Multidisciplinary Innovation, UK and Amsterdam

Creative Practices and Tools (20 credits)

Creative Practices and Tools introduces you to key approaches to creative thinking and design-inspired problem solving. The module is based upon enabling you to be able to define a compelling societal problem based in Amsterdam, and research how that city-based challenge was identified, how it was tackled by which professional agencies and personnel. You will learn key creative problem-solving skills within a practical and real-world setting and provide a research-informed case study that exemplifies creative tool use and multidisciplinary professional working practices. You will work within a studio setting with students from differing academic disciplines and so put into immediate practice the ethos of the module. You will undertake online and academic research and engage in site visits within Amsterdam. You will also engage in continual reflective practice and present ideas to peers (from both Northumbria University and Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences), in a professional manner. Therefore, you will gain a range of skills, knowledge and professional attributes that will enhance your remaining studies and strengthen your employability.

Creative Enquires and Value Creation (40 credits)

Creative Enquiries and Value Creation develops and reinforces the core creativity tools introduced and critically explored in Creative Practice and Tools and enables students to begin to apply them to real-world issues within Amsterdam. Given the analysis of an historical city-challenge, within this module, in creative teams and individually, you will identify a current Amsterdam-based issue or challenge and tackle it in two distinctive ways. Firstly, you will, as a group, identify the subject and then examine and explain, through primary and secondary research, the nature of the challenge and perceived opportunities for positive change. Secondly, you will individually propose, based on research and through the application of creative thinking tools, a viable and worthwhile solution to the identified challenge. Through this study approach, you will gain an invaluable body of experience in terms of working with an interdisciplinary group, composed of both Northumbria University and Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences students, to collective tackle a specific social issue, and demonstrate your own practical and creative thinking in proposing a practicable and sustainable solution. 

Creative Research Methods (20 credits)

Creative Research Methods builds upon the knowledge gained in Semester 1 and deepens your research skills and knowledge, reinforcing the 40-credit Creative Cities module that you are also studying in Semester 2. In terms of module content, you learn about key approaches to research thinking and practice that underpin creative problem solving and will develop your interdisciplinary thinking and practice. In this regard, Creative Research Methods is a research-rich module that will give you a range of knowledge to strengthen your research ability, but also critical thinking skills, problem-solving aptitudes and personal reflection, which will enhance your further studies when you return to your respective disciplines, it will increase  your employability, and increase your confidence for effective postgraduate study.

Creative Cities (40 credits)

Creative Cities directly develops from your experience and academic study undertaken in Amsterdam in semester 1 and so enables you to engage in researching key aspects of modern cities in a comparative manner. In this sense, you will compare and contrast key issues that you feel are of importance to city life (cultural, social, technological, policy-based, or environmental) from cities of your choice. Given the nature of the programme, the comparative approach will be based upon the city of Newcastle in comparison with at least one other city (which may well be Amsterdam), but can include London and other cities that that you may have experience of through residence, etc.). Through secondary and primary research, you will develop a proposition that tackles an identified issue of your choosing and then develop a research-based appraisal of how a city can develop and put into place that initiative. You will do this with regard to the efficacy of such an action as evidenced in an alternative city (how Newcastle and London could adopt mobility policies and actions based on Amsterdam’s approach, for example).

Because of this teaching and learning approach, you will gain an invaluable body of experience in terms of considering evidence-based and creative understandings of city challenges. Furthermore, you will understand how potential solutions can be formulated and presented through a comparative and experiential process of analysis. As a result, at the end of the module, you will have clear understandings of the key issues that face cities such as Amsterdam and Newcastle, but also how to propose the ways in which creative strategies employed in one city can be undertaken by another to successfully meet challenges and positively develop.