Master of Arts in Fashion with Professional Placement

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

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 program 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.

Architecture is a profession, and this course is an integral part of a sequence of steps – RIBA parts 1, 2 and 3 - that leads to entry into it. Criteria for entry on to the UK Register of Architects are prescribed by the Architects Registration Board (ARB). The ARB and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) have agreed to hold the criteria in common and successful completion of this Honours Degree course gives Part 1 exemption. In addition to this, the RIBA has introduced new Themes and Values for Architectural Education, which includes further focus on climate literacy, health and life safety, ethical practice, and research literacy. The modules in the course work within this framework to provide a coherent balance of intellectual and practical skills, as well as facilitating various avenues to develop students' transferable and digital skills for a wide range of employment.

The course sits in the Department of Landscape and Architecture, one of four Departments in the School of Arts, which is one of three Schools (with the Design School and the School of Creative and Cultural Industries) in the Faculty of Kingston School of Art (KSA). It is located in the compact Knights Park campus, where it is directly adjacent to the range of other creative disciplines within KSA. It has immediate access to excellent and wide-ranging resources for physical making, an opportunity which sits at the heart of the pedagogy in each of the programmes and forms a key component of the BA Architecture programme. The Department's accommodation currently occupies the fourth and fifth floors of the New Extension Building at Knights Park, with the KSA workshops on the ground and first floors of the same building. This is a place in which to converse, to debate, to work and to learn from each other.

What does it take to make thoughtful work in the built environment today?

During this degree you'll think and make, and develop the technical and critical skills required to be both nimble and empowered to act in today's diverse architectural culture.

The course features a diverse range of design approaches rooted in a common ethos, and often involving 'live-build' projects, recently for the Barbican in London and Kunstmuseum, Bonn.

You'll study in our exceptional, Haworth Tompkins-designed workshops, which are open for creative exploration and offer opportunities to collaborate on projects and share ideas.

This course is for creative individuals who want to work in visual communications in the fashion industries. You will develop understanding of the ethical, global and identity issues critical to effective fashion communication. You will learn the skills of image making, creative direction, graphic design and editorial copy needed to produce visual content for fashion brands. You will explore how technologies such as augmented and virtual reality, and the relationship between physical retail environments and online digital platforms, provide new opportunities for creating innovative brand experiences.

Because successful creatives in fashion communications combine art and design skills with commercial understanding and project management techniques you'll also develop business and management skills needed to work in teams on advertising campaigns.

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.

The MA Sustainable Design welcomes those who want to direct their existing creative practice towards ambitious and inclusive visions of sustainability.

We focus on the power of social innovation, systems thinking, and design for service to drive collective sustainable change. This established course will enable you to raise your sustainability literacy, to then design meaningful responses to the challenges of unsustainability that move you the most.

The course is open to designers from all backgrounds, who want to go beyond the boundaries of their existing disciplines rather than simply refine their existing practice. The cohort includes designers of communications, clothing, products, interiors, buildings, services, and digital environments, unified by a commitment to designing sustainability itself.

We collaborate with companies, public sector and community organisations to develop proposals rooted in opportunity and need. These collaborations often lead directly to student employment, in roles such as service design, social innovation and sustainability leadership.

This course recognises the diversity of design practice and prepares you for employment within the design industry.

You'll be given time to develop a personal design approach, learn new skills and apply them to carefully-structured projects with industry partners, that prepare you for your preferred career direction. The course requires you to challenge yourself, your perceptions of design and your role as a designer.

Live client projects are an integrated feature of the course providing valuable industry experience; recently the course has worked with brands including MADE.com and Tefal. We additionally encourage independent external collaboration. You'll work in an enviable learning environment that includes newly-renovated studio spaces and workshops supported by attentive academic and technical staff.

Faculty-wide technical resources available to students include the 3D workshop with ceramics, big build, woodworking, metalworking, blacksmithing and bronze-casting; CNC, Laser, Zund, 3D print, state-of-the-art filming environment and animation suite; industry standard photographic suite with two new digital darkrooms; newly-specified digital media workshops with hardware and software upgraded to a professional level.

Kingston School of Art is an internationally regarded art school with a reputation for excellence and innovation in research across disciplines. The newly restructured MFA Fine Art course invites applicants to critically engage with contemporary art and identify what the urgent questions for contemporary practice are. Artists joining the course are asked to reflect on the historical, social, political, technological and intellectual conditions for artistic production. We believe students will then be equipped to understand and question contemporary art and lead rather than follow developments in the field.

Teaching on the course is designed to carefully nurture the core methods, ideas and approaches of its students. The course is studio based with world-class technical facilities and teaching that will consolidate and strengthen students' positions as practicing artists.

Professors in the Department of Fine Art include Turner Prize winner Elizabeth Price and Mike Nelson who represented Britain at the 2011 Venice Biennale.

Recent guest lecturers and speakers include Caroline Achaintre, Barby Asanti, Dexter Dalwood, Mark Leckey, Chooc Ly Tan, Amila Pica, Anahita Razmi, Grace Schwindt and Issy Wood.

The aim of the User Experience Design MSc course is to equip you with the behavioural theory, design practice and technology know-how that is necessary for a career as interaction designer, usability engineer, user researcher, or head of user experience. It focuses upon the analysis, design, prototyping and evaluation of multimedia, multi-modal, and multi-platform user interfaces that are easy to use and support a great user experience.

Each taught module guides students through a UX project – to optimise an interaction, to innovate a digital lifestyle, to create a persuasive product, and to collaborate on the development of virtual reality. Each project provides opportunities to analyse, design, prototype and evaluate cutting-edge technologies, follow industry trends and apply contemporary theories. A final "capstone" project completes the student's portfolio.

This course was developed in consultation with our industry panel, which includes Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, DreamWorks and Samsung Design Europe. Kingston University is an active member of TIGA, the British Interactive Media Association (BIMA) and supports the User Experience Professionals' Association (UXPA UK).

This innovative course is designed for qualified healthcare professionals, who are keen to learn more about leadership strategies and management techniques. It consists of taught modules, a work-based learning project and enables you to explore a leadership topic of interest in depth, with the aim to publish. You will learn how to lead and manage healthcare practice and implement research advances to enrich evidence-based practice. The course will help you to drive service improvement projects relevant to your practice, and research healthcare issues within your workplace. The course combines academic teaching with interactive learning and incorporates theories of leadership and change management. You will gain confidence to influence decision makers with your recommendations.

The structure of the course allows you to continue working while studying. The full time option has one classroom based day per week (Wednesdays) and the part time option is once per fortnight (Wednesdays). Many of our students have been promoted as a direct result of studying this course.