Textile Design for Fashion and Interiors BA (Hons)

A dynamic and exciting degree for those wanting to explore textile design in fashion, interiors and product.

• Engage with professionals through 'live' industry briefs and placement opportunities in the UK and abroad.
• Immerse yourself in our strong studio culture and visit specialists, trade fairs, exhibitions and museums.
• Our graduates have been employed by companies including Conran, Selfridges, Joules, Phase Eight, Harrods and Anthropologie.

We provide ambitious students with a dynamic, practical, and theoretical design education, supported by industry networks and directed towards the development of a creative career or advanced research in the textile discipline.

Develop your creativity within the broad and complex field of traditional and contemporary textile design, through intellectual enquiry combined with aesthetic sensibility. The course is supported by drawing workshops and underpinned with comprehensive knowledge of digital textile printing technologies.

Competitions and awards

We’ll encourage you to participate in competitions. Here are some of our students' successes:

• Shortlisted for the Lewis and Wood Wide Width Wallpaper Competition
• Silk Bureau Competition
• The Worshipful Company of Framework Knitters Award in recognition of the high standard achieved in a project related to the knitting industry
• Shortlisted for the national Whittard Tea Caddy Design competition
• The Porthleven Prize
• Our graduates have won:
  • The Sanderson Award at New Designers
  • John Lewis Loves at New Designers
  • Crafts Council Hothouse Award
  • Festival of Quilts Award
  • Maker Award at SITselect Showcase Exhibition, Cheltenham

Textile Design graduates have secured employment in a range of career directions, worked for design studios and design companies, set up their own businesses or developed related careers within retail and the broader fashion and interior industries. Our graduates have also continued with their studies, undertaking MAs, PGCEs or PhDs.

Employers of graduates from the BA (Hons) Textile Design for Fashion and Interiors include:

• Liberty
• The White Company
• Bay & Brown
• Lyle & Scott
• Keeler Gordon
• Debenhams
• G.M Syntex
• Relish Clothing
• IVO Prints
• Selfridges
• Boden
• Joules
• Marks & Spencer
• Hand and Lock
• Hallmark
• Anthropologie

We offer a strong studio culture in which students are inspired to express their design direction, exercising initiative and personal responsibility.

Individually negotiated student-led lines of enquiry are encouraged and supported by a wide range of thorough contextual underpinning and professional practice, which includes live industry briefs, competitions, forecasting and external exhibition opportunities. Students demonstrate self-direction in extending networks for creating work-based learning opportunities and gaining internships.

We intend to equip students with the necessary research, practical, technical, aesthetic and problem-solving skills to develop and adapt their emerging practice for their future careers, which include team working, an appreciation of diversity, reflection and self-evaluation and the capacity to work independently to determine personal future learning needs.

Course structure

Year one

In Year One you start to cultivate your observation, thinking and drawing skills into your individual style. You begin to explore the field of textile design and its contextual framework. You learn skills in understanding colour, fabric, yarns, materials and dyeing. Taught techniques in embroidery, print, knit and construction provide the foundation for your design development.

Year two

In Year Two you start to explore your potential focus by engaging with modules as a textile designer for either fashion or interiors and begin committing to areas of textile specialisms. Your facility for thinking, writing and analysing is expanded through professional and contextual studies. To establish an understanding of your style and direction, you tackle a combination of projects looking at advancing textile techniques and understanding your career options, these include competitions, live briefs and exhibitions.

Year three

In Year Three you undertake a dissertation and state your identity as a textile designer through an initial exploratory personal studio module. The professional context module leads all students up to midway through the academic year, and at this point as a BA (Hons) student you undertake the final 60-credit module leading to a degree show and graduation.

How will I be assessed?

The module assessments demonstrate how well students have performed in tackling the intended learning outcomes, and are measured against grade criteria.

Throughout the module, students will receive formative feedback through individual and/or group tutorials, peer seminar sessions and group critiques. In many cases, this feedback is received both verbally and in a written format.

Students are informed about the ways that marks/grades and feedback are provided by the marking tutor(s), and they receive written feedback on learning achievements against the assessment criteria for a module assignment.

The feedback aims to enable students to see how to improve or develop particular aspects of their work, and students receive the summative feedback along with the marks within three weeks of the completed module submission date.

How will I be taught?

As you progress through the course, teaching methods will change to deliver the intended learning outcomes. In general, Textile Design teaching involves methods such as:

• Studio engagement
• Technical demonstrations
• Practical workshop introductions
• Taught practical sessions
• Directed or self-directed projects
• Active participation through seminars, group work and directed learning
• Engagement in using both hand and digital processes
• Lecture series
• Individual and group tutorials
• Study trips and gallery visits
• Personal presentation, display and documentation of work
• Self-directed research and study activities.

As a Textile Design for Fashion and Interiors student, you'll benefit from:

• Extensive personal support from a friendly and caring staff
• A good practical and theoretical education
• Extensive Art and Design facilities
• Availability of careers advice and support.

Study options

Integrated Foundation Year (UCAS code: WW30)

The preliminary and intensive Integrated Foundation in Art and Design is designed to develop your ideas, skills and confidence in readiness for progressing to year one of your degree programme.

Professional Placement Year (UCAS code: WW29)

This year provides you with the opportunity to identify, apply for, and secure professional experience, normally comprising one to three placements over a minimum of nine months. Successful completion of this module will demonstrate your ability to secure and sustain graduate-level employment.

By completing the module, you'll be entitled to the addition of 'with Professional Placement Year' to your degree title.

Before your Professional Placement Year, you'll work to secure your placement, constructing a development plan with your module leader and your placement coordinator from our Careers and Employability team.

On your return to University for your final year, you'll submit your Placement Portfolio, detailing your development on your placement, for assessment.

Study abroad

You’ll have the opportunity to study in a wide range of locations around the world. Our students have completed exchange programmes in a variety of countries, including Spain, Sweden and the USA.

Fieldwork

The course is globally aware and enriched by the opportunity to attend international trips. There are visits to specialist studios, trade fairs, exhibitions and museums. Please note that you may have to pay for some of these study visits.

Work placements, industry links and internships

Professionals engage with the students setting ‘live’ external briefs, through the visiting lecture programme, and by leading master classes or workshop activities.

We expect our students to be active in gaining work-based experience in addition to the learning opportunities relating to employability throughout the course. Generally, paid internships are to be undertaken in the final weeks of your second year or during the summer academic break between your second and final years.

Past opportunities have included the following: Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, Bay & Brown, Michael Angove, Calvin Klein, Ted Baker, Nina Ricci, Paperclip, Tracy Kendall, Sam Pickard, Clarissa Hulse, Jenny King, Whiston and Wright, Karen Nicol, Milena, Chloé, Nicole Farhi, Jessica Ogden, Zandra Rhodes, Dewhurst, Philip Treacy, Ling Design, Hallmark and Tiger Print, Mary Katrantzou, Holly Fulton, Selvedge Tent London, and/or solo exhibitions.