Creative Industries: Their Past, Our Future
| Module title | Creative Industries: Their Past, Our Future |
|---|---|
| Module code | EAS2089 |
| Academic year | 2025/6 |
| Credits | 30 |
| Module staff | Professor Gabriella Giannachi (Convenor) |
| Duration: Term | 1 | 2 | 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Duration: Weeks | 11 |
| Number students taking module (anticipated) | 30 |
|---|
Module description
Creative Industries: Their Past, Our Future tracks the profound changes that the creative industries have gone through during the 20th and early 21st centuries. The module, which focuses on the publishing industry, museums, film and theatre, looks at how each of these industries has become increasingly focused on ‘users’, tracking how the industries have worked with emergent technologies, including social media and AI, to shape new forms of engagement; how they have widened participation and redefined access; reinvented values (aesthetic, economic, social); and dealt with generational and social divides.
You will learn about how the creative industries operate as organisations; how they design their relationships to readerships, visitors and audiences; how they use a range of technologies to reach out to different communities; how they produce novel forms of aesthetic, social, and economic value; and how they usually operate through shrinking budgets.
The module requires no prior knowledge or skills and is open to anyone with an interest in the current and future developments of the creative industries.
Module aims - intentions of the module
• To familiarise you with how the creative industries currently work. The module aims to strengthen your skills in historical and contextual analysis and research of the field. Lectures and seminars will introduce key concepts and provide guidance on further independent research also supported by an in depth investigation into a cultural organisation, The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum.
• Prepared seminar contributions will give you the opportunity to develop your own approaches to the syllabus texts and other materials.
• The module offers the opportunity to acquire knowledge that may link to employment in the creative industries.
Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)
ILO: Module-specific skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 1. Contextualise aesthetic, economic, and social priorities for the creative industries from a historical point of view
- 2. Demonstrate an informed understanding of the way the creative industries have changed in the 20th and 21st centuries
ILO: Discipline-specific skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 3. Demonstrate an ability to interrelate texts, still and moving images, and discourses specific to their own discipline with issues in the wider context of cultural and intellectual history pertaining to the creative industries
- 4. Demonstrate an ability to understand and analyse relevant theoretical ideas, and to apply these ideas to contexts pertaining to the cultural industries
ILO: Personal and key skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 5. Through seminar work, demonstrate communication skills, and an ability to work creatively and imaginatively
- 6. Through essay-writing, demonstrate appropriate research and bibliographic skills, a capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument, and a capacity to write clear and correct prose
- 7. Through research for seminars and essays, demonstrate proficiency in information retrieval and analysis
- 8. Through research, seminar discussion, preparation for essay writing, demonstrate a capacity to question assumptions, to distinguish between fact and opinion, and to reflect critically on their own learning process
- 9. Through the seminar contributions, demonstrate the ability to think laterally and demonstrate originality in problem solving, express and communicate creative ideas and images, and initiate and sustain creative and imaginative work
Syllabus plan
Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:
- The creative industries
- The Publishing Industry, 20th and 21st centuries, historical overview, including a study of the Penguin Publishing
- The Publishing Industry, current practices and challenges
- The Museum, 20th and 21st centuries, historical overview, including a study of RAMM
- The Museum, current practices and challenges
- The Film Industry, 20th and 21st centuries, historical overview, including a study of the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum
- The Film Industry, current practices and challenges
- The Theatre Industry, 20th and 21st centuries, historical overview, including a study of the Exeter Northcott Theatre
- The Theatre Industry, current practices and challenges
- Literary Festivals
- Closing remarks
Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | Guided independent study | Placement / study abroad |
|---|---|---|
| 40.5 | 259.5 | 0 |
Details of learning activities and teaching methods
| Category | Hours of study time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled learning and teaching | 11 | Lectures |
| Scheduled learning and teaching | 27.5 | Seminars |
| Scheduled learning and teaching | 2 | Cultural organisations in depth study |
| Guided independent study | 70 | Seminar preparation |
| Guided independent study | 189.5 | Reading, research and assessment preparation |
Formative assessment
| Form of assessment | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract for essay 1 | 1000 words | 1-4, 6-8 | Feedback sheet with opportunity for tutorial follow-up |
Summative assessment (% of credit)
| Coursework | Written exams | Practical exams |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | 0 | 0 |
Details of summative assessment
| Form of assessment | % of credit | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Essay 1 | 45 | 2000 words | 1-4, 6-8 | Feedback sheet with opportunity for tutorial follow-up |
| Essay 2 | 45 | 2000 words | 1-4, 6-8 | Feedback sheet with opportunity for tutorial follow-up |
| Module participation | 10 | Ongoing | 1-5, 7-9 | Feedback sheet with opportunity for tutorial follow-up |
Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)
| Original form of assessment | Form of re-assessment | ILOs re-assessed | Timescale for re-assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Module participation | Repeat study/mitigation | 1-5, 7-9 | N/a |
| Essay 1 (2000 words) | Essay 1 (2000 words) (45%) | 1-4, 6-8 | Referral/Deferral period |
| Essay 2 (2000 words) | Essay 2 (2000 words) (45%) | 1-4, 6-8 | Referral/Deferral period |
Re-assessment notes
Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.
Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.
Indicative learning resources - Basic reading
All reading material required for this course will be made available on the course ELE site.
Publishing:
- Darnton, Robert (2010) The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future. New York: Perseus Books.
- Smith, Kelvin (2012) The Publishing Business: From p-books to e-books. London: AVA Publishing. Print.
- Young, Sherman (2015) The Book is Dead, Long Live the Book. Sydney: New South Publishing.
Museums:
- Ross Parry (2007) Re-coding the Museum: Digital Heritage and the Technologies of Change, London and New York: Routledge.
- Nina Simon (2010) The Participatory Museum, Santa Cruz: Museum 2.0. http://www.participatorymuseum.org/
Film:
- Langford, Barry (2010) Post-Classical Hollywood: Film, Industry, Style and Ideology Since 1945, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
- Sickels, Robert C. (2011) American Film in the Digital Age, Santa Barbara: Praeger.
Theatre:
- Kershaw, Baz (2004) (ed.) The Cambridge History of British Theatre, Vol. 3: Since 1895, Cambridge: CUP.
- Shepherd, Simon (2009) Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Theatre, Cambridge: CUP.
Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources
| Credit value | 30 |
|---|---|
| Module ECTS | 15 |
| Module pre-requisites | None |
| Module co-requisites | None |
| NQF level (module) | 5 |
| Available as distance learning? | No |
| Origin date | 12/12/2016 |
| Last revision date | 21/01/2025 |
