Professional and Creative Practice
This unit eases you into the course, and focuses on the development of your creative skills and redefining your professional practice. You’ll achieve this through an in-depth exploration of materials, techniques and processes. Experimentation with handcrafted design techniques, industry production methods, innovation in digital CAD and CAM applications are combined with advanced textiles printing and dyeing workshops. Live industry projects offer the opportunity to contextualise your practice.

Research and Creative Enquiry
This unit focuses on practice based research and materials and process exploration. You'll be challenged to adopt an analytical, enquiring approach to your research and to discover how this can inform and enrich your creative practice. This unit aims to give you the confidence to become an independent reflective practitioner.

Innovation, Development and Interpretation
Working on your own self-initiated brief, you’ll be encouraged to experiment with printed textiles through a broad range of materials, from fabrics and leather to wood, metal and plastics, exploring these as you address and redefine your research question. In response to your own reflections, you’ll develop a well-informed line of enquiry into a specialist topic emerging from your project proposal. Product prototyping or sampling, range planning and market research will be aligned to a market level appropriate for your work. Creative opportunities in the form of a work placement, and a chance to show at Graduate Fashion Week and New Designers continue the industry focus to stage two of the course

Resolution and Presentation
In this final stage of the course, you’ll be challenged to create a dynamic personal design philosophy through advanced conceptual thinking, exploring constantly evolving materials, technologies and processes. You’ll consider ways to exhibit and disseminate your practice and final professional portfolio through exhibition, website or competition work, showcasing a range of high quality design solutions for a diverse range of markets, disciplines and applications. Tutorials, workshops and seminars with your peers will continue to provide you with opportunities to present, reflect and refine your work.

Tuition fees
The course fees per year for 2020 entry are:

• UK and EU students full-time - £8,000
• UK and EU students part-time - £4,000

• International students full-time - £16,250 (standard fee)
• International students full-time - £15,600 (full early payment fee)

Additional course costs
In addition to the tuition fees please see the additional course costs for 2020 entry.

To support all of our current students and our recent UK and EU alumni to progress to the next level of study, we have developed a new range of fee discounts across a range of courses.

• Read more about fee discounts

As part of this course you will have access to well-established industry connections. These include:

• Faye McNulty
• James Bosley
• Kay Politowicz
• Beatrice Mayfield
• Zandra Rhodes
• Jonathan Saunders
• Eley Kishimoto
• Westcott Studios
• Maxine Sutton Textiles

From day one on the course you start to build a professional portfolio, exploring ways to externalise your practice and create an online presence and ways to present your work to industry. This can evolve through first-hand experience, industry engagement activities and internships, or through working with fashion studios and agents, buyers, shops, galleries and interior designers as well as exhibition, national competitions and online selling platforms. Fashion Textiles graduates from UCA Rochester have secured positions in many fashion and textiles companies including:

• Jimmy Choo
• Debenhams
• Skinny Dip
• Monsoon
• Circleline Design
• print.one
• House of Fraser.

The wide range of career opportunities open to our graduates include:

• Print design for clothes, fashion accessories and interiors
• CAD design for printed textiles, fabrics and print products
• Textile designers
• Self-employed designer/makers
• Public art practitioners
• Arts educators and teachers
• Fashion buyers and retailers
• Freelance design/research and tend forecasting
• Artist in residence

The International Textiles Research Centre (ITRC), based at UCA, offers an exciting staff and student research culture developing collaborative relationships with major cultural institutions, networks, galleries and museums around the world. 

The International Textile Research Centre