MA Arts Leadership & Fundraising
This one-year, blended Master of Arts focuses on contemporary arts practice to prepare you for a sustainable career in the performing and production arts.
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Overview
Unlock your potential and prepare for an enriching career as a leader in the contemporary arts sector.
The year-long MA programme will empower you to elevate your skills in leadership, management and sustainable business practices.
Join us from anywhere in the world – the programme can be completed entirely online or combined with in-person residency intensives. You also have the option to take accredited short courses to add to your learning experience.
The programme is delivered in modules, where you’ll be supported by RCS lecturers and industry experts to critically engage with your practice and to refine your identity as thinker, maker and leader.
We welcome applications from a range of creative disciplines and backgrounds. You’ll have strong technical skills in your specialist practice but will work in RCS’s multidisciplinary environment, opening up the potential for cross-collaboration that reflects the nature of the creative industries.
Enjoy being part of a dynamic international community at RCS, a global leader in performing and production arts education, where you’ll build a professional network to develop your career.
The important details
UK Applicant Deadline:
29 January 2025
International (including EU) Applicant Deadline:
29 January 2025
Institution Code:
R58
Programme Code:
TBC
Application Fee:
£28.50
Why Study Creative Arts Practice at RCS?
Are you an entrepreneurial thinker, looking to launch your own start-up and see your innovative ideas take flight? Maybe you’re working in the arts and ready to upskill or take your career to the next level.
If you are creative, curious and seeking a new challenge – the MA Arts Leadership and Fundraising programme is for you. This one-year, blended Master of Arts focuses on contemporary arts practice to prepare you for a sustainable career in the performing and production arts.
You’ll position your practice in relation to emerging industry contexts, policy environments and ethical and wellbeing responsibilities as a leader, maker, manager or producer.
Develop specialist skills and knowledge to thrive in your professional life – confident and resilient, inspired in your practice, and people-centred in your approach.
Enhance Employability
Your enhanced skills and practice, and your development of new work with specialist support, will open up new employment opportunities.
Specialist Learning Environment
In recent times of great change in the creative industries, this course ensures that you will be well-versed in and able to navigate contemporary expectations, debates and innovations in practice. RCS offers the highest level of specialist tuition across all the performing and production arts disciplines, ensuring the best possible learning environment closely linked to national and international partner companies and festivals.
Flexible Learning
The flexibility of the course means that you can fit your studies around work or family commitments, and study in the mode that best suits your needs (blended, online or distance)
Graduate Destinations
Whether it’s enriching portfolio careers or taking a new professional direction, graduates of this course will:
- Contribute and innovate in a variety of creative employment fields.
- Develop creative entrepreneurship and competency in the creative industries.
- Enhance their sustainable professional practice in a way that incorporates an ethos of self-directed and life-long learning.
- Nurture visual awareness, literacy and critical faculties in order that they may consider, for example, aspects of form, semantics, human factors, business and professional practices, sustainability issues and cultural influences in the construction and development of creative practice skills and solutions.
Programme Structure
Designed to be flexible and responsive to your personal learning goals, learn how to apply your practice to the modern creative industries. You will also gain experience in cultural policy and fundraising and connect with RCS’s professional partners and your peers.
You’ll be assigned to a tutor group and have access to online resources, learning content and classes to support your progress.
The programme is divided into Situating Practice and Cultures and Context modules, allowing you to focus on expanding your practice. The final module, Synthesising Practice, concludes with a presentation of a work-in-progress that combines your new knowledge with your existing practical and theoretical skills.
It could be a new script, improvisation practice, choreography, film score, or even a new start-up entrepreneurial concept. You can also propose a substantial research project suitable for a PhD or DPerf application.
You will also share modules with other Masters programmes at key learning points, allowing you to broaden your creative context and build a network of peers as you gain new knowledge and skills.
How to Apply
This programme is new for academic year 2025/26. More information about the application process will be available here soon. If you are interested in applying, in the meantime please sign up to receive updates about this programme, or contact our admissions team via email: admissions@rcs.ac.uk
Entry Requirements
Academic Requirements
Applicants for the programme normally have a degree or international equivalent in a subject area relevant to the demands of the programme. It is recognised that some applicants may not have achieved a full degree in a relevant subject area, and we will take account of relevant professional experience where it is deemed to be a suitable equivalency.
English language requirements
International English Language Testing System score (IELTS) (if applicable) Level 7.5 with a minimum score of 7.5 in speaking and with a minimum score of 5.5 in all parts.
Fees & Funding
Tuition fees
TBC
Funding & Scholarships
You can find out about the funding and scholarships available for studying at RCS by visiting our dedicated page:
Cost of Living & Programme Costs
This course can be studied fully online if you live further afield and don’t wish to travel to participate in-person. The course is structured to be delivered online with in-person residencies offered to supplement and enhance the learning experience.
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Why RCS?
We are the only place in Europe where you can study all of the performing arts on the one campus. There is a distinctive creative energy at RCS and you’ll be made to feel part of our inclusive and diverse environment from the very beginning of your studies.
Our graduates are resourceful, highly employable and members of a dynamic community of artists who make a significant impact across the globe.
At RCS, students develop not just their art but their power to use it.
World Top Ten
We were voted one of the world’s Top Ten destinations to study the performing arts (QS Rankings) in 2024, the eighth time we have been placed in the top ten since the ranking was established in 2016.
Perform & Collaborate
Our curriculum is built around performance and collaboration and we hold professional partnerships with all of Scotland’s National Companies. Join forces across artforms and be part of the 500+ performances we give each year.
Outstanding Alumni
Our graduates are employed across the world and we take pride in the impact they have on their art forms. We’ll equip you with the skills to thrive as a professional and join their ranks.
Learn from the Best
More than 1,000 lecturers, tutors, artists, technicians, co-ordinators and support staff work at RCS across all our art forms. Study with some of the finest educators and performing and production artists in the UK.
A Campus Built for You
Our facilities are world-class. From rehearsal rooms and recording studios to our five professional performance venues, we have a campus to showcase and develop emerging artists to the highest standards.