Creative Industries MSc

Students on this MSc programme study a range of compulsory and optional courses to complete 180 credits:

• core courses specific to your programme
• Edinburgh Futures Institute core courses (40 credits) which teach:
  • the essential, critical and hands-on data skills
  • climate change understanding (only applicable for Sustainable Lands & Cities, Future Infrastructure, Circular Economy and Planetary Health MScs)
  • enquiry methods
  • the ethical and creative capacities needed to underpin your programme-based studies
• a choice of short optional courses (at least two of which must be on topics related to your programme, with scope to study across the entire portfolio)
• a project (taking the form of a 20-credit ‘knowledge integration and project planning’ course, and a 40-credit final project)

This is a full-time one-year programme, based on-campus in Edinburgh so it can benefit from the city’s strong cultural organisations.

Core courses

In addition to the Edinburgh Futures Institute shared core courses, you will take courses compulsory to your programme covering:

• an examination of creative industries as cultural production systems and markets
• an introduction to the role, scope and application of intellectual property rights in the creative industries
• a client consulting group project

Edinburgh Futures Institute core courses

On our core courses you will work in cross-disciplinary teams with students from other Futures Institute programmes. You will learn:

• to collect, manage and analyse computational datasets
• to use emerging methodologies for mapping and designing the future
• the fundamentals of data ethics
• how to use creative skills in the analysis and representation of data-informed and qualitative inquiry

Optional courses

Edinburgh Futures Institute offers a wide range of optional courses taught by academic staff from many different discipline areas, including those associated with your programme. The exact courses offered vary from year to year.

Optional courses from across the EFI postgraduate portfolio cover a range of themes and topics, such as:

• how the climate crisis is connected to health
• the inter-relationship of place, people and nature in urban regeneration
• critical perspectives on how new technologies are changing society
• data, programming and research skills that advance the skills taught in the EFI shared core
• how new and rapidly changing technologies and data sources are transforming the future of democracy
• what the future of education might look like
• how narratives drive the way we understand the world
• service design and service management in a data-driven society
• current challenges and futures for the creative industries

The project

In your final project, you will apply your learning in depth to a domain, issue or concern which drives you. Your final project can be:

• based on your own personal or professional interests
• defined by your employer
• sponsored by one of the Futures Institute’s industry, government, or community partners
• aligned to one of our research programmes

You will submit your final project as a written piece of work or combine text with other forms – for example:

• video
• visualisation
• a digital artefact
• performance
• code

You will begin to identify your project topic relatively early in the programme, and work on it in parallel with the taught courses. We expect you to take an interdisciplinary approach to your project to connect with the creative, data and future-orientated nature of the Futures Institute.

Find out more about compulsory and optional courses

We link to the latest information available. Please note that this may be for a previous academic year and should be considered indicative.

On successful completion of this programme, you will be able to:

• build deep understanding of creative industries and markets, and the critical challenges they face
• understand the role of data and data-driven innovation in addressing these challenges and apply data-informed insights to the creative industries
• integrate insights from Business and Law to conceptualise innovative business models for the creative industries
• work with world-class cultural organisations to apply team-based learning to live challenges
• develop leadership, communication, team-working and analytic skills relevant to the creative industries

The Creative Industries programme provides core knowledge and ability - for example in marketing, digital strategy and consumer and audience engagement - that you will be able to apply to real, live challenges faced by the cultural sector.

It will prepare you to take up leadership and management roles in a variety of creative and cultural sectors such as:

• the creative industries
• arts management
• cultural heritage
• cultural tourism

For mid-career professionals, the programme offers the opportunity to expand, deepen and apply knowledge to new contexts, strengthening existing skills and developing new approaches which can be applied in professional work.

The core elements of the programme address the data and higher-order skills we know are important for the future of work, confident and critical citizenship, and a thriving, just society.

What does interdisciplinary study mean?

Interdisciplinary study is at the heart of Edinburgh Futures Institute’s programmes. It means the ability to synthesise and apply knowledge and skills from across different disciplines and is crucial to addressing many current complex challenges and planetary-scale issues.

We support you to develop interdisciplinary perspectives in different ways. For example, our shared core courses draw on diverse disciplines to support you to work creatively and ethically with all kinds of data. Each programme develops interdisciplinary perspectives in the ways most appropriate to their specific domain and focus.

And finally – because you have such choice in the optional courses you choose to take with us – you will have the flexibility to design your own disciplinary pathway through your studies, integrating your insights and reflecting on their interdisciplinary power through your project-related work.

How you will learn at the Futures Institute

Our approach to teaching connects global cohorts in new ways.

You will study in teaching spaces and digital learning environments designed to enable shared on-campus and online teaching and learning activity. Your classes and contributions will be recorded and livestreamed so that they can be shared – and so you can build a learning community – across modes and time-zones.

Students studying online have a presence in our on-campus classrooms (via video, audio and text), and students studying on-campus can work with diverse teams located across the globe. All students have a presence in the digital spaces where teaching happens, including:

• video-based classes
• real-time collaboration spaces
• live chats
• forums
• shared exhibition and blogging spaces

All your courses require significant engagement in the classroom in real time, often working with other students in groups, and significant independent engagement online in your own time.

• Fusion Teaching Privacy Notice

Teaching methods include:

• group work
• expert lectures (both live and livestreamed)
• data skills and programming workshops (online and on-campus)
• on-campus and virtual drop-ins
• hybrid seminars
• interactive journal clubs
• external stakeholder challenges and code-alongs
• data visualisation exercises
• creative and collaborative whiteboard activities
• online discussion
• blogging

Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) uses a distinctive timetabling model in which the programme core and optional courses are delivered in short blocks, mostly over five weeks. Most of these weeks involve independent activities, interactions and tasks.

In the middle of the course, a short block of teaching activity is held in real time, building on the early weeks of the course and enabling the class to work together intensively to develop knowledge and skills that support the final weeks of course activity. Shared core courses are taught regularly throughout each semester.

These entry requirements are for the 2025/26 academic year and requirements for future academic years may differ. Entry requirements for the 2026/27 academic year will be published on 1 Oct 2025.

A UK 2:1 honours degree, or its international equivalent, in any discipline.

We will also consider your application if you have other professional qualifications or experience; please contact us to check before you apply.

Students from China

This degree is Band C.

• Postgraduate entry requirements for students from China

International qualifications

Check whether your international qualifications meet our general entry requirements:

• Entry requirements by country

English language requirements

Regardless of your nationality or country of residence, you must demonstrate a level of English language competency which will enable you to succeed in your studies.

English language tests

We accept the following English language qualifications at the grades specified:

• IELTS Academic: total 7.0 with at least 6.5 in each component. We do not accept IELTS One Skill Retake to meet our English language requirements.
• TOEFL-iBT (including Home Edition): total 100 with at least 23 in each component. We do not accept TOEFL MyBest Score to meet our English language requirements.
• C1 Advanced (CAE) / C2 Proficiency (CPE): total 185 with at least 176 in each component.
• Trinity ISE: ISE III with passes in all four components.
• PTE Academic: total 73 with at least 65 in each component. We do not accept PTE Academic Online.
• Oxford ELLT: 8 overall with at least 7 in each component.

Your English language qualification must be no more than three and a half years old from the start date of the programme you are applying to study, unless you are using IELTS, TOEFL, Trinity ISE or PTE, in which case it must be no more than two years old.

Degrees taught and assessed in English

We also accept an undergraduate or postgraduate degree that has been taught and assessed in English in a majority English speaking country, as defined by UK Visas and Immigration:

• UKVI list of majority English speaking countries

We also accept a degree that has been taught and assessed in English from a university on our list of approved universities in non-majority English speaking countries (non-MESC).

• Approved universities in non-MESC

If you are not a national of a majority English speaking country, then your degree must be no more than five years old at the beginning of your programme of study.

Find out more about our language requirements:

• English language requirements

Funding for postgraduate study is different to undergraduate study, and many students need to combine funding sources to pay for their studies.

Most students use a combination of the following funding to pay their tuition fees and living costs:

• borrowing money
  • taking out a loan
  • family support
• personal savings
• income from work
• employer sponsorship
• scholarships

Explore sources of funding for postgraduate study

Search for scholarships and funding opportunities:

• Search for funding