Classification

Performance and design for theatre and screen

JACS Code W460 - Theatre design

UCAS Code W460

PSRB N/A

Work placement offered

Yes

Course Entry Requirements

The standard entry requirements for this course are as follows:

APPROVED


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One or a combination of the following accepted full level 3 qualifications:

Pass at Foundation Diploma in Art & Design (Level 3 or 4) and 1 A Level at Grade C or above

2 A Levels at grade C or above (preferred subjects include Art, Art and Design, or Design and Technology)

Merit, Pass, Pass (MPP) at BTEC Extended Diploma (preferred subjects include Art, Art and Design, or Design and Technology)

Pass at UAL Extended Diploma Access to Higher Education Diploma (preferred

subjects include Art, Art and Design, or Design and Technology)

Or equivalent EU/International qualifications, such as International Baccalaureate Diploma

And three GCSE passes at grade 4 or above (grade A*-C).

Entry to this course will also be determined by assessment of your portfolio. A very high proportion of successful applicants complete a Foundation Diploma in Art and Design.

APEL - Accreditation of Prior (Experiential) Learning

Exceptionally applicants who do not meet these course entry requirements may still be considered. The course team will consider each application that demonstrates additional strengths and alternative evidence. This might, for example, be demonstrated by:

Related academic or work experience The quality of the personal statement A strong academic or other professional

reference

OR a combination of these factors.

Each application will be considered on its own merit but


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cannot guarantee an offer in each case.

English Language Requirements

IELTS level 6.0 or above, with at least 5.0 in reading, writing, listening and speaking (please check our main English Language requirements webpage).

Selection Criteria Applicants are selected according to their demonstration of potential and current ability to:

Provide examples of a variety, breadth and/ or depth of projects.

Demonstrate a high level of engagement and commitment to projects.

Demonstrate an interest in performance or time-based projects or medium.

Demonstrate examples of independent enquiry which breaks away from norms and/ or offers alternative perspectives.

Demonstrate examples of experimentation, exploration and self-directed practice.

Demonstrate skills in communication and management of ideas.

Demonstrate the use of making and drawing as a tool to communicate and develop ideas.

Provide evidence of intellectual enquiry and

critical reflection.

What we are looking for

We’re not just looking for a passion for performance – we’re also seeking people who are curious, hard-working, open to new ideas and willing to take risks and get involved in the many different disciplines and practices of working in the professional field of performance. Suitable applicants work imaginatively and creatively in performance and visual media, demonstrate a range of skills and technical abilities, intellectual enquiry and cultural awareness.

https://www.arts.ac.uk/study-at-ual/language-centre/english-language-requirements


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Awards and Percentage of Scheduled Learning

Year 1

Percentage of Scheduled Learning 40

Awards Credits

Certificate of Higher Education (Exit Only)

120

Year 2


Awards Credits

Diploma of Higher Education (Exit Only)

240

Year 3


Awards Credits

Bachelor of Arts

360


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Course Aims and Outcomes

The Aims and Outcomes of this Course are as follows:

Aim/Outcome Description

Aim

This course is focused on your individual creative potential and critical intelligence. You explore performance creation through design and making. The curriculum content responds to the practice of others, emerging contexts for practice, and diverse perspectives of both audience and maker. The course presents performance, in its broadest sense, as a dynamic and continuously shifting subject domain. It encourages and facilitates visual practices and processes that challenge the existing conceptions and boundaries of the discipline. You develop as a curious, critically reflective and proactive learner with a unique cultural identity. The course provides a supportive and inclusive environment for the acquisition of skills and knowledge leading you into professional practice and postgraduate study.

Outcome

On completion of the course you will have developed an understanding of a complex body of knowledge, some of it at the current boundaries Performance. You will have developed analytical techniques and problem-solving skills that can be applied in many types of employment. You will be able to evaluate evidence, arguments and assumptions, to reach sound judgements and to communicate effectively. You will have developed the qualities and transferable skills necessary for employment requiring: the exercise of initiative and personal responsibility within collective and collaborative context; decision-making in complex and unpredictable contexts; the learning ability needed to undertake appropriate further study.

Outcome Create performance through a critically informed and personally challenging practice of design and making.

Outcome Sustain and evolve individual working strategies responding to diverse contemporary contexts, audiences and collective environments.

Outcome Communicate professionally and effectively through rich media in a way that facilitates and documents creative practice.

Outcome Continue to develop independently as a reflective practitioner with high level skills of critical thinking, design and making; and


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a comprehensive knowledge of contemporary performance.


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Distinctive Features

1

The embodied engagement with design and its relationship to the performance making process is a unique approach and key concept of the course. This approach fosters 'performance: design and making', in eclectic, interdisciplinary contexts of contemporary arts including festivals, installations, theatre, and film, challenging traditional territories, processes and assumptions. We value performance-making strategies where the maker's relationships with audience, space, time, movement, event and duration are parallel concerns.

2

A unique position in a specialist arts and design college and university maintain the traditions of the Art School, where collaborations, activities and initiatives take place with other courses and students and that place value on innovation, restlessness, criticality, uncertainty, academic rigor together with the highly developed skills of professional practice. As such the course is in a unique area between Theatre and Fine Art, Fashion Spatial Practices and Design - all subjects within the college.

3

Our central London location offers opportunities to take advantage of high quality partnerships and collaborations with industry, for example: The London Sinfonietta, London Studio Centre, the RCA, the National Trust and the V&A. Opportunities for engaging with diverse audiences through collaborations with, for example, Cardboard Citizens Theatre, Duckie, Live Art Development Agency, English Pocket Opera, and The Royal Albert Hall, O'Neill Ross, Trinity Laban and Punchdrunk, all of which provide opportunities for alternative and site based performance and design.

4

We are proud of the range and standing of the professional practitioners that our students come into contact with throughout their time on the course. Geraldine Pilgrim, Tim Yip, Colleen Attwood, Jacqueline Durran, Gareth Evans (Whitechapel Gallery), Free Theatre of Belarus, Peta Lily, Nitin Sawney and Uchemma Dance, Chrysalis Dance.

5

The course is practice based and this is reflected in the breadth of ambitious work that has concerns for the societal, ethical and sustainable contemporary performance making agendas. The course actively engages with and has an effect upon diverse audiences and communities.

6 Performance: Design and Practice attracts an international cohort with diverse skill sets who bring and share their knowledge of diverse traditional and emerging cultural performance practices.

7

The integration and application of contextual and critical studies with practice gives our students an argument for not only what they are doing but also the process through which work is created. This is developed through understanding performance as research practice. Delivered through lectures


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and seminars, the wide range of topics and material consider the principles and history of design for performance. Key practitioners and movements, specific to performance and theatre and from a wider context. These broadly are Semiotics, Phenomenology, Post structuralism & Deconstruction, Psychoanalytic theory, Feminist and Gender Studies, Reception theory, Materialist theory, Postmodern and Post-colonial theory.

8

The course is practice based and this is reflected in the breadth of ambitious work that has concerns for the societal, ethical and sustainable contemporary performance making agendas. The course actively engages with and has an effect upon diverse audiences and communities. The course offers opportunities for students to develop a broad portfolio or focus their practice on for example design for dance, costume in film.

9 We forefront the dialogic and collaborative skills of performance making combined with the innovative thinking, presentation and design skills that are needed in new creative cultural economies.

10

Working in collaboration with students to shape their learning increases individual responsibility for learning, professional identity and direction. As the students develop their own practice we provide the opportunity for them to choose emphasis and orientation in the final year. Sites and spaces at Kings Cross and the black and white performance laboratories at CSM are fundamental spaces for developing and presenting practice and for experimentation and testing of ideas.


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Course Detail

On BA Performance: Design and Practice, you will interrogate what performance means in the 21st century. The course challenges the traditional view that performance design is something to look at and performance is something to watch. We will support you to think about performance critically and how it can engage with the world in a meaningful way.

We believe that a dialogue between mainstream traditions and new practices will shape the future of performance. On this course, you will explore the expanding field of performance. In particular, you will study post-dramatic theatre, immersive and interactive events. You will undertake work which takes place outside of traditional theatre spaces. You will study different concepts of performance and its associated objects and materials.

On BA Performance: Design and Practice, we will develop your ability to think as an artist. Our teaching strategy integrates thinking and making. We acknowledge the varied and specialist skills different roles in the creative industry demand. Our teaching falls broadly into two categories:

Performance design practice – The skills and knowledge required to create the visual components of performance. These include: model making, technical drawing, film shooting and editing, storyboarding and costume.

Contemporary performance practice – The skills and knowledge required to create performance. These include: performance-making strategies, dramaturgy, experimental film-making, resourcing, scheduling, rehearsing and collaborative working.

BA Performance: Design and Practice challenges traditional British performance culture and its hierarchies. The course questions the long-established model of authorship in performance production. Instead, it promotes a more open structure. It encourages the view that the audio and visual languages of performance are not secondary to written text, but just as important.

A key element of BA Performance: Design and Practice is sharing and combining ideas and practice. We are proud of the fact that our students have great success doing things we never imagined. Our graduates have gone on to work in a wide range of performance-associated disciplines. These include: visual performance, theatre design, set design for fashion, festivals, design for dance, event design and applied theatre.


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Course Units

The BA Performance: Design and Practice curriculum is devised to develop cross-disciplinary skills appropriate to your emerging interests. It includes critical studies and personal and professional development. The course focuses on experiential practice, and personal reflection will inform your choices throughout. Across all stages of the course, we aim to build a shared language and study framework, made up of screenings, guest lectures, artist talks and external events.

Stage 1

Unit 1: Performance: Design and Practice: Introduction to Study in Higher Unit 2: Right Here Right Now Unit 3: Critical Practice 1: Drawing Colour Making Unit 4: Performance: Frames and Territories

In Stage 1 you will begin to look at perspectives on the creation of performance. You will explore source material, concepts of space, time and the audience–performer relationship. You will be introduced to practical and writing skills, allowing you to start building your own approach to performance. Stage 1 establishes the critical skills needed to communicate ideas in collaborative, time-based media. These are mostly explored through peer-group projects.

Stage 2

Unit 5: Further Adventures in Performance: Making Stuff Happen Unit 6: Critical Practice 2: Platforms and Communities Unit 7: Performance Design in the Expanded Field

Stage 2 is a year of transition. You will continue to develop your individual creative identity. You will progress your own methods for working and identify the areas of particular interest that will inform your choices in Stage 3. The skills required to communicate your ideas effectively are refined through intensive practical projects. Towards the end of Stage 2, you will begin to prepare and plan for a major piece of written work in Stage 3.

Stage 3

Unit 8: Critical Studies Unit 9: Design and Performance

The units in Stage 3 reflect the potential challenges of professional working life or further study at Master’s level. They are designed to help you apply and expand on the skills gained in Stages 1 and 2. Through project work, you will develop your creative perspective, enabling you to move between activities or pursue a specialist


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interest. These final units offer flexibility, allowing you to choose the best way to demonstrate your abilities.

Diploma in Professional Studies

Between Stage 2 and Stage 3 of the course there is an option to take a year out and complete a Diploma in Professional Studies. This separate qualification (rated at 120 credits) involves researching, undertaking and reflecting on a 20-week (minimum) placement related to your professional interests and aspirations. The Diploma provides a valuable opportunity to make professional contacts and to develop your personal employability skills.

Exchange opportunities

The course is actively engaged in the University’s Study Abroad scheme, with the incoming international students bringing an important additional dynamic to the course.

Mode of study

BA Performance: Design and Practice runs for 90 weeks in full-time mode. It is divided into three stages over three academic years. Each stage lasts 30 weeks. You will be expected to commit 40 hours per week to study, which includes teaching time and independent study.

Credit and award requirements

The course is credit-rated at 360 credits, with 120 credits at each stage (level).

On successfully completing the course, you will gain a Bachelor of Arts with Honours (BA Hons degree).

Under the Framework for Higher Education Qualifications the stages for a BA are: Stage 1 (Level 4), Stage 2 (Level 5) and Stage 3 (Level 6). In order to progress to the next stage, all units of the preceding stage must normally be passed: 120 credits must be achieved in each stage. The classification of the award will be derived from the marks of units in Stages 2 and 3 or only Stage 3, using a dual algorithm.

If you are unable to continue on the course, a Certificate of Higher Education (CertHE) will normally be offered following the successful completion of Level 4 (or 120 credits), or a Diploma in Higher Education (DipHE) following the successful completion of Level 5 (or 240 credits). 


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Learning and Teaching Methods

Your primary means of learning is through practice. This is supported by:

Lectures, seminars and guest speakers Workshops and inductions Live external and internal projects Collaborations and group project work Work experience, exchange and community opportunities Personal and group tutorials Presentations Study and development-planning with an emphasis on options and choice Recommended reading, viewings and visits Independent study Peer and self-critical evaluation Formative dialogic and assessment feedback

Assessment Methods

Performance practice and design practice work Communication, participation and connectivity Experimentation Proactivity, enterprise and agility Verbal and visual presentations Written and visual work Peer and self-critical evaluation

Reference Points

The following reference points were used in designing the course:

The Learning and Teaching policies of the University of the Arts London; College policies and initiatives including local engagement, digital literacy.

The course references the HE descriptors for Level 4, 5 and 6 and integrates these with the diversity, multi disciplinarily, blurred boundaries and expanding nature of the subject area that is described in the Benchmark statements for both Art and Design and Performance. The course draws on the Creative Attributes Framework to embed enterprise and employability into the curriculum: to make things happen, showcase achievements and abilities, and life wide learning.

HE Level Descriptors; Creative Attributes Framework; Art and Design Benchmark statement; Drama, Dance, Performance Benchmark Statement; External professional organisations;


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Contemporary performance design and practice culture.


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Course Diagram Indicative assessment weeks are detailed in the course diagram. For exact dates please refer to the timetable. For details on the winter, spring and summer breaks, term dates are published on the UAL website: https://www.arts.ac.uk/students/term-dates

Stage One

Autumn Term Spring Term Summer Term

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Unit 1: Performance: Design and Practice: Introduction to Study in Higher Education 20 credits

Unit 3: Critical Practice 1: Drawing Colour Making 40 credits

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Unit 2: Right Here Right Now 20 credits

Unit 4: Performance: Frames and Territories 40 credits

https://www.arts.ac.uk/students/term-dates


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Stage Two


1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Unit 5: Further Adventures in Performance: Making Stuff Happen 40 credits

Unit 6: Critical Practice 2: Platforms and Communities 40 credits

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Unit 7: Performance and Design in the Expanded Field 40 credits

Optional – Diploma in Professional Studies

Placement Year

Diploma in Professional Studies 120 credits


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Stage Three


1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Unit 8: Critical Studies 40 credits

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Unit 9: Design and Performance 80 credits

Key

Week Summative assessment

Week Formative assessment


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The University will use all reasonable endeavours to provide the Course and the services described in this Output. There may be occasions whereby the University needs to add, remove or alter content in relation to your Course as may be appropriate for example the latest requirements of a commissioning or accrediting body, or in response to student feedback, or to comply with applicable law or due to circumstances beyond its control. The University aim to inform you of any changes as soon as is reasonably practicable.

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