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  • DeadlineStudy Details: MA 12 months

Course Description

MA Fashion Media and Communication is a ground-breaking practice-based course that challenges the sector and seeks to develop agile, innovative, creative leaders for emerging and future roles in industry.   
 
By embracing fashion as a technology of worldbuilding this dynamic course is radically transdisciplinary in its approach to the creating and learning process. Here, existing disciplinary boundaries such as visual communication, creative direction, experience design gaming, strategy and futuring are traversed and different areas of practice come together to form emergent disciplines and build new models of making that are native to the project at hand and the present now in which they arise. 

As we transition to an age of digital primacy, where fashion brands now operate as media platforms, fashion media & communication has emerged as one of the leading cultural forces of our times. Positioning itself at the intersection of this new paradigm, the course is actively future-focused and is aimed at those who want to push boundaries and disrupt existing approaches to fashion media and communication. Through design thinking, co-creation prototyping and entrepreneurship you will craft innovative and agile creative practices equipped and able to intervene in the challenges of our times to facilitate meaningful change.   

You will explore the opportunities offered by emerging and advanced technologies for the envisioning, planning and design of extended reality environments and experiences. This includes investigating AI, gaming and platform systems, hybridised fashion experiences, community building and curatorial interventions, as well as strategic and speculative initiatives.

MA Fashion Media and Communication equips you with the skills, methods and professional confidence to push boundaries and innovate approaches to creative practice.  In addition to developing the creative, technical and soft skills, you will strengthen your critical capacities through practice. You will learn contemporary organisational and workflow methods such as project management, system logistics and social engagement. 

The course comprises three sequential stages – Explore, Situate, integrate – and a series of distinct practice-based units that blend individual and group work through a combination of rapid ‘sprint’ briefs and in-depth investigations. You will engage with diverse theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches that inform and enrich experiential design thinking and practice. Through a range of methods and approaches, the course is designed to guide you towards an individual critical position, informing your future transdisciplinary design practice. 

On graduation you will work in emerging fields such as experiential design, creative direction, UI/UX, gaming, AI (product design, software architecture and visualisation), organisation design, design research and innovation, design insight, strategy and futurology. 

Entry Requirements

  • An Honours degree at 2.1 or above in a related discipline;
  • Applicants with a degree in another subject may be considered, depending on the strength of the application;
  • OR Equivalent qualifications.

APEL (Accreditation of Prior (Experiential) Learning)

Applicants who do not meet these course entry requirements may still be considered in exceptional cases. The course team will consider each application that demonstrates additional strengths and alternative evidence. This might, for example, be demonstrated by:

  • Related academic or work experience (minimum of three years)
  • The quality of the personal statement
  • A strong academic or other professional reference
  • OR a combination of these factors

Each application will be considered on its own merit but we cannot guarantee an offer in each case.
 

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Fees

For fees and funding information, please see website 

Student Destinations

All our postgraduate courses offer career development, so that you become a creative thinker, making effective contributions to your relevant sector of the fashion industry.

LCF offers students the opportunity to develop Personal and Professional Development (PPD) skills while studying through:

  • Access to to speaker programmes and events featuring alumni and industry.
  • Access to careers activities, such as CV clinics and one-to-one advice sessions.
  • Access to a graduate careers service
  • Access to a live jobsboard for all years.
  • Advice on setting up your own brand or company.

Module Details

Stage 1: Explore - Supports the transition to postgraduate level study through the following units: 

Stage 1 commences with the first two-day summit of the year, consisting of talks from industry experts from a wide range of disciplines, screenings and group discussions. The summit introduces and explores the central theme for the year and provides the conceptual and theoretical foundations for the practice-led units that follow. The summit also provides you with the opportunity to meet your cohorts as well network with some of the industry's leading practitioners and thinkers. 

Alongside the talks, the summit also acts as a showcase for the graduating year’s Masters Project work. 

  • Unit 1: Prototyping Practices (20 credits)  
    Led by the key conceptual themes developed in the Stage 1 ‘Explore’ summit, and with a focus on the body, you will explore current design making methods, present-day digital media and communication discourse, and sensory-based technologies within the context of contemporary fashion media and communication practices. The unit is structured around a set of short ‘sprint’ assignments undertaken both collaboratively and independently in class and through independent creative practice. You will initiate a series of iterative and process-led prototypes that will investigate the potential use of emerging ‘extended reality’ technologies within a fashion media and communication context. 
  • Unit 2: Experiential Ecologies (40 credits)  
    With a focus on the convergence of digital and physical environments, you will explore the transdisciplinary development of hybrid fashion experiences. The unit will introduce you to contemporary co-design methods and processes, as well as essential ideation, organisational and community management skills that are necessary for building complex omnichannel experiences. Over the course of the unit, you will develop a hands-on and reflective understanding of the dynamics of working within a multidisciplinary creative team as you explore how community-driven platforms, multi-player gaming environments, and physical interactions can be used to create richly textured fashion experiences. Working in small groups, you will develop a design concept for a hybrid fashion experience as well as critically situate it within a broader social, racial and technological context. 

On successful completion of these units you are eligible for the award of a Post Graduate Certificate (60 credits). 

Stage 2: Situate - Positioning knowledge and skills gained in stage 1 to affirm your own interests and specific direction within an external professional context. 

Stage 2 commences with the second two-day summit of the year, consisting of talks from industry experts from a wide range of disciplines, screenings and group discussions. Stage 2’s summit builds on the conceptual and theoretical foundation established in stage 1 by situating it within a broader socio-technological and climate context that will define stage 2’s research and practice-based units. As a public facing event, the summit provides you with the valuable opportunity to network with some of the industry's leading practitioners and thinkers. 

Running alongside the talks, the summit presents a work-in-progress showcase of current student projects.

  • Unit 3: Emergent Futures (40 credits) 
    Led by the key conceptual themes developed in the Stage 2 ‘Situate’ summit, this unit focuses on systemic transformation and thought leadership. On this unit you will explore the potential roles fashion media and communication could play in response to present and near future planetary scale environmental, social, and technological challenges. You will be introduced to insight generation, strategic thinking, and speculative design as well as system technologies such as machine learning, the blockchain and biotech. Through a series of rapid sprints, and working in small groups, you will develop and present an insight report that addresses a real-world issue by responding to the potential implications of social, technological and environmental drivers. You will then produce and present a speculative design outcome that offers a compelling vision of an alternative future and will operate as a projective model of how to conceive and initiate systemic transformation within a fashion media and communication context.   
  • Elective Units  
    In block 2, students will have an opportunity to take an elective unit. Individual unit descriptors can be found in the Electives Handbook. 

On successful completion of these units you are eligible for the award of a Post Graduate Diploma (120 credits). 

Stage 3: Integrate - The culmination and incorporation of the knowledge and skills acquired throughout stages 1 and 2 which is expressed through the Masters Project 

  • Unit 5: The Masters’ Project (60 credits)*  
    The Masters’ Project is the final stage of your course and is the culmination of your studies and provides you with a space to synthesise all the knowledge and skills you have gained on the course so far. Your project will be self-directed and you will negotiate the shape and direction of your project at the outset with your supervisor. This important final phase of your studies is where you will effectively communicate your work along with your ability to critically interrogate your practice with robust approaches to research and theoretical analysis. Upon completion of your project, you will have generated a high-level Masters’ quality piece of work that will showcase your practice, academic literacy and the professional standards that will act as a platform for your future career and professional development.  

On successful completion of the Masters Project unit you are eligible for the award of a Masters of Art (180 credits). The final award grading is based upon the results of the Masters Project only. 

Credit Framework

The University of the Arts London Credit Framework equates 20 credits to 200 hours of learning time. 

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