• Inactive for Year: 2025/26

• Module Leader(s): Dr Adam Behr
• Co-Module Leader: Dr Weizheng Zhang

• Owning School: Arts & Cultures
• Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus

Semesters

Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.

Aims

‘Policy, Intellectual Property and AI’ explores the regulatory, political and industrial frameworks that underpin the production, dissemination, and management of creative and cultural outputs across the diverse industries and concerns within the creative and cultural sectors. It equips students with the critical and conceptual tools to assess how creative work is treated as property, how creative and cultural sectors are governed and funded, the priorities and tensions within cultural policy, and how regulation responds to evolving technological landscapes such as AI.

Drawing on leading academic research, industry reports and policy documentation, the module develops a deep understanding of the global, national, and sector-specific forces shaping IP and cultural policy across industries such as music, publishing, visual arts, gaming, fashion and film. Students will learn to critically evaluate research evidence and data sources to assess their relevance and implications for cultural and creative industries policy.

Contemporary and historical case studies from different regions and sectors illuminate recurring patterns in how cultural industries and their governance adapt to technological and political change, alongside the needs of evidence-based policymaking

The module aims to enhance students' critical and professional capacities to engage with current and future developments around intellectual property, creative policy, and technology in the cultural and creative sector, including the examination of different forms of data and their relationship to historical trends and current challenges.

Outline Of Syllabus

Topics covered include:

Intellectual Property across creative industries: Historical developments and foundational concepts

Global IP frameworks and sector-specific differences: e.g. copyright, trademark, design rights, and other protections

The political economy of IP and creative labour: Ownership, the public domain, and industry dynamics

Evaluating evidence in cultural and creative policy: understanding how claims are used, supported and contested

Reading and interpreting data: Approaches to analysing cultural data sources and their limitations

Organisational infrastructures of IP: The role of collection societies, guilds, and intermediaries

Policy and regulatory responses to AI in creative production

Platformisation and the governance of IP: Streaming services, social media, and digital marketplaces

Technological shifts in cultural production: From mechanical reproduction to AI-generated content

Generative AI and evolving notions of authorship and originality

The implications of technological changes (from mechanical, to digital, to AI) for labour, licensing, and value creation.

The datafication of culture: The role of metadata, rights tracking, AI-driven recommendation systems, and algorithmic curation.

Case studies in creative reuse and the challenges to policymaking and regulation (e.g. sampling, remix, and adaptation across different industries)

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Asynchronous materials, alongside tailored readings, serve as an introduction to each session topic, providing a foundation for both overarching and specific topics (K1, K2, K3, K4). These are contextualised at a series of present-in-person lectures, where academic and practical aspects of the topics are developed, including work on the evaluation of evidence relevant to IP and the policy sphere (S1, S2).

In-person seminars are used to further explore specific examples from the preparatory and lecture materials, with an emphasis on assessing potential responses to industry debates (K4) and reflecting on their cultural and political variety (K2). Small group sessions also allow for exploring different socio-cultural contexts and experiences of consumption and business practice related to IP, and foster a collaborative consideration of how contexts affect creative work and policy responses to it (K3, K4).

The opening session-blocks focus on providing an organisational and conceptual framework for IP as a source of value, and its relationship to the public sphere and policy contexts (S1). The workshop series develops these to provide foundational material on data sources and forms of evidence (S2, S3). Subsequent sessions develop case-studies provided on the VLE (K2, K3, K4) that fit into this context providing further examples that work to unpack historical, present-day and future-facing trends in IP’s relationship to policy, industry and society (K3, K4).

Assessment Methods

The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners

Other Assessment

Formative Assessments

Formative Assessment is an assessment which develops your skills in being assessed, allows for you to receive feedback, and prepares you for being assessed. However, it does not count to your final mark.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The formative assessment encourages students to engage with a range of case-studies and explore their various relationships to the industrial and policy frameworks set-out in lectures, preparatory materials and seminars (S1, S2). It facilitates this by structured provision on the VLE of different examples for students to examine and choose from.

The oral format is geared towards fostering participation from students from a range of geographical (and social) backgrounds, allowing them to develop their ideas – and receive feedback and feed-forward in preparation for the related written submission (S1, S3).

Summative Assessment (100%):
The written report allows for a degree of flexibility in presentational style to support different cultural and academic backgrounds while developing capacity in professional communication (K4, S3). It builds on the case-study chosen for the formative assessment, developing the initial discussion into a more systematic, analytical and in-depth response to the topic while maintaining continuity of key ideas from the formative work. Key assessment criteria align with knowledge and skills outcomes as follows:

- Evidence of research and incorporation of a range of relevant academic and industry or policy sources (K1, K3, K4, S2)

- Demonstration of an understanding of key underpinning theoretical issues related to the chosen case-study (K1, S1)

- Identification of key actors and interests in the chosen case-study being reported on, and how these relate to, and affect, the sources used (K1, S1, S2)

- Coherent structure and organisation of materials appropriate to postgraduate study (S2, S3) and presentation and tonal style suitable for advanced academic or professional readers (K1, K4, S1, S3).

Reading Lists

• SAC8013's Reading List

Timetable

• Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
• SAC8013's Timetable