Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Fashion Photography

at Leeds Arts University United Kingdom

The MA Photography course promotes innovation and experimentation. Through an examination of contemporary photographic practices you will learn to contextualise cultural and ethical uses of photography within a range of different photographic genres.

The course will examine strategies to resolve projects into different outputs such as publications, exhibitions and digital platforms, as well as emphasising the need to find an audience as being integral to a sustained and successful practice. There will be opportunities for external visits and the chance to attend events such as the Unseen in Amsterdam, Photo Paris and Photo London in order to enable engagement with the wider photographic community and industry. You will be able to attend talks by visiting professionals to the University, with examples of previous speakers including: Laia Abril, Haley Morris-Cafiero, Cristina de Middel, Guy Martin, Bruno Ceschel, Anouk Kruithof, Ewen Spencer and Elaine Constantine.

Our Textile Design* course has an outstanding reputation for producing innovative, professional designers. We look for students who will develop their own ‘handwriting’, both anticipating and setting future trends within this field. We value the importance of personal engagement and celebrate diversity that informs creativity.

You will work alongside your peers where we foster a culture of creativity. The course offers you the opportunity to develop your creative practice through experimental engagement with materials and processes. The course actively engages with contemporary and global issues, and ethical concerns relevant to the practice of printed textile and surface design, such as: sustainability, collaborative practices and innovation in surface and textiles. Tutors are experienced educators, researchers and practitioners in the field of textile and surface design. Through their diverse links you will engage with a breadth of contemporary approaches.

The course is committed to external and professional practices with relevant currency, so that our graduates are fully prepared for direct employment by high street and designer brands, further study, self-employment or business start-ups. You will be given opportunities to  participate in a number of prestigious live briefs, competitions and employment related activities to ensure that you are as best prepared for employment in the creative industries as possible.

Our MA Graphic Design explores the fascinating relationship between design-led practice, industry engagement and critical analysis.

You will build a body of self directed work informed by contemporary graphic design practice and emerging debates within the field of design. Driven by problem analysis, critical debate and design innovation you will develop briefs, engage with an audience and work collaboratively. Your investigation will explore the relationship between visual and contextual research, investigating the social, political and ethical contexts of your work.

You will be supported by a team with diverse research and practical interests within graphic design and visual culture, working closely with visiting industry professionals. You will source briefs, work with clients and apply your contextual and industry informed knowledge and understanding to question why graphic design needs to exist and who is the audience - the focus is on becoming a problem seeker not just a problem solver.

The course offers unique opportunities to develop a portfolio of creative and critical writing in a lively and stimulating environment.

Writing is a valuable social currency and opens up doors. The creative possibilities of the written word are enhanced and invigorated by working collaboratively alongside established visual and performing arts courses.

You’ll write in the real world and be encouraged to enter competitions, write for review, write to briefs, and write alongside visual and performative creatives. You will be guided through a range of creative writing landscapes including writing for performance, prose writing, short fiction, art criticism, poetry, script writing, novel writing, new media and zines. You will be encouraged to think locally and globally about the place, purpose and reach of writing, exploring online platforms as well as the potential of the festival, gallery and event space.

You will learn to successfully employ a range of critical thinking skills that will enable you to make sound and valid judgements about the value and role of fiction and non-fiction, becoming a critical reader, thinker and producer of language. You’ll consider the role of writing as a social, cultural, historical and political meaning maker, and explore its contemporary relevance. A positive approach to a writing life is emphasised. You are encouraged to develop cultural awareness and a reflective, self-aware and critically analytical mind-set that will equip you to take on the writing world with a portfolio of transferable skills.

Our MA in Digital Fashion offers a unique route for creatives interested in the digital future of fashion. It will enable through practice-led research and new sustainable methods of design and fabrication to reach a new frontier of fashion design.

Fashion is a dynamic field with trends currently pointing to significant innovations in digital design and production to facilitate the creation of multiple digital and physical products from both fashionable and functional briefs. The emergence of additive manufacturing as a new method for manufacturing, along with the increasing acceptance of smart and wearable tech, will allow students with technical abilities and/or understanding of traditional fashion design and pattern cutting skills to push their ideas into new terrain.

Students will use 3D programs, such as CLO 3D, which allows an intuitive method of design, as well as scanners and laser cutters in innovative ways throughout the modules. Graduates enjoy a wide range of employment prospects due to their transferable skills and most relevant digital skills for today’s modern fashion industry. The course supports individuals’ career aspirations and students can tailor their work towards their aim.

Our BA (Hons) Visual Communication course offers a truly multidisciplinary environment underpinned by design methods. Students on the course create work which both, reflects their own interests, and responds to the requirements of the contemporary creative industries.

We provide an opportunity to develop a personal and professional understanding of visual communication within a range of contexts including: studio-based practice, live projects, collaborative learning and work-related learning. Through a carefully structured three-year process, students will learn to become practitioners in visual communication or further study.

Learning and teaching is based on design problem-solving methods, which draw upon the academic and industry experience of the staff team. The teaching uses ideas and terms from film, television, graphic design, photography, illustration and event design.

External engagement through work-related learning is central to our approach, with all students having the opportunity to work on live projects and many engaging regularly with businesses and external partners. Our alumni work in a variety of fields including illustration, television, photography, graphic design, film, animation, visual merchandising, and teaching. Graduate employers include industry leaders in all areas of the creative sector. In addition many alumni are now established freelance practitioners working for clients across the UK and overseas.

Our BA (Hons) Fashion Design is a three year, full time, practice-based course that embraces the diversity of fashion in the 21st century.

In close alignment with the fashion industry we offer inspirational visiting speakers, live projects and competitions, industry visits, and invitations to fashion events, all of which authenticate the currency of our course and its ability to produce ‘industry-ready’ graduates. Our dedicated teaching team support the development of practice-based skills, professional attitudes and intellectual abilities which are necessary to succeed as a professional fashion practitioner.

During your studies, gallery and residential visits where possible will offer a cultural insight into the fashion ecology and inspire your work. Course related educational visits/trips experiences can take a variety of formats including physical and virtual. You will also explore the context of historical and contemporary fashion and the wider factors that influence fashion design thinking including gender, sustainable practice and ethics, enabling you to become an informed fashion design thinker whilst recognising your identity as a creative fashion design practitioner.

Our established relationships with the fashion industry offer you the opportunity to enhance your portfolio and increase your awareness of the professional expectations of potential employers. Working with partners, that have included the British Fashion Council’s ‘Colleges Council’ and Graduate Fashion Week, we offer opportunities to enter high profile competitions, attend seminars/presentations and showcase your work on a variety of platforms.

Our BA (Hons) Animation is a focussed course aimed at students interested in becoming a professional animator who can work across animated film, TV and related industries. You will work alongside other students who are collectively interested in animation production.

On this course students will learn practical and technical skills across a range of traditional and digital animation practice. A grounding in animation and related concepts and theories will help you make an informed choice when you begin to specialise on a specific area of animation practice. This is developed through practical investigation of the animation production cycle including narrative development, worldbuilding, character design, storyboarding, background/layout and animating using a variety of media and techniques.

We encourage collaboration both at course level and across the University, including live briefs and international competitions, helping you to focus on developing your specialist practice within animation.

Work experience and studio visits are supported as part of the professional practice elements of the course. Visiting professionals will give an insight into career development and industry practices.

Previous visiting professionals have included animators, modelmakers, sound designers, scriptwriters, producers and directors from companies such as CBBC, Aardman Animation, Mackinnon and Saunders, Cartoon Network and Golden Wolf. The course encourages students to attend festivals and conferences as opportunities arise. Through these you’ll learn to generate your own networking, collaboration and career opportunities, and how to find work and clients when you graduate.

This exciting and creative course nurtures individuality through collaboration. It is designed to produce ‘Ideas That Work’ from creative professionals in advertising.

We’ve developed exceptional links with leading national and international agencies such as McCann, Ogilvy, BJL, Havas Linx, Atomic London, Intermarketing, Golley Slater, Jaywing, CreativeRace, Home, Uniform and TBWA, which will maximise your exposure to industry practice.

Creativity sits at the core of our proposition and we encourage originality and innovative thinking. Our ‘Actively Creative’ philosophy helps you to experience first hand creative challenges which are developed both in-house and through our industry contacts.

Our tutors have considerable industry experience spanning art direction, copywriting and branding. They will support you to understand and analyse advertising, so that you can use what you discover to inform and develop your own work.

You’ll have the opportunity to enter prestigious international competitions which have included D&AD New Blood Awards, YCN, The Drum Chip Shop Awards, and AdVenture in past years. Top agencies have offered coaching, mentoring, work critiques, live briefs, workshops, competition briefs and work experience possibilities. Our students regularly win work experience opportunities with agencies.

This course will advance, widen and deepen your existing fine art practice through a series of modules designed to enable your progress through practice-led research. Dialogic exchange is at the heart of this course of study, staging, at its core, teaching and learning approaches in the form of regular dynamic group work, supported by individual tuition.

This course cradles all specialisms within contemporary practice such as painting, drawing, sculpture, text, performance, media and sound. The core seminars will use group work to explore the wider field of practice within which such disciplines are situated, and deepen individually nuanced discourses through an individual tutorial programme.

Working with subject specialists you will be introduced to practice-led research approaches to advance your knowledge acquisition of advanced critical and analytical methods and approaches in your own practice. The programme of study will explore your creative ambitions in the context of both knowledge and market-led fields.

The course begins with a sharing of personal intentions through exhibiting your own work to peers, and progresses to a conclusive moment of public sharing, where you will materialise theories, concepts, techniques, processes and crafts as artwork. You will be supported to articulate your ideas in visual, oral, written and material forms.