MA Fashion and Textile Design - MA

Fashion and Textile Design (160 or 180 credit points)

Working with your allocated supervisor and through discussion with your peers, you will develop ideas for your project creating a Project Proposal outlining your personal and project aims. It is expected that your project will have its focus within the subject of fashion and / or textile design, and be based on your initial application and future career aspirations.

Group tutorials held across the subject area (Fashion, Textiles and Knitwear Design) will be used to invite debate and provide a platform to critique the theories and practices you are interested in. You will also be encouraged to evaluate the development of your research and use of methods, personal engagement and reflective practice, all of which will inform your project and contribute to discussions about your fellow students' projects.

As part of your learning you'll keep evidence of your reflective practice, through recording, analysing and evaluating your ideas, and by considering ways in which your project might progress.

You'll have the opportunity to attend a series of multi-disciplinary Fashion, Textiles and Knitwear Design lectures and seminars on themes to support the development of scholarly, critical, and practical knowledge and skills at postgraduate level. This will include lectures delivered by academic staff, postgraduate researchers, MA alumni, designers, and fellow professionals. If you are unable to attend the timetabled lectures or seminars, you will be able to view the presentation slides and notes through NTU's online workspace, NOW.

Building on your skill base you will attend workshops in visual research, computer-aided design (CAD), 2D / 3D and portfolio presentation from which you will schedule a timetable of study which enables you to develop, prototype, test and identify the materials, processes and technologies required for the production of your designs.

Throughout you will be asked to present your work to date in formal verbal and visual presentations to the Course Leader, supervisors, and your peers. You will effectively articulate, critically analyse and reflect upon your progress through examples of theoretical research, practical design work and reflection on your developing fashion and / or textile design practice. You will also be asked to submit your work to date, including evidence of reflective practice, an understanding of research methods and project development work.

During the module you will also consider options for sharing your fashion / textile / material design and prototype work in public forums through exhibition briefings and professional practice lectures and seminars. This will provide you with opportunities to present and critique your work, and that of others, to support you in the successful and professional resolution of your project. Portfolio tutorials will support you in resolving the visual communication of your project in a format that reflects your individual philosophy and identity as a fashion and / or textile designer.

Peer group independently organised activities, both inside and outside the university, can also be planned in this module to encourage the dissemination of your work in a manner that benefits you and your project. Towards the end of the module, you will be invited to join promotional events such as New Designers (London) and an MA Exhibition (NTU) to present your innovative designs to the Industry and general public. Towards the end of the module you will have the opportunity to prepare and deliver a final presentation summarising the outcomes of your MA project.

Advanced Art and Design Research (20 credit points)

This module will support your reflection on your research and practice through discursive lectures and coursework assignments. In these, you will contribute accounts of your postgraduate research enquiry, its antecedents in your practice and academic study, as well as your understanding of the role your practice can play in it.

After an initial diagnosis phase, where you’ll outline your perspectives on research, you’ll be introduced to an overview of the philosophical assumptions that underlie research across disciplines. You’ll also identify where these feature in your experience of education and practice.

You’ll be introduced to the literature on practice based research that has grown out of PhD activity in Art, Design and Performance, in which you will discover the direction you want your work to take. The module then identifies a range of practice based approaches that are found across disciplines from education to archaeology, and laboratory science.

The second phase of the module brings these insights to be applied to your practice, so that it can be an element in a research design that will contribute to knowledge. This process includes a reflective audit of the research dimensions of your practice, to identify elements of it that could be part of a research design. The outcome of this audit will help you to build a prospective view of the design of potential research processes that include your practice, as well as appropriate modes of analysis and reporting.

At the end of the module you will write up your responses to the discursive lectures, supplementing them with appropriate visual material (no more than 3,000 words).