The Master of Arts (Creative Arts) is a two-year, full-time Master by research program for students who have completed an undergraduate degree in the arts.

Students will be required to research, devise and produce new works of art, or develop new approaches to arts practice.  It is expected that this activity will be a contemporary expression of traditional arts practice leading towards new insights in the selected field of study.  The work will be exploratory, frequently based around emerging methodologies of arts research, leading usually to a performance, presentation, exhibition or publication of significance.

Integral to research through the practices of the creative art/s in question, the student is required to provide an appropriate written record (between 20,000 and 30,000 words) of their research, detailing their interrogative processes and artistic ideas in the context of current professional knowledge. Together, the critical practice and reflection constitute the thesis which is expected to develop appropriate methodologies of inquiry and incorporate current theoretical understandings of the discipline/s.

Where the thesis involves live performance, exhibition and/or events, candidates are advised to pay attention to examination procedures before the required final submission of the two integral components in a form of documentation appropriate to the research involved.

The course is aimed primarily at high level practitioners from a wide cross-section of the arts community who wish to extend their capacity to operate in an increasingly multi-art form and technologically-based profession.

 Specifically, the course aims to:

• create opportunities for innovation and creativity in the arts;
• use the resources of the Academy to create leadership opportunities for people who can offer the arts informed direction, and identifiable and marketable skills, to advance the Australian cultural environment into the next decade;
• provide opportunities for people from diverse ethnic and creative arts backgrounds to synthesise disparate artistic skills to produce innovative and creative outcomes for the arts industry;
• build upon and extend the traditions and conventions of the student’s earlier training to create new knowledge for the arts.

Students will be expected usually to have completed an under-graduate degree in the arts or a related field, together with demonstrated interest and experience in the arts industry/profession.  Admission is based on a written application which prepares and describes an initial research topic.

The Master of Arts (Creative Arts) will comprise two years of full-time study (or the part-time equivalent).

The sequence of units offered is as follows: