Course Catalogue

Liverpool Screen School

This module will help students understand and critically engage with the development of theoretical approaches to understanding cities, with a focus on the interrelationships between cities, culture, and urban change. The module will enable students to • evaluate the different ways in which cities are conceived and analysed, in relation to their economic, cultural, and social significance; social and urban change; • understand contemporary approaches to urban policy and the role and contribution of cultural policy in a wider theoretical and historical context • critically debate why culture and creativity are vital to understandings of cities in different historical contexts and, in contemporary times, to economically successful and socially sustainable cities.

Outline Syllabus:1. Introducing cities: what are they, why are they important, critical debates 2. Evolution of UK cultural policy 3. Urban cultural activity and creativity in the UK & Western Europe 4. Reflecting on the European Capital of Culture: UK and European Case Studies 5. Regenerating the post-Industrial city: The Liverpool experience 6. Exploring the strengths and weaknesses of culture-led regeneration 7. The ‘Creative City’: key thinkers, theories & critical reflections 8. International urban cultural policy research: case studies & lessons 9. Field Visit: exploring case studies of urban culture-led regeneration 10. Understanding Cultural Value: Academic and Policy Debates 11. Working in the Cultural and Creative Industries: Academic and Policy Debates

Module Overview:
This module develops your knowledge of theoretical approaches to understanding cities. It focuses on interrelationships between cities, culture, and urban change. It provides:

• an understanding of cities, culture and creativity in a different range of contexts
• the necessary knowledge to understand the social and cultural importance of cities
• an understanding of contemporary debates and their historical context
• an awareness of key urban theories, economic changes, cultural policy, trends and underlying dynamics

Additional Information:Understanding cities: cities, culture and creativity explores changing theoretical approaches to understanding cities' cultural significance in a range of contexts. As such the module will complement students' learning on other parts of the programme. The module draws upon works in a range of disciplines, and from a range of theoretical traditions, in keeping with the inter-disciplinary focus of the MA. The module begins with a recognition that cities remain scenes of profound social and cultural change and sites for creativity, innovation, and the emergence of advanced service industries, and that theoretical approaches to understanding these dynamics and transformations, and policy responses to them, are therefore of fundamental importance to students. In fact, when viewed in a broader historical context, social, cultural, and urban change and problems associated with cities were important precipitants in the development of important strands within social, cultural, and critical theory. The module therefore aims to provide students with an understanding of contemporary debates relating to cities, while also providing a wider historical and theoretical context. The module gives detailed consideration to contemporary debates and policy responses that lie at the core of its concerns. Contemporary cities remain sites of social, cultural, and economic change, innovation, adaptation and renewal. In this part of the module, students will develop an awareness of key contemporary urban theories, trends, and their underlying dynamics, recent economic changes and their impacts, the main facets of cultural policy, especially its urban aspects. The module concludes with an exploration of comparative case profiles of strategies and policies and work in the creative sector that are of relevance to the module.