Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Textile Design

at Leeds Arts University United Kingdom

Our studios are creative spaces with an innovative and engaging atmosphere. You will benefit from exposure to the structures and disciplines of a studio environment, learning how individual and collaborative creativity combine to produce work.

This course will encourage you to develop your own voice, opinions and individual understanding of graphic design. You will build the discipline and skills you need to succeed in a professional environment, such as peer presentations, group feedback sessions and collaborative projects. You will explore how the application of type and image can solve problems and communicate ideas, which will engage and challenge your audience.

The BA (Hons) Graphic Design course offers opportunities to collaborate with creatives from other disciplines with different skills to your own. Developing your creative understanding you will be able to communicate both visually and verbally. You will gain a wider understanding of the creative, social and ethical context of contemporary visual culture. You will seek problems to solve and audiences to connect with.

Our industry links are extensive, with an array of visiting professionals delivering lectures, seminars and workshops, and setting live briefs.

On this course we see no boundaries between performance, production and composition. We look for creative and versatile musicians who wish to develop their performance, production and technical skills to a professional level in order to prepare for a career in the contemporary music industries.

We recruit musicians to the following principal studies: vocals, keyboard, guitar, bass guitar and drum kit. You will study in a creative environment that fosters collaborative opportunities with students across a range of disciplines. Our course nurtures and develops musicians to have the confidence to create original music. Performance, production and composition are integral to our approach whilst providing you with a clear understanding of the business of music and the structure of the music industries. Our experienced tutors and visiting industry professionals will support and stimulate the development of technical skills necessary to thrive as a working musician in the 21st century creative world. On graduation students will have the choice of a wide range of career options.

This dynamic course develops your musicianship through specialist 1:1 vocal/instrumental tuition, a range of band performances and learning from experienced visiting musicians with a range of styles.  Our vibrant community gives you the opportunity to work with creative writers, graphic designers, fine artists, visual communicators, photographers, fashion designers, animators, filmmakers, and creative advertisers. Our degree provides the unique opportunity to build important creative networks and an impressive musical portfolio from the outset of your professional life.

Our MA Worldbuilding brings together practitioners who want to create immersive worlds for entertainment design, production, and research.

You will design a well-researched and richly detailed world in a collaborative and interdisciplinary environment that integrates imagination and emergent technologies. You will have opportunities to explore designing cultural, historical and futuristic worlds through drawing, iterative design, and 3D prototyping.

Candidates are encouraged to position their work within a professional context to help inform the visual output and production method. The function and output of the worldbuilding will be examined through a self-determined approach, whether that’s drawing on concept art, VFX, game art and design, or analogue game design.

Embracing emerging technologies, such as VR and 3D printing, candidates will be able to explore wider contexts of worldbuilding, creating negotiated projects ranging from environment concept art, matte painting, theme park design, VR experiences or table-top game prototypes. The course provides the critical and progressive space to explore the processes and contexts to visualise and build immersive, believable and sustainable storyworlds.

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.

Our BA (Hons) Fine Art course immerses you in a diverse, creative community where you are encouraged to learn the business of becoming an artist in the contemporary world.

This engaging course is housed within specialist studio communities, each led by experienced teams of artists. You will engage with a range of strategies to support the development of your studio practice with an emphasis on craft, skill and critical thought.

You will be supported to produce work that spans a diverse range of media. You will embrace appropriate forms of resolution such as painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, installation, performance, screenings, text or sound works.

On joining the course you will embark on an initial period of orientation, induction and familiarisation which draws from our long history of traditional art education. You will then work in one of the specialist communities where there will be regular critiques, seminars and material workshops involving students from different levels of the course.

We engage with cultural visits to galleries and exhibitions, and you can take inspiration from nearby Leeds Art Gallery, the Henry Moore Institute as well as the award-winning Yorkshire Sculpture Park and The Hepworth Wakefield. Course related educational visits/trips experiences can take a variety of formats including physical and virtual.

You will be encouraged to seek opportunities to exhibit your work, gaining valuable experience and practical skills that will help to prepare you for a range of rewarding careers in this exciting discipline.

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.

This is a practical course - you will have opportunities to write, plan and make films amongst a community of filmmakers.

You work in production teams to produce a range of films, providing the professional experience and abilities to prepare you for work in the film and screen industries. There is a strong focus on production; supported by watching, investigating, analysing, critiquing and thinking about film in order to discover your own identity as a filmmaker. Working in small groups with other passionate filmmakers, you will take an active role in all stages of development and production, learning the skills of directing, producing, cinematography, sound, editing, production design and storytelling.

Our students enjoy creative freedom and have the opportunity to pitch and initiate filmmaking projects across a wide range of productions, from fiction to documentary, advertising to music video. You will develop skills such as self-promotion, knowledge in finance and distribution, and learn to commercialise practical experiences and skills to successfully navigate the film industry.

Learning and teaching is supported through filmmaking practice: in the studio, on location, in seminars and film screenings, production meetings and class discussions, industry talks and study trips including film festivals. Course related educational visits/trips experiences can take a variety of formats including physical and virtual.

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 Curation Practices is ideal for those who wish to focus on the expansive field of curation by contributing to growing areas of practice within the commercial, education, arts and heritage industries.

Students will develop a synthesised skill set in preparation to enter the profession or continue further study. Perfectly situated in a specialist arts community, students will be surrounded by the study and production of creative artefacts. Specialist tutors, visiting lecturers and professional curators provide a stimulating range of study topics including audience engagement. Students will also be supported to advance their object handling and installation skills.

We support students in identifying curation spaces through our partnership network. This entails students being resident with a partner organisation and in close proximity to professional curators in order to enhance their skills, experience and knowledge for a career in the discipline. Students are also encouraged to take responsibility for their own learning through forging contacts and securing space for curatorial projects.

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.