Project Management for Creative Practitioners MSc
Subject and course type
- Creative Professions
- Postgraduate
Ready to boost your creative career and deepen your knowledge of value? Kingston University’s MSc in Project Management for Creative Practitioners is perfect for art and design graduates looking to tap into a career in this fast-paced industry.
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Balance creativity and commerciality
You’ll study project, product and design management, build commercial and operational skills and develop a critical understanding of what it means to deliver value.
Studying this Project Management for Creative Practitioners MSc at Kingston University will equip you for a range of rewarding opportunities in industry. Recent graduates have gone on to work in everything from project management itself to creative freelancing and entrepreneurship.
Through a blend of theoretical and practical learning, you’ll gain skills in everything from entrepreneurship, funding and marketing to collaborative practice, resource management and risk assessment. You’ll also get to grips with agile work flow – crucial for successful creative practice in today’s landscape.
This programme offers opportunities to work with creative professionals from the art and design economy. You’ll even have the chance to complete an Agile Business Consortiums and APMG accredited Scrum Master certification.
During the course, you’ll benefit from tailored opportunities to develop your knowledge and skills. You’ll take part in designing projects and develop a portfolio of work in response to live briefs.
Part of the programme will also involve collaborating with key stakeholders or focusing on your own personal enterprise and development pathway to deliver a major project.
Why choose this course
While you study, you’ll benefit from top quality teaching at Kingston University. We are ranked Gold in the Teaching Excellence Framework, and our state-of-the art facilities create the perfect modern learning environment.
University museums and galleries
Kingston University has two on-site galleries, which offer exciting opportunities for career progression. Grade II-listed Dorich House is the former home of the sculptor Dora Gordine, while the Stanley Picker Gallery is one of the UK’s leading university galleries. Our Knights Park campus also has a bookable project space for large-scale exhibitions.
Workshops and studios
Explore, collaborate and share ideas in our state-of-the-art workshop facilities, designed by Stirling Prize-winning studio, Haworth Tompkins. Facilities are open to all Kingston University students, and include:
- 3D workshops, with spaces for ceramics, concrete, resin-casting, plastics, metalwork, woodwork, bronze-casting foundry, set design and large scale model making
- Animation and post-production studios
- A digital media workshop
- Knitting and sewing workshops with digital and analogue facilities, plus a working dress archive including from 1750 to the present day
- A HackSpace for collaborative, creative, solutions-focused projects
- A letterpress and printmaking workshop
- A moving image workshop, with studios, an editing suite and industry-standard equipment
- A fully-equipped photography workshop
The Art School Experience
As part of Kingston School of Art, students on this course benefit from joining a creative community where we encourage collaborative working and critical practice.
Our workshops and studios are open to all disciplines, enabling students and staff to work together, share ideas and explore multi-disciplinary making.
Course content
The course is multi-disciplinary and practitioner-based. You will study with creative professionals and practitioners from across the creative practice (e.g. art and design) economy. Throughout your studies, the emphasis is on learning by doing/making/production/application: you'll develop a portfolio of projects, culminating with a substantive major project. You'll develop your project management skills relevant to creative practice, leading to a professional certification in Agile Project Management.
Incorporated in the curriculum are general transferable skills including team building, collaborative practice, resource and stakeholder management, risk assessment, legal strategy and budget management. The key application is agility in project management for creative sector projects. The focus is on understanding both the language of management and leadership relevant to creative practice environments. While this will include the 'hard' skills of budget management, scheduling and legal strategy, there will be an important focus on understanding qualitatively, people; cultural context(s); and, the meaning of project 'outputs' and 'success' factors.
Please note that, below is an indicative list of modules on this course. This is not intended as a definitive list. Those listed here may also be a mixture of core and optional modules.
Modules
You'll develop a pragmatic understanding of the political, social and economic contexts of project management for creative practice. Areas of study and practice include people management, communication management, process management and business case development.
You will study established project management techniques and approaches that will improve your ability to manage and lead creative projects. The course includes a module on freelancing as a creative practitioner, which develops skills of pitching, work flow management and basic accounting.
Core modules
30 credits
This module examines and covers the key methods and approaches of project management such as agile, scrum, waterfall, and critical path analysis. It will set out the stages of project management, how projects are established and governed and the fundamental principles of management and control such as exception based reporting, the staged organisation of progress and task completion and measurement processes. The different approaches to project management will be explored and the principle of tailoring project management to suit different contexts will be examined. This module will include AgilePM training delivered by a specialist trainer and the award of AgilePM Practitioner level certification on successful completion.
30.00 credits
This module is based on the provocation that people are one of the key challenges when managing projects. Understanding and appreciating the complexity of people is fundamental to successful project management, their unpredictability, differing agendas, values and attitudes to work and notions of quality and purpose make people a challenging resource within the scope of project management. This is especially the case when managing people with creative sensibilities and identities built on notions of creative expression. The module will cover different sources of motivation, leadership and the notion of super-collaborators, and include the study of tasks such as establishing project teams, describing roles and conferring responsibilities. The skills developed during the module will include active listening, negotiation and the presentation of ideas.
30 credits
This module develops knowledge and understanding of the resourcing of projects. It will consider aspects of project budgeting, the management of a risk register, types and requirements for governance, the stage-gate process, different options for project management software, business case analysis and formation, strategy, quality and legal assurance management. The module includes use of project management simulation software that gives students experience of the resourcing of projects and provides performance data to use when evaluating a project's completion.
30.00 credits
This module builds an effective, practical knowledge of the principles and best practices needed for a professional and ethical, freelance creative career. Students will learn how to answer a commercial brief, how to interact with a client, deliver a creative outcome and be remunerated for that work. An important part of the module is to create a working appreciation of how technology effects, shapes and can enhance their creative career. The module aims to build a self-directed working appreciation of the intellectual property and the wider legal and financial requirements needed to successfully operate as a freelancer, in a chosen field and geographical (country/region) area. Assessments and tasks throughout the module are designed to aid the launch of the student's individual commercial practice, by producing a targeted, industry relevant digital presence (website/blog), and the active forward planning of their freelance creative career.
60 credits
This module forms the capstone of the degree offering students a real-life opportunity to put into practice the knowledge and skills developed in the previous modules. The module is based around a student-directed and managed project based exercise, involving the design, development and delivery of a portfolio of projects. The students will each design and project manage an aspect of the programme (a sub-project) such as organising the delivery of a launch event, creating the social media and online platform, and organising exhibition displays. The programme will be based on a social issue of their choice and students will build a business case, network with local stakeholders and design and organise fundraising to support the event. The physical programme events will be held at a suitable space in Kingston.
Professional placement year
Many postgraduate courses at Kingston University allow students to do a 12-month work placement as part of their course. The responsibility for finding the work placement is with the student; we cannot guarantee the work placement, just the opportunity to undertake it.
As the work placement is an assessed part of the course, it is covered by a student's Student Route 4 visa.
Optional modules
120 credits
The Professional Placement module is a core module for those students following a masters programme that incorporates professional placement learning, following completion of 120 credits. It provides you with the opportunity to apply your knowledge and skills to an appropriate working environment, and to develop and enhance key employability skills and subject-specific professional skills in your chosen subject. You may wish to use the placement experience as a platform for your subsequent major project module, and would be expected to use it to help inform your decisions about future careers.
Career opportunities
After you graduate
You’ll complete this course with the skills you need to work as a project or design manager in the creative industry. Previous graduates have also progressed to roles such as producer, creative freelancer and entrepreneur.
Links with business and industry
You’ll have plenty of opportunities to work with creative organisations including agencies, studios, charities, competitions, award bodies and professional consultancies such as APMG and Scrum Inc. Not only do our professional practice links keep all course content relevant to today’s workplace, our staff are professional practitioners with experience across the creative industries.
Live project delivery
During the course, you’ll work closely with businesses and organisations to design and deliver a programme of events for your live project.
Teaching and assessment
Assessment is carried out through a blend of practice-focused written reports and reflections; presentations; role play; simulations; live project briefs; and, project portfolio development.
When not attending timetabled sessions, you will be expected to continue learning independently through self-study. This typically involves reading and analysing articles, regulations, policy documents and key texts, documenting individual projects, preparing coursework assignments and completing your PEDRs, etc.
Your independent learning is supported by a range of excellent facilities including online resources, the library and CANVAS, the University's online virtual learning platform.
At Kingston University, we know that postgraduate students have particular needs and therefore we have a range of support available to help you during your time here.
A course is made up of modules, and each module is worth a number of credits. You must pass a given number of credits in order to achieve the award you registered on, for example 360 credits for a typical undergraduate course or 180 credits for a typical postgraduate course. The number of credits you need for your award is detailed in the programme specification which you can access from the link at the bottom of this page.
One credit equates to 10 hours of study. Therefore 180 credits across a year (typical for a postgraduate course) would equate to 1,800 notional hours. These hours are split into scheduled and guided. On this course, the percentage of that time that will be scheduled learning and teaching activities is shown below. The remainder is made up of guided independent study.
- 12% scheduled learning and teaching
The exact balance between scheduled learning and teaching and guided independent study will be informed by the modules you take.
Your course will primarily be delivered in person. It may include delivery of some activities online, either in real time or recorded.
Assessment typically comprises practicals (e.g. pitch presentations, reflective presentations and demonstrations) and coursework (e.g. project evaluation, reflective essays, reports, self-assessment, portfolios, dissertation). The approximate percentage for how you will be assessed on this course is as follows, though depends to some extent on the optional modules you choose:
Type of assessment
- Coursework: 50%
- Practical: 50%
We aim to provide feedback on assessments within 20 working days.
To give you an indication of class sizes, this course normally enrols 18–20 students and lecture sizes are normally 18–20. However this can vary by module and academic year.
Fees and funding
| Fee category | Fee |
|---|---|
| Home (UK students) | |
| Full Time | £12,400 |
| Part Time | £6,820 |
| International | |
| Full Time | £21,800 |
| Part Time | £11,990 |
| Fee category | Fee |
|---|---|
| Home (UK students) | |
| Full Time | £11,900 |
| Part Time | £6,545 |
| International | |
| Full Time | £20,900 |
| Part Time | £11,495 |
Funding support for postgraduate students
If you are a UK student living in England and under 60, you can apply for a loan to study for a postgraduate degree on the government's website.
Scholarships and bursaries
Interested in studying an MSc in Project Management for Creative Practitioners at Kingston? The following funding support is available:
Get a 40% reduction in fees for taught masters or postgraduate diploma courses with September start dates. Find out more about the Inspire the Future Scholarship.
Receive up to £5,000 towards tuition in your first year of study. Find out more about our international scholarships.
Get a 15% reduction in tuition fees. Find out more about our Postgraduate Progression Scholarships.
Kingston University offers a 10% discount on full- and part-time postgraduate degree course tuition fees to our alumni. Find out more on our alumni benefits page.
Additional course costs
Some courses may require additional costs beyond tuition fees. When planning your studies, you’ll want to consider tuition fees, living costs, and any extra costs that might relate to your area of study.
Your tuition fees include costs for teaching, assessment and university facilities. So your access to libraries, shared IT resources and various student support services are all covered. Accommodation and general living expenses are not covered by these fees.
Where applicable, additional expenses for your course may include:
Our libraries have an extensive collection of books and journals, as well as open-access computers and laptops available to rent. However, you may want to buy your own computer or personal copies of key textbooks. Textbooks may range from £50 to £250 per year. And a personal computer can range from £100 to £3,000 depending on your course requirements.
While most coursework is submitted online, some modules may require printed copies. You may want to allocate up to £100 per year for hard-copies of your coursework. It’s worth noting that 3D printing is never compulsory. So if you choose to use our 3D printers, you’ll need to pay for the material. This ranges from 3p per gram to 40p per gram.
Kingston University will pay for all compulsory field trips. Fees for optional trips can range from £30 to £350 per trip.
Your tuition fees don’t cover travel costs. To save on travel costs, you can use our free intersite bus service. This route links the campuses and halls of residence with local train stations - Surbiton, Kingston upon Thames, and Norbiton.
How to apply
Before you apply
Please read the entry criteria carefully to make sure you meet all requirements before applying.
How to apply online
Use the course selector drop down at the top of this page to choose your preferred course, start date and mode, then click 'Apply now'. You will be taken to our Online Student Information System (OSIS) where you will complete your application.
If you’re starting a new application, you’ll need to select ‘new user’ and set up a username and password. This will allow you to save and return to your application.
Application deadlines
We encourage you to apply as soon as possible. Applications will close when the course is full.
After you apply
If the admission tutor wants to see your portfolio, we will email asking you to upload your zipped portfolio to the OSIS portal within three weeks. If we need more information or want to invite you for an interview, we will be in touch directly. After that you will then hear whether your application has been successful.
Course changes and regulations
The information on this page reflects the currently intended course structure and module details. To improve your student experience and the quality of your degree, we may review and change the material information of this course. Course changes explained.
Programme Specifications for the course are published ahead of each academic year.
Regulations governing this course can be found on our website.
