Creative Arts and Law
Creative arts and law is a combination that sits at an important and growing intersection: the business of creativity is governed by a complex body of legal rules, and the legal profession increasingly needs practitioners who understand the creative industries from the inside. Copyright, trade mark law, contracts for artists and performers, the regulation of cultural institutions, freedom of expression and the legal frameworks that shape how creative work is produced, distributed and protected are all areas where creative and legal knowledge meet. At SOAS University of London, this three-year full-time degree includes a foundation year and brings the institution's distinctive emphasis on non-Western and global perspectives to both the study of law and the study of creative practice.
In the creative arts strand, you will engage with the production, history and theory of creative work across a range of forms, informed by SOAS's particular strengths in the arts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The global orientation gives the creative arts component an unusual breadth, moving beyond the European canonical tradition to engage with artistic practices from across the world. The law component provides a grounding in English law alongside the international and comparative dimensions that SOAS's research culture naturally encourages.
Together, the two strands develop critical and analytical skills applied to questions at the intersection of culture, creativity and legal frameworks.
Graduates pursue careers in entertainment law, arts management, cultural institutions, publishing, intellectual property practice, creative production, journalism, arts policy and cultural diplomacy. The combination is particularly well suited to careers that sit at the intersection of cultural and legal work, whether in a law firm specialising in media and entertainment, in a gallery or museum with significant legal and commercial dimensions, or in an organisation working on cultural rights and policy. Many graduates proceed to the Legal Practice Course or to postgraduate study in arts management, law or related fields.