Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Textiles in Practice with Placement/Overseas Study

at Manchester Metropolitan University United Kingdom

Whatever the brand, whatever the market and whatever the media, successful advertising comes down to a combination of creative thinking, commercial awareness and strategic insight. The kind of people who excel in the industry don’t just offer exciting ideas, but also have an excellent eye for detail, a flair for communication and an instinctive understanding of their audience.

You'll learn about consumer behaviour, brand management and digital marketing communications – to name a few areas. You’ll get to grips with the media landscape, exploring integrated campaigns that balance traditional and digital channels. Put your creative abilities to the test, turning your own ideas into memorable advertising and learn how it all fits in to a greater marketing strategy designed to build brands.

Photography offers an exciting range of career paths and specialisms and this course provides the perfect starting point for them.

You will have the opportunity to discover and push the boundaries of current practices and approaches. You’ll discover how photography can be used to tell powerful stories and communicate your personal interests within cultural and industry contexts. You will also have an opportunity to explore a wide range of different subject areas such as fashion, documentary, editorial and commercial photography. Throughout the course you will have the chance to experiment in a purpose-built studio, darkroom and digital facilities.

As a Photography student you will be part of the broad, dynamic creative community at the School of Digital Arts. As such, you will have units and classes taught across all our courses, with the chance to collaborate on projects with animators, sound designers, games developers and a range of other media-focused students. It’s an approach designed to mirror the cross-disciplinary practices you’ll find in the professional world, while giving you the chance to explore the creative directions that interest you most. Matching that professional approach, our purpose-built school provides professional-standard tools – a brand new creative playground for producing photographic work at the cutting edge of emerging digital technologies. It’s a school and a course designed to give you the vital industry and artist networking, technical and creative skills to prepare you for a career in the photographic and related industries.

Manchester offers a fantastic backdrop for it all. Studying here puts the country’s second-largest media and creative sector on your doorstep, with a globally recognised photographic industry and a substantial animation, film and digital/tech sector. At MediaCityUK, there’s a mix of national broadcasters and independent operators, while the city is home to a wide range of major media businesses. Manchester has a dynamic artistic and cultural scene that houses some of the best public and independent museums and galleries in the UK . So, whatever path you want to pursue in photography – or in the wider media, arts and digital tech industries – Manchester offers all sorts of opportunities for building a network, gaining experience and making a great start in your career.

Placement options

SODA Placement Year
As part of your studies with SODA, you will have the chance to take a year working on placement within the industry. During your year, you will spend at least 36 weeks working within an organisation in the industry, developing workplace skills, practical understanding and genuine industry experience.

From breaking news to cultural reviews, sports reporting to in-depth investigations, we’ll help you scrutinise, interrogate and report on the issues that really matter.

This degree is geared towards inquiring minds and creative thinkers seeking a career in journalism and the creative media industries. Throughout the program, we’ll encourage you to carve out your own creative identity as you express yourself through a variety of media and genres – including print, broadcast and digital publishing.

You’ll start with the core skills of interviewing and reporting, before going on to look at specialist areas like media law and ethics, magazine journalism, editing and production. You’ll also get the chance to work on live events and learn how to cover breaking news – all under the pressure of tight deadlines.

In your third year you’ll be able to focus on your own particular interests, such as sports and music journalism. You’ll also create a portfolio of original journalism, rooted in the real world – real people, real issues, real events.

Throughout it all, you’ll have access to the multimedia newsroom, TV studio and radio production facilities, getting you up to speed with all the latest technology. So, by the time you’re finished, you’ll have acquired the wide range of skills necessary to work in today’s multiplatform digital environments.

You may also have the opportunity to spend an extra year expanding your horizons, either studying with one of our partner universities overseas, or working on a placement with an organisation.

Placement options

You may have the opportunity to take advantage of placement opportunities both in the UK and abroad. Students currently on placement are working in a variety of roles over a huge span of industries.

Our dedicated placement team has developed excellent links with various industries. You will be offered support through a preparation program of activities, including guidance on selection procedures, working overseas, CV preparation, interview and selection techniques.

Product designers at Manchester Met explore why, examine how, and ask ‘what if?’ We are investigative and critically responsive to human and global needs, developing innovative design-led solutions that connect the consumer experience of products, systems and services. As a product design student, you will be creative with purpose, gaining critical understanding of the emergent issues affecting design across society and culture, learning how to be a designer of products that enhance functionality, interactions and relationships with people and the places we inhabit.

 You will develop essential skills in creative methods, research, design thinking, prototyping and design strategy, applying design intelligence to the creation of new product opportunities and solutions. You will discover how to design products that embrace both traditional and contemporary approaches to production and manufacturing, generating value through the application of materials, processes, and technologies. This course will enable you to produce innovative crafted design solutions and develop the creative and professional skills required to support a sustainable career in product design.

Product Design at Manchester Met builds on the success of our previous programme, BA Three Dimensional Design, which has produced influential and award-winning graduates including designer and architect Thomas Heatherwick, jeweller Ruth Tomlinson and ceramicist Joe Hartley.

With our BSc (Hons) Applied Computing degree, you’ll gain an insight into IT and computing industry practices. Alongside developing your technical knowledge and skills, you will also gain an understanding of how these skills are applied in an organisational context by learning about systems analysis, project management, software development, the management of data and the administration of information systems.

You’ll start by studying the core technical subjects of programming, computing mathematics, web development, computer architectures and databases as you cover the fundamentals of computing, developing your team working and communication skills as you go. You’ll then begin to specialise, studying topics such as IT project management, systems analysis and design, the software development process, computer networks and the implementation of database models. As you progress into your final year, you’ll learn about IT systems operations and administration, data management, database architecture and performance and you’ll conduct a large-scale project.

In addition to the computing skills you will develop, you will also gain key employability skills such as team working, report writing, communication and negotiation skills. 

The Combined Honours program offers you an opportunity to study two subjects at degree level.

English:
English explores the role of writing in defining and transforming human experience. Creative writing is a contemporary art practice which expresses that experience.

At the Manchester campus, the English department has access to a community of internationally renowned writers and critics through the Manchester Writing School, one of the most successful of its kind in the UK. It boasts over 95 published graduates and its Creative Director is Carol Ann Duffy DBE (Poet Laureate 2009-2019).

Against this backdrop you will examine major periods and forms of literature, learning to analyze literary and media texts by drawing on wider humanities disciplines. Creative writing students will develop the craft of writing, learning to read as a writer and collaborate with artists across the creative spectrum. Both approaches develop the necessary skills in critical thinking and communication that are of value to graduates entering a wide array of career paths or establishing practice.

French:
Proficiency in modern languages can give you the competitive edge in the global jobs market. In both the private and public sectors, there is demand for professionals with strong language skills who can work in culturally diverse environments. Studying French at Manchester Metropolitan University will give you the opportunity to learn from native speakers. Our languages department have created their own multicultural community, including British, exchange and international students, along with foreign language assistants, allowing you to be absorbed into the everyday use of your chosen language.

The University has been providing professional language courses for more than 30 years and our staff are nationally, and in many cases internationally, recognized experts in their field. Our strong local, national and global links will help to enhance your study and future employment opportunities.

This combined honours course will give you the practical language skills while also developing your understanding of the social and cultural environment in which it is spoken. You’ll also gain an appreciation of how states, international organisations, and non-state actors interact on the global stage.

International Relations
You’ll use theories and models to best explain and understand power in the world, why the world is the way it is, and how we can change it. Looking at all levels, from individuals to whole global systems, you’ll question what we think we know, what we think matters, and how we can develop a better world. Supported by knowledgeable and passionate staff, you’ll start by looking at the core critical and emancipatory theories of international relations and their underlying methods.

French
Proficiency in modern languages can give you the competitive edge in the global jobs market. In both the private and public sectors, there is demand for professionals with strong language skills who can work in culturally diverse environments. Studying French at Manchester Met will give you the opportunity to learn from native speakers. Our languages department have created their own multicultural community, including British, exchange and international students, along with foreign language assistants, allowing you to be absorbed in the everyday use of your chosen language.

With the rapidly changing nature of social and digital media, content needs to be designed strategically, engagingly and at pace.

Our BA (Hons) Future Media Production offers the skills and understanding to work at the forefront of the creative and digital sectors. It’s a course that will equip you with the tools to design, create, manipulate and deliver engaging digital media content for a wide range of audiences.

The course brings together key aspects of contemporary professional media practice, learning beyond the narrow confines of any single discipline. As such, you’ll learn alongside and collaborate with artists and designers across a range of exciting projects – laying the foundations for industry networking, technical and creative skills that will prove vital for a professional future in the creative media industries.

As a student at the School of Digital Arts you will work in an environment that is purpose-built for today’s fast-moving creative and digital sectors – offering boundary-breaking, cross-disciplinary learning that reflects modern project-based working practices. It’s a place that offers the opportunity to discover your passions and explore your role through collaboration within our dynamic creative community of animators, sound designers, filmmakers, games developers and more. And, just as it’s home to a cutting-edge creative community, it has the facilities to match. This means that you can develop industry-standard skills for creating content across the latest digital platforms.  

Just as SODA offers the perfect place as a creative student, Manchester provides the ideal setting. It’s a globally renowned and intensely creative city, second only to London as a hub for the UK’s media and creative sectors. The nearby MediaCityUK is home to major media and television businesses including the BBC and ITV, along with a host of independent operators, while the city also hosts a substantial animation, film and digital/tech sector. For students, it makes this a city for learning industry-relevant knowledge and workplace-ready skills. For budding creative media professionals, it makes the city a starting point for building a network, gaining experience and embarking on a career in the media, games and digital tech industries.

Placement options

SODA Placement Year
As part of your studies with SODA, you will have the chance to take a year working on placement within the industry. During your year, you will spend at least 36 weeks working within an organisation in the industry, developing workplace skills, practical understanding and genuine industry experience.

On this three-year course, you’ll explore topics from the structure of language and how speech sounds are expressed, to anatomy, the psychology behind our development, and the effects of politics on the provision of speech and language therapy in the community.

You won’t simply learn the theories and research behind how we communicate and why people have difficulties in communicating, you’ll also learn the practical skills you’ll need.

You’ll study the techniques, skills and methods used to assess, analyse and manage clients, such as using boards with symbols that children can point to or swallowing tests for adults who have suffered a stroke to determine the treatment they need.

You’ll complete clinical placements in each year of study. Past placements have included working in a hospital with adults who have had strokes, special educational needs (SEN) provision for teenagers in a secondary school, and in community clinics.

Product designers at Manchester Met explore why, examine how, and ask ‘what if?’ We are investigative and critically responsive to human and global needs, developing innovative design-led solutions that connect the consumer experience of products, systems and services. As a product design student, you will be creative with purpose, gaining critical understanding of the emergent issues affecting design across society and culture, learning how to be a designer of products that enhance functionality, interactions and relationships with people and the places we inhabit.

 You will develop essential skills in creative methods, research, design thinking, prototyping and design strategy, applying design intelligence to the creation of new product opportunities and solutions. You will discover how to design products that embrace both traditional and contemporary approaches to production and manufacturing, generating value through the application of materials, processes, and technologies. This course will enable you to produce innovative crafted design solutions and develop the creative and professional skills required to support a sustainable career in product design.

Product Design at Manchester Met builds on the success of our previous programme, BA Three Dimensional Design, which has produced influential and award-winning graduates including designer and architect Thomas Heatherwick, jeweller Ruth Tomlinson and ceramicist Joe Hartley.