Creative Industries MSc

Students on the programme study the following:

• A portfolio of EFI ‘shared core’ courses (40 credits) which teach the essential critical and hands-on data skills, enquiry methods, ethical and creative capacities needed to underpin your programme-based studies.
• Three core courses (30 credits) that establish the foundations of strategy and business models, and apply them in a client consulting course with a leading cultural or creative organization.
• A project (which takes the form of a 20-credit ‘integration and project planning’ course, and a 40-credit team project) based either on a challenge set by a client or proposed by a student.
• A wide choice of short 10-credit optional courses (50 credits), at least two of which must be on topics related to your programme, with scope to study across the entire EFI portfolio.

This is a full-time one-year programme, based on-campus in Edinburgh so it can benefit from the city’s strong cultural organisations.

Core courses

You will take the following 10 credit core courses for your programme:

• Creative Markets teaches the fundamentals of strategy, competitor analysis and business models that enable leaders to create and capture value amidst the demand uncertainty that permeates the creative industries.
• Intellectual Property in the Creative Industries examines intellectual property rights in the creative industries to protect intangible assets and identify which rights generate possible revenues and are appropriate for different business models.
• Client Consulting project applies knowledge of Creative Markets and Intellectual Property to a client-led challenge with a cultural or creative organisation.

You will also take the following 10 credit shared core courses, which are compulsory for EFI students on all programmes:

• Interdisciplinary Futures
• Insights Through Data or Text Remix (choose one)
• Ethical Data Futures
• Representing Data or Building Near Futures (choose one)

These shared core courses place you in cross-disciplinary teams with students from other programme areas. They will teach you to collect, manage and analyse computational datasets, and to use emerging methodologies for mapping and designing the future. They will also teach the fundamentals of data ethics, while supporting you to use your creative skills in the analysis and representation of data-informed and qualitative inquiry.

Optional courses

EFI offers a wide portfolio of about 40-50 optional courses taught by academic staff from across many discipline areas including approximately five to eight courses on topics associated with your programme.

The exact courses will vary from year to year. In 2023-24, the courses associated with your programme may include:

• Cities as Creative Sites: Urban Studio
• Critical Creative Diversity
• Culture, Heritage and Learning Futures
• Pitching Your Stories, Services and Products
• Strategic Change Leadership for Creative Industries

Optional courses from across the wider portfolio will cover a range of themes and topics, such as:

• critical perspectives on how new technologies are changing society
• data, programming and research skills that advance the skills taught in the EFI shared core
• the causes and consequences of inequalities around the world
• how new and rapidly changing technologies and data sources are transforming the future of democracy
• what the future of education might look like
• how narratives drive the way we understand the world
• bringing service design and service management together to build change in a data-driven society

The project

The project for the Creative Industries programme will address complex, live challenges facing the creative industries via a combination of individual and team work.

During the 20 credit integration and project planning course, you will develop an individual project idea, which can be a theme arising out of the client consulting project, or a proposal for a project on an issue or concern that particularly interests you personally or professionally.

You will then work with other students in a team on a 40 credit final project. You will be able to pitch your own ideas for a topic, and external clients will also propose topics. Teams can submit their final team project report as a written piece of work, or combine text with other forms as appropriate – video, visualisation, a digital artefact, performance, code. It is your chance to apply an interdisciplinary perspective and a methodologically robust approach to a live issue of importance to the creative sector.

Find out more about compulsory and optional courses

We link to the latest information available. Please note that this may be for a previous academic year and should be considered indicative.

On successful completion of this programme, you will be able to:

• build deep understanding of creative industries and markets, and the critical challenges they face
• understand the role of data and data-driven innovation in addressing these challenges and apply data-informed insights to the creative industries
• integrate insights from Business and Law to conceptualise innovative business models for the creative industries
• work with world-class cultural organisations to apply team-based learning to live challenges
• develop leadership, communication, team-working and analytic skills relevant to the creative industries

The Creative Industries programme provides core knowledge and ability - for example in marketing, digital strategy and consumer and audience engagement - that you will be able to apply to real, live challenges faced by the cultural sector.

It will prepare you to take up leadership and management roles in a variety of creative and cultural sectors such as:

• the creative industries
• arts management
• cultural heritage
• cultural tourism

For mid-career professionals, the programme offers the opportunity to expand, deepen and apply knowledge to new contexts, strengthening existing skills and developing new approaches which can be applied in professional work.

The core elements of the programme address the data and higher-order skills we know are important for the future of work, confident and critical citizenship, and a thriving, just society.

What does interdisciplinary study mean?

Interdisciplinary study is at the heart of the EFI programmes. It means the ability to synthesise and apply knowledge and skills from across different disciplines, and is crucial to addressing many current complex challenges and planetary-scale issues.

We support you to develop interdisciplinary perspectives in different ways. For example, the EFI shared core courses draw on diverse disciplines to support you to work creatively and ethically with all kinds of data. Each programme develops interdisciplinary perspectives in the ways most appropriate to their specific domain and focus. And finally – because you will have such wide choice in the optional courses you choose to take in EFI – you will have the flexibility to design your own disciplinary pathway through your studies, integrating your insights and reflecting on their interdisciplinary power through your project-related work.

How you will learn in EFI

The EFI approach to teaching places student experience and choice at its heart and connects global cohorts in new ways.

Students study in teaching spaces and digital learning environments designed to enable on-site/online sharing of teaching and learning activity. Your classes and contributions will be recorded and livestreamed so that they can be shared – and learning communities built – across modes and time-zones.

Students studying online will have a presence in on-site classrooms (via video, audio and text in different forms), and students studying on-campus will be able to work with diverse teams located across the globe. All courses require significant synchronous engagement in the classroom. While there may be opportunities to engage in some activities asynchronously from different time zones applicants should be aware of the requirement to join live classes at particular times. Please get in touch with us to discuss your particular circumstances before applying.

All students will have a presence in the digital spaces where teaching happens – video-based classes, real-time collaboration spaces, live chats, asynchronous forums, shared exhibition and blogging spaces and more.

• Fusion Teaching Privacy Notice

Teaching methods will include:

• group work
• expert lectures both live and livestreamed
• data skills and programming workshops online and on-campus
• on-site and virtual drop-ins
• hybrid seminars
• interactive journal clubs
• external stakeholder challenges and code-alongs
• data visualisation exercises

Apart from the shared core, most EFI courses are delivered in intensive two-day blocks of teaching and learning activity, combined with pre- and post-intensive wraparound activity that will include a range of scheduled and self-directed activities (for example, group project activities, reading, assessment).

Creative Industries Programme from The University of Edinburgh on Vimeo.

These entry requirements are for the 2023/24 academic year and requirements for future academic years may differ. Entry requirements for the 2024/25 academic year will be published on 2 October 2023.

A UK 2:1 honours degree, or its international equivalent, in any discipline.

We will also consider your application if you have other professional qualifications or experience; please contact us to check before you apply.

Students from China

This degree is Band C.

• Postgraduate entry requirements for students from China

International qualifications

Check whether your international qualifications meet our general entry requirements:

• Entry requirements by country

English language requirements

You must demonstrate a level of English language competency at a level that will enable you to succeed in your studies, regardless of your nationality or country of residence.

English language tests

We accept the following English language qualifications at the grades specified:

• IELTS Academic: total 7.0 with at least 6.5 in each component.
• TOEFL-iBT (including Home Edition): total 100 with at least 23 in each component. We do not accept TOEFL MyBest Score to meet our English language requirements.
• C1 Advanced (CAE) / C2 Proficiency (CPE): total 185 with at least 176 in each component.
• Trinity ISE: ISE III with passes in all four components.
• PTE Academic: total 70 with at least 62 in each component.

Your English language qualification must be no more than three and a half years old from the start date of the programme you are applying to study, unless you are using IELTS, TOEFL, Trinity ISE or PTE, in which case it must be no more than two years old.

Degrees taught and assessed in English

We also accept an undergraduate or postgraduate degree that has been taught and assessed in English in a majority English speaking country, as defined by UK Visas and Immigration:

• UKVI list of majority English speaking countries

We also accept a degree that has been taught and assessed in English from a university on our list of approved universities in non-majority English speaking countries (non-MESC).

• Approved universities in non-MESC

If you are not a national of a majority English speaking country, then your degree must be no more than three and a half years old at the beginning of your programme of study.

Find out more about our language requirements:

• English language requirements

Information on tuition fees and studying costs:

• Fees and costs

Tuition fees for postgraduate Edinburgh Futures Institute 2023-24 programmes can be viewed here when published:

• EFI tuition fees

Featured funding

• EFI funding opportunities

Search for scholarships and funding opportunities:

• Search for funding