Management and Creative Arts

Management and creative arts is a combination that prepares you for the complex intersection of commercial thinking and cultural practice that characterises the modern creative industries. Management provides the strategic, financial, and operational foundations for understanding how organisations work, how resources are allocated, and how leadership and decision-making translate into outcomes. Creative arts bring a different set of competencies: the ability to develop ideas, to work with aesthetic and cultural material, to understand audiences, and to create work that communicates in ways that purely commercial thinking cannot.

Together they equip you for roles that require both commercial literacy and creative intelligence.

At the School of Oriental and African Studies, this three-year full-time programme carries a foundation year route for those who would benefit from additional academic preparation. The management component introduces you to the core disciplines of business and organisational studies, while the creative arts component draws on SOAS's distinctive expertise in the arts, performance, and cultural production of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, giving your creative studies an unusually broad cultural grounding. The combination is particularly relevant for those who want to work in arts management, cultural organisations, international festivals, or the creative industries at a global scale.

Graduates pursue careers in arts management, cultural event production, festivals and programming, arts marketing and communications, gallery and museum management, film and media production management, creative entrepreneurship, and the many commercial roles that require genuine understanding of both organisational management and creative processes. The combination of management skills and arts knowledge is valued in international cultural organisations, national arts bodies, and the commercial creative industries. Many graduates continue to postgraduate study in arts management, cultural policy, business administration, or related fields.