Master of Arts - Cities

• Unit 1: Voices in the City - Situated Practices and Positions

This introductory unit, Voices in the City, immerses the cohort in studio-based explorations to analyse and reimagine the city through live projects and cross-course collaborations. It aims to equip students with new skills while challenging fixed perspectives, helping them establish an ethical, situated position for working in urban contexts.

Through transcultural dialogues, site-specific interventions, and contextual studies, the unit examines collaborative city-making, public space, and participatory practice. Students reflect on their cultural identities and the polyphonic nature of civic life, building a critical foundation for community-engaged work.

• Unit 2: Productive Ecologies - Critical Creative Practices and Life-Affirming Infrastructures

The unit Productive Ecologies focuses on combining research and practice to address pressing urban issues through a live project with external partners like local government or arts groups. Students develop methods of critical analysis, mapping, and proposition-making to interrogate the role of culture and value in city-making.

Working on a specific site with a live client, students contribute to developing a 'life-affirming infrastructure' through curatorial strategies. The unit tests research-based creative practices as propositional models for advocating and creating spaces with and for communities in the changing city.

• Unit 3: The Project in the City - Practice Manual and Speculative Policy 

The unit Project in the City supports students in developing and launching a live project by examining organisational structures, working relationships, and commissioning processes within local government and wider agencies. Through case studies, seminars, and practitioner insights, it covers urban governance, policy, funding, and the complexities of institutional collaboration.

Running parallel to studio work, the unit also provides dedicated time to develop and scope a thesis question, which can take the form of a written, design-based, or practice-led project, potentially in collaboration with a third-party placement. Both the thesis and live project emphasize collaboration with communities, organisations, and stakeholders.

• Unit 4: Space, Money & Time - Cities, Global Flows and Transactions

The unit Space, Money & Time encourages students to speculate on the global potential of their live project by examining the economy of urban practices and the relationships between economic flows, social transactions, and urban space. It moves beyond traditional methods to engage with fluctuating economic and social realities, prompting students to question the ethics of spatial practice and cultural production, and to critically update the ethical position established in Unit 1.

• Unit 5: Thesis by Practice - New Positions on City-Making

The course culminates in a student-led thesis by practice, where students develop an independent written, design-based, or practice-led project under supervision and with transnational critical feedback. This unit rehearses the skills needed to become a self-sufficient, critical practitioner, enabling students to shape and theorise a future city-making role.

Through supervision, presentations, publication, and exhibition, the thesis frames and launches a new civic or urban practice, revisiting the situated, declarative approaches from Unit 1 and demonstrating proactivity, enterprise, and agility.