Graduate Diploma in Arts and Cultural Management (Advanced)

This subject introduces students to the theories, processes, and practices behind strategic planning and decision-making in arts organisations today. In addition to generic management issues, students will be asked to identify and analyse issues specific to the arts industry. Students will be introduced to core issues in arts management, including arts leadership; strategic planning; governance; organisational structuring; funding and financing; audience experience; conflict and negotiation; sustainability; diversity; equity; and inclusion. Emergent concepts and approaches in the field such as co-creation and agile project management will also be considered.

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This subject introduces students to theoretical perspectives on arts and cultural policy and explains how various historical, political, and cultural contexts shape cultural policies in different nation states. The subject provides a broad overview of multiple aspects of cultural policies including regulating public arts, preserving national cultural heritage, contributing to sustainable economic, environmental, and urban development, as well as protecting cultural diversity on local and global levels. The subject explains how different political and cultural actors are involved in complex processes of creating, communicating, restructuring, or resisting cultural policies and how they affect local economies, reframe social and cultural composition of communities, as well as contribute to place branding.

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This subject examines audience development, engagement, and retention in arts and cultural activities. It engages with a variety of professional techniques including experience design, programming and content analysis, analysis of audience types and segments, aspects of audience experience, methods for audience research and analysis, and elements of access and barriers to entry. Lectures and seminars will address a range of themes underpinning audiences in the arts and cultural sectors, include research into attitudes to the arts, economic and social trends that impact on attendance at arts events, and the role of artists as promoters of their own work. There will be guest lectures throughout the semester.

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This subject introduces students to the fundamentals of commercial operations in an arts and cultural context, including financial management, budgeting, contracts, grants, and resource management. This subject includes an examination of the principles of financial reporting for arts organisations; the preparation and evaluation of financial budgets, particularly for grants; and a survey of critical operational logistics related to contracts, staffing, and resource management.

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This subject addresses ethical issues and legal constraints related to working in the arts and culture sector, including publishing for print and digital media. It will review existing ethical codes and the mechanisms established to police them, as well as offering an overview of how practices are shaped by law relating to such matters as intellectual property, contracts, negligence, privacy, defamation and respect for cultural differences. On successfully completing this subject, students will have gained an understanding of a wide range of ethical and legal considerations for their professional practice.

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This subject will examine the various strategies employed by museums and galleries to frame the objects and ideas in their care and in order to communicate to the public about them. It will consider how these display strategies have changed over time, but its principal focus will nonetheless be on current exhibition and display settings, from contemporary art spaces to science and natural history museums. What is the best way - if any - to frame a particular exhibition? What sorts of communications messages should curators and exhibition designers seek to convey to museum and gallery visitors? How effectively do galleries and museums communicate their ideas? What role does the public have in engaging with the objects and ideas in museum and gallery display settings? These and other questions will be asked in order to critically interrogate the idea of the exhibition as a meeting point between the institution and the public and as a site of a charged dialogue of meaning between all the players in the exhibition circuit: from the institution, to the objects and/or ideas in the institution, and on to the public who comes to engage with them. On completion of the subject students should be able to apply a range of critical theoretical, art historical and museological approaches to the study of exhibitions and displays in historical and contemporary settings.

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The aim of this subject is to provide students with knowledge, insight and skills in the practice of managing key stakeholders in cultural organisations. Its particular focus will be on stakeholder relationships. Topics will include but not be limited to: internal stakeholders such as Boards and staff and external stakeholders such as donors and sponsors. In looking at internal stakeholders, the focus will be on effective people management including relationships between Boards and management, management and staff, and management and unions. In exploring external stakeholders, this subject will provide students with an understanding of the role of philanthropy, development activities and fundraising in the cultural not-for-profit sector.

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This subject investigates the diversity of marketing forms, practices and strategies used across the breadth of arts organisations. Students will explore a range of influential marketing concepts, investigating the evolution from traditional forms of engagement to contemporary innovations in this area. Seminars will explore the interrelationship between communication theory and practice, identifying pivotal issues and influential concepts in arts marketing. Topics include strategic marketing planning, branding, pricing and communications. Students will engage in an advanced study of scholarly approaches and contemporary debates in the field as well as applying marketing tools and techniques.

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Cultural festivals, carnivals and special events are a prominent feature of arts and cultural activities at the local, national and international level. Through a series of international and local case studies, this subject will examine the economic and artistic origins of and rationales for these events in the context of a range of theoretical framings. Students will be asked to consider a variety of professional and critical approaches to evaluating these events, including programming and content analysis, audiences, creative labour, place-making strategies and the role of artistic directors. The influence of ritual, invented traditions and the carnivalesque in contemporary festival practices, along with the historical and political underpinning of festivals, will also be explored in order to appreciate the diverse range of interests that are served by such events and the social and political contexts within which they take place.

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This subject examines the growth of the museum from its origins in the wunderkammer and antiquarian collections of the 16th century to the dynamic and constantly shifting field of possibilities available to museums today. The subject charts the progression of the museum from the private collections of the Renaissance and Baroque to the vast public institutional spaces of the late 18th and 19th centuries, and beyond. Students will also address the various functions of the museum in Western culture from its inception to the present day. Special attention will be given to the ways in which the changing objectives of the museum (e.g. entertainment, propaganda, education) are reflected in the architecture, design and the display techniques developed in different countries at different times. Students should develop an understanding of the relationship between museums and concepts of national and cultural identity, focusing on their development within Australia and internationally.

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Students will read a range of fictional and non-fictional narratives written in the late 20th and early 21 st centuries for serial publication, such as Maupin’s Tales of the City books or ABC’s Please Like Me. Students will analyse these texts with a focus on the relationship between serial distribution and storytelling form, and with particular attention given to historical transformations and new developments.

Students will also read critical approaches to serial narrative concentrating on textual forms, genre, criticism, technologies of production and distribution, industrial formations of production and distribution, cultural contexts, and modes of audience engagement. Students will work to devise a concept outline for an original serial narrative for print, online, audio or screen delivery (e.g. online prose series, television series or podcast series), and write selected instalments.

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This subject is a study of the Australian performing arts from 1960 to the present with a special focus on the shift from national drama to diversity, and from the sole-authored play to devised and collaborative theatre. The study is framed by the changing landscape of Australian culture and the key insights of modernism, postcolonialism, feminism and gender theory. Students will read selected plays in relation to context, genre, and performance history; view DVDs of live performance; engage in online and library-based archival research; and undertake detailed textual and performance analysis; and investigate the role of performance as a medium of cultural life.

The subject is arranged in sections including single-author or theatre maker studies; the New Wave of the 1970s; Indigenous dramatists; and performance and live art. There will be scope to develop specialist studies of dramatists, theatre companies, and the performing arts industry.

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This subject offers an advanced critical examination of the impact of digital technology on contemporary media industries and cultural practices. We will examine the way the internet and new modes of collaborative production in the Web 2.0 environment are driving the transformation of all media sectors, including cinema, music, video, gaming and television. Through case studies in these sectors and close analysis of contemporary internet practices, students will engage with key debates about digital culture, including the transformation of audiences, the emergence of new media platforms, the role of peer to peer networks and social media and the changing nature of power in the digital era.

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Social enterprises are businesses that exist with the specific purpose of solving social and/or environmental problems through trade. These enterprises merge the best features of business and the non-profit sector to create innovative solutions that address both social and market gaps. Within these enterprises, success is thus measured in social and/or environmental terms, in addition to financial sustainability.

This multidisciplinary subject equips students with a critical understanding of social entrepreneurship, and provides them with a practical opportunity to develop their own start-up social enterprise. Groups will be formed according to personal interest and students will work in small project teams to conceptualise, develop and pitch a viable social enterprise initiative. Students are also expected to test their idea in the marketplace in real time, for example, liaise with external organisations to receive feedback on your product/service and/or develop a minimal viable product that can be showcased.

To support the development of ideas, the subject draws from case studies and guests speakers from the Victorian start-up ecosystem that share their personal experiences and advice as successful social entrepreneurs. Students will also have the opportunity to receive direct support on their idea during a feedback salon with academics, business leaders and social enterprise practitioners.

Upon completing this subject, students will develop a critical understanding of the nature of social enterprise in contemporary society and the practical requirements for developing sustainable social enterprise projects. The subject also uniquely provides students with the opportunity to apply theoretical knowledge to real-world solutions in real time.

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This subject will focus on the theoretical and practical elements involved in the production of screen-based content through advanced research, professional insight and contemporary practice. Students will gain specialised theoretical and practical grounding in the screen-based content production life cycle including: the ‘pitch’; script and story development; funding and financing; pre-production, principal photography and post-production; and transmedia production and distribution. The Australian screen production sector will be situated within the context of a highly globalised industry. Other areas under investigation include the role of industry and policy stakeholders; support for emerging content creators; forms of marketing and promotion; new technology and workflows; and cross-platform production strategies.

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