Low Residency courses in Performance

“The distinctive thing is that, although it’s online, it’s entirely practice-based. We’re not thinking about performance being about, we’re thinking about what performance can do, and so when we meet, we ‘do stuff’. These are really the practice-based workshops that we do together online—we improvise, we move, we film, we generate things together, and we meet every week.”
Anna Macdonald, Course Leader, MA Performance: Society 

The Performance programme at Central Saint Martins takes an interdisciplinary, experimental and frequently collaborative approach to performance-making. The work produced is political, free-thinking and inclusive. It encompasses, moving image, socially-engaged practice, choreography, scenography, dramaturgy and immersive technologies.

Our student body and teaching team come from a wide range of personal and professional perspectives. As a community, we are deeply committed to the idea that diverse ecologies are the most vibrant creatively and we actively celebrate difference. As a programme, we encourage creative risk-taking by cultivating a supportive and accepting environment in which unique individual and collective perspectives can develop. We believe in the potential for performance to change the society in which we all live.

The programme includes two low-residency courses which are taught mostly online, with one in-person intensive each year: 

MA Performance: Society
MA Performance: Society explores radical, socially engaged performance through live, screen-based and sited practice. 

The course critically explores the conventional boundaries between art, performance, screen, theatre and activism. It recognises that you, the performance maker, can be an agent for change in relation to local places and challenges. The course examines how performance, and its methodologies can provoke debate, build community and make lasting change.

MA Performance: Society is aimed at students who are interested in participatory arts, socially engaged arts, applied theatre, site-specific, site-responsive performance, moving image, live arts, scenography and performance in the expanded field.  Central Saint Martins, as a College community, seeks to prioritise the urgencies relating to: identities and equity, climate ecologies, and publics and commons. The Performance: Society course recognises that its students will seek to contribute to collective efforts to address the urgencies faced by their community in a particular place as well as the global context. 

This is a part-time course delivered through a blend of online teaching, intensive workshops, international teaching exchange, and independent projects. The anticipated student community will have a broad international reach. The course encourages you to draw from your communities of practice and interests and engage with wider transnational networks through the Shared Campus.  

MA Intercultural Practices
Preparing you for future careers where intercultural collaboration is essential. Global themes are best understood and acted on from multiple cultural and disciplinary perspectives. This course encourages the sharing of these perspectives to develop your agency as an artist and cultural producer. 

This is an MA by project. Study on the course prioritises making, action research and intercultural dialogue. The unit structure builds from your context and experiences to lead you in the development of your own personal project with potential extensions that might bring about change.  

This is a part-time course delivered online through a blend of teaching, intensive workshops, international teaching exchange, and independent projects. The course encourages you to draw from your communities of practice and interests and to engage with wider transnational networks through the Shared Campus. Shared Campus is an international network of specialist art and design universities established to overcome barriers to cultural exchange.

Mode and length study
MA Performance: Society and MA Intercultural Practices are offered part-time and in low-residency mode, running for 90 weeks over two academic years. Teaching is mostly online. 

Applications
Applications are accepted until each course is full. Your application will only be considered after you have successfully completed an online application and submitted the required documents. Full details of specific entry requirements for each course can be found on the relevant course pages of our website.