Arts and Society

What does an arts professional for the future look like? The cultural sector is in a constant state of flux due to technological innovation, urbanisation, migration, social movements, changing politics and funding conditions. Utrecht University's Master of Arts and Society is rooted in the cultural ecologies around Utrecht and the Netherlands at large, and aims to provide the space for you to grow and find your footing in the arts, media, and cultural sectors. 

Build your profile, skills, and find your niche

Our Master’s programme is designed to meet the urgent need for arts professionals who possess rigorous theoretical and research skills coupled with practical abilities and an acute awareness of the current state of the sector at the local and global levels.

As a student in this programme you will explore, for example, the dynamics and dilemmas from established cultural institutions to “alternative” cultural practices. You will be exposed to various modes of creative production and industry through the Dutch cultural scene. Studying with us is not limited to the classroom: we find that self-driven students get the most out of our programme. You are invited to explore and learn from the cultural scene around you and to immerse yourself in the cultural ecologies of the Netherlands. To put it metaphorically, as a programme we provide the soil, nutrients, and academic home base for your learning, and with your seed ideas, we build a garden of knowledges together as a cohort.

Why this programme in Utrecht?

A cultural hub

The Master's programme in Arts and Society is uniquely positioned to take advantage of one of the most dynamic cities for the arts in all of Europe. Utrecht is filled with world class museums, galleries, theatre, live music venues, community/participatory arts, street art and graffiti, anarchist and underground collectives, numerous cultural festivals and parades throughout the year, film and performing arts festivals, etc. We sometimes partner with local organisations for visits and projects.

The city as laboratory

With the vibrancy of Utrecht as a city, students can use the city itself as an immersive laboratory to understand the interaction between arts and publics, conduct ethnographic research in diverse sites from museums to the streets, and ponder questions related to the arts in the relation to public life.

Our faculty and partners are interested in research and debate around societal issues and how the arts intersect with them. Our students are strongly encouraged to step outside the classroom and pursue their own questions, interests and concerns in the city of Utrecht.

Open exploration

With a strong academic orientation and grounding, our programme allows students to spend time studying emergent themes and trends in the arts sector that you are interested in. We encourage students to find your topics and objects of interest, and build your knowledge around them through internship opportunities and research projects. Through this, you build your own profile as arts professionals and gain insight into the active cultural field.

Involvement in cultural enterprises

Our programme’s direct involvement in various cultural enterprises provides students with immediate access to the field in which they will be working. We have a number of local, regional and global partners that allow us to provide our students with exciting internship opportunities, potential research projects and a close insight into the active cultural field.

After graduation

Our Master’s programme prepares a new generation of creative critical thinkers and doers for the global cultural sector, who are able to thrive and build their careers in this diverse field. We recognise that stable jobs in the cultural sector are few and far between and there is no standard career path. So how can you build your own projects, career, and network, and navigate art-and-culture ecologies wherever you end up in the world? What kinds of skills and knowledges would you need to possess in order to find your way? The programme is designed help you build a solid foundation of academic knowledge in the arts field as well as offer transferrable skills training so that you are prepared for challenges post-graduation. Whether you wish to pursue curating, programming, production, or art publishing, the programme hosts space for you to design your own trajectory with guidance from our team of Dutch and international staff.

The programme offered me exactly what I was looking for in my academic and artistic pursuits, that is the balance of the theoretical and practical study in the artistic field.