Digital Culture and Media with Foundation Year BA (Hons)

Are you fascinated by the rise of digital technologies, and their impacts on contemporary media and culture? Do you want to develop yourself into an independent thinker capable of negotiating rapid shifts in the media and creative industries today? During this course you will be challenged, not only to think about digital culture and media but to also think through these topics by engaging directly with digital and traditional media forms.The BA Digital Culture and Media with Foundation Year gives you important insight into the world where new media permeate almost every aspect of our lives. You will explore some of the most recent topics in digital culture and media, from mobile technologies and artificial intelligence to social media influencers and algorithmic bias. These topics will frequently be put into a longer historical context, enabling you to find out how the media forms we use and depend on today have been made possible.This course is your opportunity to learn about cutting-edge academic perspectives, while also developing skills and knowledge in applied media practice. Your course will involve not only critical reading of academic literature on digital culture and media, but practice-led activities, projects and experimentation. It will help you develop a broad and highly transferable understanding of digital culture and media suited to our twenty-first-century context.Before proceeding to the main degree, you will spend your Foundation Year preparing yourself for a degree in the arts by improving your study and research skills and gaining arts-related knowledge and understanding. You will also have the opportunity to take a language module as part of the Foundation Year.Upon successful completion of the Foundation Year, you can automatically progress on to our three-year, full-time evening study BA Digital Culture and Media.**HIGHLIGHTS**- Our Foundation Year programmes will fully prepare you for undergraduate study. They are ideal if you are returning to study after a gap, if you have not previously studied the relevant subjects, or if you did not achieve the grades you needed for a place on your chosen undergraduate degree.- The Department of Film, Media and Cultural Studies offers an extensive portfolio of internationally respected courses that engage with the latest ideas and techniques in media and cultural theory, arts policy and management, film and television studies, journalism, creative marketing and digital media.- Attend our dynamic programme of seminars, events and guest lectures organised by affiliated research centres and networks such as Birkbeck Interdisciplinary Research in Media and Culture, the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image and the Vasari Research Centre for Art and Technology. Make yourself at home in our Bloomsbury campus, which includes facilities such as the award-winning Birkbeck Cinema, computer labs equipped with video editing, print layout and web design software packages, and The Newsroom, home to The Lamp and Owl, Birkbeck’s magazine produced by and for students.- The School of Arts is an official partner of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London. Opportunities for students have included a year’s free membership of the ICA, private views, discounts on all talks and events, free members' screenings and £3 cinema tickets on Tuesdays, up to 25% off ICA Artists' Editions and a monthly e-newsletter.- Learn from leading academic researchers in the field such as Scott Rodgers, Joel McKim, Catherine Grant, Silke Arnold-de Simine, Lina Džuverović, Robert Topinka, Sophie Hope and Tim Markham. Acquire up-to-date skills and knowledge from experienced industry practitioners at the heart of London's global media industry.