MA Collaborative Performance is unique within the University in that it is genuinely cross-university with relationships to all the colleges rather than belonging to one only.

This means that you (as a course member) can collectively negotiate relationships with a wide range of tutors and students to access facilities and specialist staff and events that otherwise would not be available in pursuit of learning: this process of negotiation, initiation and management is itself part of that learning.

MA Collaborative Performance offers a radical new approach within the learning community to realising performance events, providing you with high level preparation for practice in the professional world.

Informed by consultation with some of the most influential UK practitioners and providers in the performance field, MA Collaborative Performance is situated at the leading edge of current professional practices. It questions those practices to find ways of promoting fresh and dynamic thinking, extending your engagement with the potential of collaborative performance and exploring what this might mean for the cultural industries and education.

The core concern of the MA is to explore, examine and redefine collaborative practice by developing your creative, practical and managerial skills within the collective endeavour. To this end, all aspects of the process of making a performance are the shared responsibility of the course team and the students together – ‘the company’. This group of people will conceive, devise, plan, manage and deliver ‘performance events’ under the guidance of inspirational professional mentors.

As a student group, you will have negotiated access to university facilities to support agreed projects that are the outcome of the collaborative process. You will be encouraged to interpret what might constitute collaborative performance events as widely and creatively as possible, enabling proposals to emerge from and be determined by the individual skills and the collective thinking of ‘the company’, subject only to resources and practicability.

MA Collaborative Performance is supported by a group of high-profile professional practitioners from various aspects of performance, who give their time and expertise as a demonstration of their commitment to collaborative working. Part of this commitment is to make periodic visits to the course, to work with the ‘company’ in support of the curriculum and performance events.

MA Collaborative Performance lasts 45 weeks, arranged across one academic year – 3 terms of 10 weeks – plus an additional 15 weeks.

MA Collaborative Performance is credit rated at 180 credits. It comprises two Units: Unit 1, (60 credits), for the first 15 weeks of the course followed by Unit 2 (120 credits) that runs for 30 weeks, with public performances or events taking place towards the end of this Unit.

Both units must be passed in order to achieve the MA, but the classification of the award of MA derives from the mark for Unit 2 only.

We expect you to commit an average of 40 hours per week. This comprises 20 hours of taught and supervised sessions and 20 hours self directed study including rehearsal, mounting the performance and post production activities (hours will vary according to the performance project undertaken).

This section will be updated in February.

Information about the entry requirements and selection criteria will be available towards the end of February.

Application information and an application pack will be available towards the end of February.