Skip to main content

Arts and Culture Strategy, 2024-30

Purpose

To support, grow and promote arts and culture at Birkbeck and their social, civic, and economic benefits.

Peltz Gallery at Birkbeck

Context

Our Strategy recognises the centrality of the arts and culture to Birkbeck’s identity, reputation and future success. It acknowledges the unique value of arts and culture to the College’s social, civic, creative and intellectual life. It responds to Birkbeck’s location in the heart of Bloomsbury in central London with local, national and global perspective and ambition. Our Strategy contributes to national efforts, across Higher Education and the creative industries, to nurture the arts and humanities. In particular, it echoes the British Academy's ‘A manifesto for the Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts’ (2024), which recognises the power of the arts and humanities in sparking creativity and career opportunities, responding to society’s urgent challenges, and producing research partnerships abroad and in the UK.

Teaching

  • We offer undergraduate, postgraduate taught and postgraduate research degrees, as well as short courses, within the following subject groupings located in the School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication and the School of Historical Studies in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences: English and Liberal Arts, Creative Writing; Film, Media and Journalism; Languages and Linguistics; Performing Arts and Arts Management; Archaeology, Classics, History and pre-History; Art History; Museums and Heritage. Our teaching spans contemporary and historical periods, addressing local, national and global cultural forms and concerns. We believe that many contemporary questions and problems need addressing from a multi-disciplinary perspective and offer students opportunities to study across different subjects, time periods and cultures. Our commitment to interdisciplinary teaching and learning, across the arts and sciences, is reflected in our provision in Health and Social Care, Medical and Health Humanities and Environmental Studies. The importance of cultural and linguistic understanding is reflected in our provision in a range of combined degrees across the Faculty and beyond, including the School of Law. Our new ‘Languages for All’ initiative permits students to learn a language alongside any other subject.
  • Our teaching is led by a distinctive combination of academic study in seminars and lectures, fieldtrips, and creative practice in workshops. Our approach to creative practice is supported by the facilities housed withing Birkbeck Creative Practice Lab, which includes the Birkbeck Cinema, the Peltz Gallery, the Derek Jarman Lab, a Performance Studio and the Vasari Research Centre for Art and Technology.
  • A commitment to student success, from all backgrounds and life experiences, guides our approach to teaching. We foster a learning environment that is personalized and responsive to students’ needs and circumstances, and to the changing world. Our classrooms are collaborative, inclusive and supportive. We prepare our students to be critical thinkers, creative makers and engaged citizens; to communicate their ideas with clarity, and to pursue their interests with confidence.
  • Employment preparation is supported by Careers and Employability initiatives, including work-focused modules and Careers and Enterprise skills training, including work-based placements and mentoring in collaboration with industry partners such as the BFI, Film Buddy, Japan Society and Camden’s People Theatre.
  • Our commitment to flexible, lifelong learning allows students to study full-time and part-time, or take short courses, with options for HyFlex study, digitized learning materials and study abroad opportunities.

Research

  • In alignment with the College’s Research Strategy, we are committed to research excellence and impact across our subject areas, as confirmed by our REF2021 results.
  • Our researchers produce interdisciplinary, intermedial, intersectional, and practice-based research. We develop historically informed and pioneering approaches to literature, creative writing, linguistics, language, journalism, media, digital culture, film, television, theatre, performance, curation, visual culture, heritage, archives and cultural collections. Our socially engaged research fulfils Birkbeck’s central mission of widening participation, enabling access and supporting justice by addressing conditions of marginalization and under-representation, underpinned by research on multilingual, geopolitical and transnational contexts; applied linguistics; arts policy and practices; diverse communities and institutions; health, wellbeing and sustainability.
  • Knowledge exchange and impact structures our approach to collaborations with communities and stakeholders, using research centres and institutes to support individual scholars and research clusters, foster collaborations with institutional partnerships, lead cultural institutions and community initiatives, and shape research agendas, public debate and policy. Our top-rated REF2021 research impact case studies include the exhibitions Blood: Uniting & Dividing (2015-2016) and Jews, Money, Myth (2019; ‘Museums Change Lives’ award 2019) at the Jewish Museum London, The Fallen Woman at the Foundling Museum, London (2015-2016), and the ‘The Forgotten Showman’: How Robert Paul Invented British Cinema at the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford (2019-2020); professional training provided by the MFA Theatre Directing, which underpinned over 225 plays in London, 180 regionally, and 14 new theatre companies; and world leadership in open research and open access policy through the Open Library of Humanities, which publishes the Birkbeck-led journal 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the long Nineteenth Century. Birkbeck is home to the Essay Film Festival, which has nurtured the essay film as an innovative practice-led research form.
  • The Fallen Woman, The Foundling Museum, London (2015-16) Our practice research and its impact are supported by the Birkbeck Creative Practice Lab, and an annual programme of seminars, screenings, readings, exhibitions and performances open to the public. Our annual festival of research, Birkbeck Arts Week, showcases the work of academics, collaborators, students and alumni to the College and to the public. Birkbeck is home to numerous world-renowned research centres and institutes, including Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image, Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities and Birkbeck Institute for Social Research, and archives including the Jo Spence Memorial Library Archive.

Public Engagement

  • We ensure that our arts and culture research and scholarship find audiences inside and outside the university to benefit it and extend its impact. Our public engagement takes the form of lectures, festivals, exhibitions, performances, screenings, workshops and symposia that invites students, colleagues, alumni and external audiences to participate in our activities. Annual events including Birkbeck Arts Week and Birkbeck Climate Festival are opportunities to showcase our research inside and outside the College. We share academic expertise and creative collaborations in accessible podcasts and via live recordings. We appoint Research Fellows drawn from the creative arts, culture industries and academia to support their work and to enable collaborations with Birkbeck’s academics and students to flourish.
  • We are pioneers of digital publishing and making academic research freely available to all through open access models (e.g. Open Library of Humanities). Our projects with NGOs, Refugee Community Organizations, and Charities make a major intervention in the treatment and visibility of migrants and displaced people in conflict zones around the world, including in London’s diasporic communities from Palestine and Ukraine. Our staff engage publics globally and locally, including producing sound installations with Hong Kong’s Oblik Soundwork collective, and preserving community art and histories at Camden People’s Museum.

Partnerships, industry and innovation

  • We have established partnerships with a wide range of individuals and institutions in the cultural and creative sectors as well as non-governmental organizations and charities in London, the UK and globally. Our collaborators include artists, theatres, museums, galleries, libraries, media, production companies and publishers. They include partnerships that span our research, scholarship and teaching commitments ranging from innovative graduate programmes taught in collaboration with Camden’s People Theatre to industry placement opportunities at institutions such as the Tate, British Museum and Whitechapel Gallery. We offer professionally recognized graduate training for theatre directors developed in partnership with the Arts Council England, Equity and UK Theatre and delivered with theatres from across the UK such as Leicester Curve and the Royal Exchange Manchester. Our thriving doctoral community is supported by Collaborative Doctoral Awards and Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships with organizations such as the BFI, Wellcome Trust, Linnean Society and the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the Science Museum, English Heritage and the British Library. Birkbeck colleagues played a leading role in the founding of the People’s Museum Somers Town.
  • Our partnerships and collaborations support transformative local, national and international initiatives. They include formal and informal collaborations with non-governmental organizations, charities and policymakers such as the Donor Conception Network and the UK-fertility regulator HFEA (Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority) and cultural institutions such as the British broadcaster ITV, the BBC Archive, Ukrainian Institutes in London and Kyiv, the Palestine Writing Workshop, and the Dublin based theatre and events company THISISPOPBABY.
  • We specialize in cultural policy, including advisory work on arts education and racial justice at the Runnymede Trust and work on long-term policy implications together with visual artists in Germany. Birkbeck is home to the Open Library of Humanities, which reflects our commitment to making knowledge accessible to all.

 

Commitments

Building on our strengths, this Arts and Culture Strategy, 2024-30 makes the following commitments:

Our commitments to Teaching

  • Pursue teaching excellence across our diverse subject portfolio by monitoring our practices and processes, enhancing our approaches, innovating new methods, (re) designing modules and programmes, and developing opportunities for embedding transferable skills, employment-oriented learning and industry experience in our provision:
  • Ensure that we maintain subject breadth in our arts and culture provision at undergraduate, postgraduate taught and postgraduate research levels
  • Ensure that programmes include opportunities for students to develop subject-specific and transferable skills
  • Create opportunities for students, across the College, to engage with arts and culture modules and activities
  • Continue to build links with communities and industry to ensure that students have opportunities to prepare for the workplace
  • Develop new provision that responds to the emerging needs of students and employers
  • Maintain spaces and resources appropriate for teaching our subjects and supporting their learning
  • Embed Birkbeck's commitment to diversity, accessibility, inclusion and social responsibility at the heart of all our teaching and learning activities

Our commitments to Research

  • Drive intellectual curiosity, creativity, innovation, knowledge exchange and impact via a commitment to research excellence in arts and culture, including via industry partnerships, cultural collaborations, social and civic engagement:
  • Conduct research in arts and culture that seeks to positively respond to local, national and global challenges affecting society, culture, communities, politics, economics, health and wellbeing, and the environment
  • Identify and cultivate new research agendas in which Arts and Culture play a key part in driving innovative approaches and solutions
  • Collaborate with artists, practitioners, cultural institutions, industry, and other stakeholders to define shared research agendas and inform cultural programming, practices and policies
  • Communicate our research in ways that benefit our students, academics, collaborators, communities and industry partners, including via teaching, public talks, public events, conferences and symposia, and published work
  • Embed Birkbeck's commitment to rigorous ethical research, diversity, accessibility, inclusion and social responsibility at the heart of all our research

Our commitments to Public engagement

  • Promote the value of arts and culture by creating opportunities for engagement inside and outside the university while continuing to make important contributions to the creative and cultural economies in London and the UK, and the global communities and contexts impacted by our work:
  • Create opportunities to share our research and scholarship inside and outside the university by maintaining an accessible programme of public-facing events, workshops, lectures, festivals and other modes of sharing and exchange
  • Ensure that our work positively benefits from engaging with the communities, partners and social groups with whom we collaborate
  • Identify and support ways in which research across the College would benefit from Arts and Culture strategies of engagement
  • Embed Birkbeck's commitment to diversity, accessibility, inclusion and social responsibility at the heart of our public engagement activities

Our commitments to Partnership, industry and innovation

  • Create and sustain mutually beneficial collaborations and partnerships among the university, cultural providers and organisations to strengthen our research and scholarship, ensure its impact, and enhance our students’ preparation for employment:
  • Nurture existing relationships between the university and the creative arts and culture industries to prepare students for the workplace, enable upskilling, enhance employment opportunities and support research initiatives
  • Cultivate new partnerships with artists, practitioners, cultural institutions and industry to deepen and extend our teaching, research, scholarship, public engagement and impact
  • Identify ways in which Arts and Culture can play a key part in stimulating and sustaining partnerships, industry collaborations and innovative enterprise across the College
  • Embed Birkbeck's commitment to diversity, accessibility, inclusion and social responsibility at the heart of all our partnership, industry and innovation activities