Module: PM7031-30 Professional Collaboration

Level: 7

Credit Value: 30

Module Tutor: Kerry Irvine

Module Tutor Contact Details: k.irvine@bathspa.ac.uk

1.Brief description and aims of module

This module has a professional focus. It requires you to collaborate with other practitioners, be they fellow students, professional practitioners or organisations. It gives you the opportunity to explore your subject specialism within a contemporary professional context and embeds and entrepreneurial outlook through professional and/or collaborative practice. The module aims to:

• Foster professionally-focused approaches to subject specialisms

• Provide students with professional perspectives and outputs/products relevant to their subject and possible career path

• Explore the collaborative skills implicit in the relevant industry

2.Outline syllabus

The module embraces the notion of collaborative practice as the core of professional practice, therefore it invites you to work in collaboration in a manner best suited to your chosen subject - module handbooks will give further guidance. You must be able to demonstrate that you understand the processes of collaboration through the filter of your particular professional environment.

You can collaborate with other students within a professional context. For example, songwriters might collaborate in the traditional manner of successful and acclaimed songwriting teams, or they may work with choreographers, film makers, animators, poets, composers, arrangers or remixers.

You can undertake a placement activity. For example, dance students who might choose to work with a professional dance company assisting the process of choreography, or within the company.

You might go to work in professional environment as a practitioner. For example, Theatre for Young Audiences students might choose to work within a young person's setting as a facilitator. Or producers might shadow a Producer working on a production (including the Producer working on Bath Spa Productions).

Or you might work together as a professional company to a professional brief. For example, actors and directors might work with a professional company to produce a piece of performance work, or music performers might collaborate with other musicians or dancers, actors, etc on the module. You might do this by working with an existing professional company or by establishing your own company and using professional processes.

Alternatively, you might create projects that develops an innovative ensemble programme or portfolio of performances and rehearsals. Traditional ensemble collaborations are possible with the emphasis on working creatively and developing new ways of working collectively.

The key purpose of the module is to locate you within an environment that enables you to work within a professionally focused manner appropriate to your individual interests. It presumes that contemporary arts practice is an evolving concept that functions across an international community, aided by technology and powered by innovative collaborative practice.

As creative outputs gather focus towards the Major Project, the collaborative process is an experience of negotiated creativity capable of informing, influencing and possibly enriching your eventual outputs, although this is not a requirement of the module. If you are an international student, you should be mindful of your rights to work when studying in the UK. The module offers a range of approaches to ensure that you can demonstrate the learning outcomes, without having to engage in a work-place environment.

The professional collaboration should take advantage of the numerous platforms emerging in the online environment, where appropriate.

3.Teaching and learning activities

You develop your own professional approaches within an appropriate area through a combination of classroom, tutorial, online, and work-based learning. The module aims to support those who engage in distance learning by employing e-learning strategies, for example blogs, online tutorials and songwriter’s webinars; as appropriate to the mode of delivery or the nature of the collaboration undertaken. The emphasis as the programme moves toward the major project stage is for you to develop greater autonomy; therefore negotiation is critical.

Formative assessment engages you in negotiating your project proposal. This enables you to relate your chosen form of professional collaboration to the cultural/artistic environment with which you wish to engage. The negotiated project should address the professional demands of the proposed project in relation to your subject specialism. As such the project negotiation might take the form a diary or log of ideas that demonstrate the development of a project idea. It might be a formal proposal, or it might be through tutorial or group discussion around shared ideas.

The summative assessment is the submission of a portfolio or work as defined by your negotiation. The module presumes a word-count of 7,500 or equivalent. So for example a portfolio of five songs, a performance of around 50 minutes duration, an evaluation of practice undertaken with supporting evidence, etc.

For this module, assessment criteria are set for each subject area to ensure that the realisation of the assessment activity reflects the specific nature of the award title.

Assessment Item 1:

• Assessment Type: Course Work

• Description: Professional project portfolio

• % Weighting: 100%