Arts Management MA: Focus on employability

The course is very flexible and there are lots of different pathways through the training, from studying full-time over one year, to part-time, which usually takes place over two years, but can be spread over up to five years.

Students who already have experience of working in the arts can use this as credits to shorten their learning journey.

Sara Treble-Parry came to study arts management at the College straight after finishing her fine art degree at Cardiff Met.

Having studied music here, Daisy Cooksley went on to work as a Graduate Music Assistant before realising that she wanted to consolidate her skills and think about her next career steps.

Here’s Daisy talking about the arts management course in a video made by Sara Treble-Parry during her marketing placement.

Sofi Nowell is studying part-time. She’s an independent producer of experimental visual arts and music projects, working as a tour and artists manager in the music industry.

Having previously been at circus school, a dancer and worked in performance art she’d already got lots of experience of promoting the arts. She joined the course because she wanted to take her career forward and learn about fund-raising among other things:

Working in close partnership with the industry ensures the students have training that’s both current and relevant.

Sara adds, 'As the course is only a year, it really has to pack everything in. The first term we have lectures and assessments, including a group project and a presentation where we have to do a dummy fund-raising pitch to a real company. Last year someone did so well they actually GOT the funding for a production!'

We cover all the practical aspects of what you might have to do in your job, for example, in a small organisation that might include anything from fundraising, marketing and curating, to producing, finance, and general management.

We have some phenomenal lecturers. I particularly liked finding out about the psychology of management from the marketing manager of Cardiff’s New Theatre.

In our management lectures we also learn about things like building effective teams, ethics, good governance, creative sector leadership and resilience and alternative business modelling.'

The course brings together all kinds of people from different backgrounds so we all bring different strengths and skill-sets to our discussions which is really exciting.'

Sára Neužilová, who originally hails from the Czech Republic, studied theatre and film at Bristol before coming to study at the College: 'We’ve just started a finance module and surprisingly as someone who doesn’t like talking about money, I love it! It’s just so enjoyable.'

Students undertake two professional work placements: one part-time in Spring term and one full-time during the Summer term. Placements provide opportunities to develop and apply skills in a mentored, professional environment.

Sara is currently on a Spring placement with the marketing team: 'The internal placements run on a part-time basis alongside lectures. It’s great as RWCMD is an arts centre as well as a college so there are loads of opportunities to be involved.

I’ve found it a good middle ground between work and being a student, because you’re still coming to College. We have regular action-learning sessions where we can reflect and discuss how our work is going and how useful it is. It helps us decide which direction we want to go in for our final industry placement and our future careers.'

Iain Fraser-Barker is on an orchestral management placement: 'I’ve come from a background of musical performance and it’s really great to see behind the scenes by managing an entire orchestra.

I’ve also been able to apply the skills I’ve learned on the course into real-life situations which has been incredibly useful.'

Sofi’s placement has involved working on outreach projects with third year students and primary schools within the Jazz department.

'It’s been life-affirming and amazing,' she said.

The course boasts a full range of partners that students can work with for their extended industry placement in the summer term, with everything from small touring companies to national organisations, producing and presenting venues, and representing just about every performing arts genre.

They can cover a wide range of opportunities and interests and have previously been at The Hallé Orchestra, National Dance Company Wales, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Edinburgh Festival and Jamie Wilson Productions in the West End.