In April 2022, I joined the team at the University of Creative Arts as an Associate Lecturer teaching two different modules to level 4 and level 7 students.

Events and the Experience Economy Module – Level 4 (First Year Students)

In the Events and the Experience Economy module we explored what goes into creating transformative events looking at areas such as programming, the online experience, event gamification and accessibility. There was a huge emphasis in the first half of the module (which I didn’t teach) on considering the motivations for individuals attending events. How do we speak to the emotional levers that help people decide whether they will attend an event or not? I therefore enjoyed bringing a more practical edge to the module. We looked at how we take that learning and apply it across different aspects of the event. Students were tasked with creating a hypothetical transformative event, bringing in all the different elements we explored including the 4 realms of experience, customer journey’s, experience design principles, the Bartle test and the SAPS model.

Music and Brand Management – Level 7 (Masters Students)

On the Music and Brand Management module we explored how music artists can approach their brand strategy. This included the semiotics of music branding, brand positioning, international appeal & cultural context, and crisis management. Being that the academic papers around music brand management are not as developed, we spent a lot of time applying principles used in other industries such as FMGC to the music industry. This created great talking points as it became apparent that the principles don’t necessarily slot into the music industry as easily. This challenged my students, but also allowed them to be creative with their approach. In the end, students created strategies to break an artist into a new market. This allowed them to consider cultural context and dive into the ways artists make their music appeal to different people in different cultures through brand positioning, visual cues, partnerships, and more.

Lessons Learnt

This was my first time in an Associate Lecturer role teaching a full module and it challenged me a great deal. Outside of pulling on my professional experience, I also had to embed myself in the academic writing around my subjects. This included drawing on obscure concepts, whilst also challenging the norm. The experience helped me to better understand how to keep an audience engaged and make them active participants in their learning. The marking side of my role was equally challenging as it allowed me to see how students interpreted what they were taught. There were many interesting concepts shared, as well as an opportunity for them to improve.