Creative Arts and Social Anthropology
Creative arts and social anthropology is a combination that places artistic practice in conversation with a rigorous academic discipline concerned with understanding human societies and cultures in their diversity. Creative arts develops your studio and conceptual practice across a range of visual, performance and other creative media, asking you to make work that is responsive to ideas, contexts and communities. Social anthropology, alongside this, provides the theoretical and methodological tools to study human behaviour, belief, social organisation and cultural difference through ethnographic fieldwork and comparative analysis.
The combination is particularly suited to artists who want their work to be grounded in deep cultural understanding.
At the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, this three-year programme with a foundation year draws on SOAS's exceptional expertise in the cultures and societies of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, offering a distinctive context for the combination of arts practice and anthropological study. You will develop your creative practice alongside rigorous engagement with anthropological theory and ethnographic methods, learning to understand how cultural context shapes artistic production and reception. The combination is well suited to those interested in socially engaged art, documentary practice, community arts, or research at the intersection of art and culture.
Graduates from this programme pursue careers across the arts, cultural organisations, community arts, international development, academic research, education, journalism and a range of roles in the cultural sector that require both creative ability and deep cultural understanding. Many move into socially engaged art practice, arts development or cultural consultancy. Postgraduate study in fine art, social anthropology, visual culture, cultural policy or international development is a natural route for those who want to develop their research or practice further.