ENGL6145 Communicating the Cultural Industries

Module Aims

This module introduces the practical skills that communicating in the cultural industries requires. It will encourage you to think in new ways about the style, content, and forms of cultural communication. The module introduces you to practical case studies, taken from publishing, broadcasting, heritage management, and arts curation, which give you the opportunity to engage with the wide variety of written and spoken genres, interpretative techniques, and communicative strategies used in the cultural industries. You will learn the skills that writers in these different fields use to make complex, creative ideas accessible and exciting to a variety of audiences. The module will give you the opportunity to gain practical experience of writing and speaking in these genres. Using these case studies you will develop your own copy and editorials, prepare and deliver interviews, develop pitches and proposals for different audiences, write grants and funding bids, and compose press releases for a variety of publications. Finally, you will consider the material mediums of these communications: to learn to write across and within the different platforms that printed, broadcast, digital and social media offer.

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• the specific genres used in both written and oral communication for the creative industries
• the importance of tone, audience, purpose, creative and ethical integrity in relation to communication in the creative industries
• how to communicate in a precise, concise and clear way across a variety of different genres
• knowledge of the research skills required for preparing written and spoken material
• knowledge of the importance of critically analysing sources for appropriateness, authenticity and the writer’s position

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Research and present material drawn from individual and archival research in an engaging way
• Distil and rework primary and secondary materials in a way that is accessible to a wide range of audiences
• Display, promote and disseminate your research in a variety of forms
• Communicate creative ideas in an engaging and persuasive way
• Research and select appropriate material form a variety of sources to support your own argument
• Edit, proofread and critically evaluate your own work
• Provide positive feedback to peers and help others develop their own projects

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Carry out your own research on a topic
• Collaborate with others on a project
• Speak confidently about your own research in public, creatively and persuasively presenting your approach to a topic