The MA/MFA as an advanced postgraduate program places contemporary performance making and critical thinking at its core with students’ produced work and reflective analysis being instrumental to progress on all modules on the programme.
A wide range of subject specific approaches to teaching and learning are used within the MA/MFA Choreographing Live Art, which reflect the diversity and expertise within the teaching team.
Reflective practice and critical reflection of theory into practice are the paramount modes of enhancing learning. Teaching and learning of a critical and creative understanding of different forms, methodologies and processes in the field of contemporary performance is achieved by lectures, in-class discussion, the presentation of seminar papers and their staff and student-led feedback, oral and written critical feedback on essays, presentations, artist’s workshops, work-in-progress and completed performances, portfolios and websites/blogs. Guest artists and practitioners will be invited to share their practice with the students, as appropriate throughout the course of the degree. Students will work independently and in groups to develop and examine seminal and personal choreographic and facilitative approaches, analyse texts and produce performances, presentations, documentation and essays. Active participation of all students is encouraged in all teaching and learning contexts. Peer-assessment and formative feedback will be crucial in engaging and supporting the students’ development. Group and individual tutorial support is available at specified times throughout the course, and at the students’ request.
Assessment will be by means of performance presentations, essays, artefacts, portfolios, reflective journals and lecture demonstrations.
Students will be supported in their transition to postgraduate study. Since the target group of this MA/MFA is practitioners and artists who may have been outside a University context for some years, advice and guidance in relation to study skills and learning strategies is available from the university’s DART programme. The university library offers access to one-to-one Learning Development drop in support five days a week, as well as a wide range of skills-based workshops covering (amongst others): Essay Writing, Presentations, and Harvard Referencing. In addition, the library help-guides available through the portal all serve to duplicate – in written form – the existing workshop provision.
Writing support will be provided both in-house and via the library and the PG writing support centre. Comprehensive library inductions will be delivered, as will on-line research tools such as identifying and navigating through electronic databases, journals and websites.
Student work is supported by formative and summative feedback throughout the MA/MFA. The evaluation and development of the individual student’s performance production and the ability to define their practice are achieved through tutorials with commentary on works in progress across a variety of media accompanied by oral and written critical feedback. Supporting and connecting these evaluation strands is the creation of a critical community of peers.
Instruction on appropriate methodologies for research through practice is provided by the practice as research module. Tutorial dialogue, critical, analytical, and self-reflective expression within a group, and peer-group discussion are the foundation of all learning and teaching in the programme.
Students will be encouraged to support each other and to maintain conversations and collaboration outside of the module delivery via technology (Skype, blogging, piratepad etc.) and face-to-face encounters. Students will be encouraged to consider such interaction vital to their on-going development, group cohesion and effectively enriching the trail of documentation. Studio time will be allocated to the cohort outside of the taught delivery hours in order to provide a communal or independent working space where collaborative/personal discoveries can take place.