Master of Arts in Curating Contemporary Design (in Partnership with the Design Museum) with Professional Placement

at Kingston University London - Kingston School of Art, Knights Park United Kingdom

This collaborative degree, between Kingston School of Art and the Design Museum, has grown into one of the world's foremost programmes for design curators.

Taught by leading curators and designers, the course engages critically and creatively with our fast-changing, complex world. You will have the opportunity to curate live projects and build your own professional profile, through the Design Museum and with institutions such as the Architectural Association, British Council, Gallery Fumi and the Royal Academy of Arts. Led by both research and practice, this course has taught aspiring curators for more than fifteen years.

The Kingston School of Art environment, which includes the Stanley Picker Gallery, Dorich House Museum and outstanding workshop facilities, encourages creativity and experimentation as responses to interrogations of contemporary conditions. To actively consider geopolitical, social and economic concerns, Curating Contemporary Design is taught within a transdisciplinary framework that allows students to develop responses to the complexity of the world today.

This course, one of a suite of digital media courses, enables you to study professional digital media practice in a microstudio environment with a focus on the design skills necessary for the field of games development. Through a student-centred, project-based curriculum, you will work as a games designer to develop your specialist skills while working as part of an interdisciplinary team with students from across the full programme.

• This course has been developed in consultation with our industry panel, and we are an educational partner of Sony Interactive Entertainment through PlayStation First. We are also an active member of TIGA, the games industry's representative body.
• This course has been designed to utilise the best digital media expertise and resources from across the University, and will prepare you for employment in the digital media industry, where teams of specialists work together to develop and author innovative digital media projects.

Through this course you will acquire real-world experience of working in museums and galleries. Our imaginative, interdisciplinary, international approach will advance your knowledge of contemporary developments in this vibrant and sophisticated area of culture, arts and heritage.

You'll develop transferable skills that are essential across this sector, working with museum and gallery professionals to nationally and internationally recognised museum standards. There are plenty of research opportunities in museums and galleries, which will allow you to develop your own interests and gain valuable research and practice-based skills. You'll also have the option to manage and curate an exhibition and produce research towards a dissertation or work-based creative projects.

If you are interested in developing a career in the business of art, this masters level course will prepare you for the opportunities lying ahead. You will develop the key skills and gain the knowledge to understand global art markets within ever-changing artistic, cultural and economic environments.

Making the most of its location in Europe's art market capital in London, this Art Business MA degree draws on a high standard of interdisciplinary academic and practical teaching by recognised scholars. It also offers insights from art market professionals, both those with long-standing careers and those who are rising entrepreneurs of the millennial generation. In short, the curriculum balances skills training with academic rigor, as well as core business and legal concepts with industry-specific knowledge in order to reflect the diverse professional landscape students might wish to enter. Students benefit from frequent field trips to art business enterprises and partnership projects with industry.

On this course you'll explore the medium of film, developing your own filmmaking practice while acquiring skills for working professionally.

You will engage with innovative, ambitious ideas, developing successful films in groups and individually, and gain a practical knowledge of filmmaking production. Your learning will be supported by technical inductions, workshops with industry professionals, guest lectures and field trips.

You'll produce films with high production value, through our moving image workshop and with specialist filming equipment. You will be able to experiment with digital and analogue formats, and shoot, process, telecine and edit on 8mm and 16mm gauges. You will also have access to our 3D workshops, photography darkrooms, printmaking and animation facilities.

You'll be taught by academics who are active practitioners in the film industry, working as directors, artists, editors and producers; they offer access to unique work experience opportunities. For example, a number of our students have participated in placements at Institute of Contemporary Arts, Film & Video Umbrella and Fly Film.

This course prepares you for a career in design marketing in the creative industries. You will develop the practical and analytical skills needed to create marketing materials and design user experiences across different media and digital environments.

You will learn to visualise, collaborate, experiment and project manage as you work on real-world projects with other students and industry professionals.  You will also develop your knowledge of the creative industries, exploring topics such as design thinking, branding and strategy for creative organisations. You will have creative freedom and be encouraged to undertake non-commercial creative projects.

The Design Marketing BA (Hons) course also offers opportunities to work on live projects with creative companies and institutions, alongside your classmates in the student-powered creative agency, Studio KT1.

Throughout the course you'll also develop the commercial and organisational skills and understanding needed to work effectively in the Creative and Cultural sector.

Do you want to become a professional within the specialist field of historic building conservation? On this course, you'll visit many of London's fascinating historic buildings to illustrate and inform your learning. Past and ongoing works at the Historic Royal Palaces, together with several national and local heritage organisations and practitioners, are used to support your project work.

The course is interdisciplinary and international. Current and former students include archaeologists, architects, architectural technologists, chartered surveyors, craftsmen, engineers, and project and construction managers.

You will have opportunities to work alongside other postgraduates in the Faculty and the wider university, including those studying architecture and landscape architecture.

The Illustration Animation BA(Hons) - the UK's first degree in Illustration Animation - at Kingston School of Art combines narrative and time-based subjects to give the undergraduate complete creative freedom to engage in visual thinking, expression and communication.

The course is part of the highly-regarded Department of Illustration Animation and Kingston University is ranked No. 1 in the UK for design and crafts* in the Guardian League Tables 2021 (*covers graphic design, interior design, illustration, animation and product and furniture design.)

Illustration has expanded from the traditional printed page to explore many forms of visual media including digital objects and interaction, spaces and environments. Animation as a time-based medium allows exploration from traditional to hybrid domains like film and television, and virtual and augmented reality.

We celebrate the cross-pollination of ideas and skills through the hybrid nature of the course. You'll benefit from dedicated studio spaces and the opportunity for collaboration between illustration and animation.

Built around drawing, the course is carefully structured to develop your individual voice, applying content to image communication to reach an audience.

We encourage learning through making and you will have access to all workshops to test and prototype using any process from etching to ceramics, arc welding to laser cutting, and 3D printing or large-scale textile printing.

The course includes self-initiated and group work assignments and presentations encouraged through self-reflective and critical discourse, individual practice is built and tested by peer group interaction. This breadth ensures students develop the range of skills essential to contemporary practice in all forms of applied image making.

Projects with industry, cultural and social institutions test and shape student understanding in real-world situations. Staff practitioners and alumni networks offer insight and contacts with international creative practice, including studio visits and placements.

The course has an excellent reputation for nurturing graduates who go on to be leading practitioners in illustration and animation, as well as design, direction and a broad range of creative careers.

Kingston School of Art offers a stimulating environment for the postgraduate study of Illustration. Kingston University has some of the best fabrication and visual process workshops in the UK. This enables the most exciting innovations in ‘thinking through making'.

The Communication Design: Illustration MA course, offered through the highly-regarded Department of Illustration Animation, aims to develop creative professional understanding of Illustration in the context of communication design.

The course is structured to challenge you and your preconceptions about both illustration and design. It places an emphasis on the patterns of research you develop and the visual methods you employ to explore and unravel briefs. You will be expected to demonstrate how you research and develop your ideas. In this context, research is not only a working process it can also be considered an outcome in its own right.

This programme asks you to examine: what, how, why and who as key factors in design thinking. This represents a shift from the traditional definition of design and illustration as a problem solving activity to a placing the focus on problem finding. The course encourages the exploration and understanding of the methods and processes at work in contemporary illustration.

This course has been designed to enhance your long-term employment possibilities through an appreciation of the changing global, technological and social context of illustration and design. It includes the option of a one-year UK work placement, enhancing your experience and connections in industry. This type of assessed placement is not available on any other postgraduate courses.

This course prepares you for a career in exhibitions and events in the creative industries. You will develop practical and analytical skills for the curation, conception, resourcing, marketing and budgeting of an exhibition or event.

You will learn to visualise, collaborate, experiment and project manage as you work on real-world projects with other students and industry professionals. You will also develop your knowledge of the creative industries, exploring topics such as design thinking, branding and strategy for creative organisations. You will have creative freedom and be encouraged to undertake non-commercial creative projects.

The course also offers opportunities to work on live projects with creative companies and institutions, as well as alongside your classmates in our student-powered creative agency, Studio KT1.

Throughout the course you'll also develop the commercial and organisational skills and understanding needed to work effectively in the Creative and Cultural sector.