MA Live Art

Our Live Art MA programme introduces you to radical art practice and encourages you to create ground-breaking original work.

You'll explore your ideas in the context of live art theory with the support and guidance of distinguished industry professionals, artists and researchers.

You'll also develop your professional skills and networks to take your career to the next level.

• Make ground-breaking work about the most pressing issues of our time
• Study with renowned theatre practitioners and thinkers
• Explore the theory of performance art and other experimental practices
• Guest lecturers from the world of live art and the cultural industries
• Gain a work placement at Live Art Development Agency

What you'll study

The Live Art MA is a collaboration between our Drama Department with the Live Art Development Agency (LADA), the main industry body. Our teaching team includes Dominic Johnson (a prolific writer on live art), Lois Keidan (Live Art Development Agency) and Lois Weaver. Visiting lecturers will work in live art, so you'll have an industry-wide view of the latest developments in the field.

You will also build your professional network, making use of our links to world-class creative professionals: students from this MA participated in and had their work screened at this year's V&A Friday Late: Art Schooled.

You’ll take two theoretical modules and two practice-based modules. You will understand, challenge and make live art in response to some of the most pressing issues of our time and examine art’s potential for protest and direct action.

You’ll explore the histories of live art after 1960, as well as its intersections with theatre, dance, video, installation and activism. You’ll explore your ideas in studio-based laboratory work, focusing on, and experimenting with, performance process and devising strategies to document your process.

You will also have the opportunity to take a work placement at Live Art Development Agency (LADA).

Career paths

We train scholar-artists who can pursue a wide range of careers worldwide: we prepare you for research degrees in theatre and performance, help you to develop your own work as an artist or prepare you for a role in the cultural and creative industries, or in a range of other creative professions.

We’ll help you to find a public platform for your work and ideas: for example, our MA Live Art cohort presented live and documented performances at the V&A, following a discussion about radical art school practice with Prof. Dominic Johnson and Dr Martin O'Brien.