18 March 2014
From 10 to 11 March, Prof Stephen Cottrell, Associate Dean (International) and Dr Jo Littler, Program Director, School of Arts and Social Sciences, City University London visited the Shanghai Theatre Academy (STA). During the visit, they held two wonderful seminars at the Virtual Studio for the Year 2013 students of the undergraduate course in culture and creative industries, a cooperative program between STA and City University London. The seminars were chaired by Fang Jun, Party Secretary of STA's College of Creative Studies.
The seminars focused on art management, culture policies, creative industries and other areas related to the course. Prof Cottrell briefed the students on the characteristics and trends of creative industries in UK and the world. He also shared the information with the students regarding the curriculum structure and requirements of City University London's culture and creative industries course. The seminar was highly interactive with the students actively participating in the discussion and expressing their own views and opinions. Dr Littler made a comparison between creative industries and cultural industries, on the basis of which she discussed the core substance of creative industries and shared the different perspectives with them, thereby, stimulating their cognition and thinking about the course. On the topic of the characteristics and development of consumer culture, Dr Littler held an in-depth discussion with the students and also explored the differences in consumer culture caused by the differences between Chinese and western cultures. The students also interacted actively with Dr Littler on many interesting Chinese cultural phenomenon. So interested by the seminars, the students regretted that they were only for two days and looked forward very much to their studies at City University London as part of their course. The active interaction with the professors from UK enabled the students to have a better understanding and positioning of creative industries and expanded their horizon in terms of their major. In the meantime, the professors from UK were deeply impressed by the proactive approach and good professional knowledge of the Chinese students, and extended a warm invitation to them to pay a study visit during the summer vacation.
After the seminars, Prof Cottrell and Dr Littler also held discussions with the Sino-UK joint education program management team, making more detailed arrangements for the integration of the teaching programs, which included UK teachers and students coming to Shanghai to teach and for study exchange respectively during the first two years of the course, as well as making the effort to create more internationalized teaching environment for the students and providing them with the most cutting-edge professional knowledge.
City University London is the first famous British university that opens the culture and creative industries major. It takes a leading position in UK in terms of its faculty as well as its professional teaching management and curriculum system. The culture and creative industries major of STA is a new major launched in partnership with City University London. It is also STA's first Sino-foreign cooperative undergraduate course and as such receives lots of care and support from the STA leaders and all departments. During the discussions, STA Vice President Huang Changing expressed that the students of the culture and creative industries major are not only studying the professional curriculum but also further improving their IELTS proficiency so as to lay a solid foundation for their overseas study in the future. To ensure that the students get the most professional IELTS training, STA is cooperating with the Global IELTS School to provide the students with experienced teachers and authoritative learning and test simulation materials as well as intensive training, thus effectively improving the students' English level and hopefully ensuring the IELTS passing rate. In regard to the professional curriculum, STA and City University London have established a complete Sino-foreign joint teaching system, which incorporates the professional curriculum and teaching model of City University London and involves the leading professors and PhD instructors from Tongji University, Shanghai Normal University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and University of Macau etc to teach the students. In the first semester, apart from the regular course schedule, STA arranged a series of on-campus and off-campus lectures, classroom observations, culture and creative industries practice activities for the students with a view to providing them with the opportunities to undertake professional practice and exploration at the same time as learning the theoretical knowledge. Since the opening of the culture and creative industries major, the students have made a strong presence in a variety of professional activities both on-campus and off-campus. They have actively participated in the academic discussions and engaged well in the dialogue with scholars and professors, displaying a commendable learning attitude which has deeply impressed many teachers. Finally, Prof Cottrell and Dr Littler spoke highly about STA's efforts in building up a great learning platform for the students and talked in detail about deepening the cooperation and exchange between the two universities.
Photo: Prof Cottrell speaks during the seminar
Photo: Dr Littler speaks during the seminar
Photo: Group photo after the seminar
