Explore Culture, History & Humanities Courses

Are you interested in art and want to get more out of looking at art and exhibitions? Want to know what an art historian does? Develop your interpretative skills by exploring at how art is made and what social and cultural factors construct our understanding of it.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Uncover the history of North London’s historic districts including Highbury, Friern Barnet and North Finchley, High Barnet, Tottenham, Muswell Hill, Wood Green, Golders Green and the Northern Heights, Hampstead Garden Suburb, Kentish Town, Camden Town and Belsize Park.







First meeting place: Saturday 13 January at 11am: Meet outside Highbury and Islington Tube Station (this could be altered if there are engineering works on the Victoria Line, please check before travelling).

Want to have a go at creative writing in a supportive environment? Join one of these introductory courses. Guided exercises will give you the tools to explore language creatively and find your own writing voice.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

London's stations see over 1 billion journeys annually, but the buildings themselves are often ignored. Explore a different station and environs each week, discovering the architecture, history, stories and future of these lifelines of London. The course starts with an initial zoom lecture, followed by a series of walking tours.



This course will be delivered online and in person. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Learn to write for the screen on this practical, introductory course. Writing exercises, presentations and screenings will teach you key skills, and you’ll begin to produce work and an outline for a full-length project.

The course provides a general introduction to Spanish art and culture of the period, and considers the distinctive contribution made by Spanish artists to 20th-century visual culture. Explore the development of Spanish art from Impressionist Joaquin Sorolla and Picasso’s 'Guernica' to the installations of Juan Muñoz in the 1980s and the cinema of Pedro Almodóvar.

Architecture is the one art form that we cannot avoid even if we try. It shapes our environment and the way we live our lives, so understanding why buildings look the way they do is a vital part of understanding the world around us. This introductory course will enable you to do just that by examining the development of architectural styles from Ancient Greece to the present day.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Often referred to as “the Baroque”, the seventeenth century embraces some of the most dramatic, dynamic and acclaimed artworks ever produced, yet also some of the most tranquil and gentle. We will explore a wide range of paintings and sculptures from this period, discover why they look as they do, and investigate the powerful religious and historical contexts that influenced its artists.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Come and join us at the Cultureplex Ciné-Club, where once a week, for 10 weeks (and throughout the academic year), we will watch and discuss film. Taking its cue from the famous Parisian ciné-club set up by the celebrated critic and writer, André Bazin, ‘the single thinker most responsible for bestowing on cinema the prestige both of an artform and of an object of knowledge’, and the man who foresaw the emergence of film studies as a legitimate discipline of academic study, our contemporary incarnation of the film club will offer a curated series of films for detailed study, discussion and debate. Each film will be introduced, placed in both its cinematic, cultural and historic context. In sharing our viewing in City Lit’s premier screening room, the Cultureplex, we will approximate the experience of watching film in the cinema, one that is intense and fully focussed in a way that other modes of viewing often are not. After the screening we will devote the rest of the class to a collective exploration of the film, led by the tutor, but involving everyone in a participatory discussion that will allow all to express their responses, their views, their thoughts on the film screened.

Relatively new to writing poetry? This inspiring course offers an opportunity to experiment with language and a variety of poetic devices alongside fellow emerging poets. Discover the key elements of a poem in a friendly and interactive class.

Explore art and culture in the early 20th century, focussing on the major developments and movements in art including Cubism, Abstraction, Dada and Surrealism and their relationship to wider cultural contexts.