Master of Arts in Historical Costume

at Arts University Bournemouth United Kingdom

Animation is everywhere: from the classic Disney fairytale, to the quirky aardman comedy and the dynamic Pixar blockbuster.

Graduates from this course have gone on to work in studios across the world, including Pixar, Aardman, carrot, Lupus, and ILM. We’ll introduce you to the fundamental skills of drawing and painting which underpin animation in all forms. Along with training in industry-standard software, you’ll be able to apply your skills to hand-drawn, stop-motion, and CGI work. Working as part of a team in an animation studio environment, you’ll develop your personal portfolio and produce graduate films.

We have industry-standard facilities, where you’ll have access to the following throughout your studies – PC workstations with WACOM Intous Pro Tablets, a render management software, Adobe Creative Cloud, ToonBoom Harmony, Storyboard Pro, Dragon Frame, Mari, Maya, ZBrush, Da Vinci Resolve and Red Giant Complete.

Visits from industry practitioners and opportunities for studio placements will add to your knowledge and prepare you for a career that could see you work in film, commercials or even video game production. We’ll teach you skills to shape the future of the industry.

This degree will help you to prepare for professional practice (part 1 ARB/RIBA) and investigate the ways we live in the world through material and spatial relationships. You'll develop skills that will form the foundation of your career in architecture: making, collaborating, designing and communicating. Integrating practice with theory is at the heart of professional architectural practice, so that’s exactly what you’ll do here.

You’ll explore, experiment and develop new solutions. Discussing and presenting your work you'll share ideas about architecture through making tangible propositions, mindful of how they might be realised.

This ‘research-by-making’ approach encourages risk-taking, innovation and entrepreneurship. Both inside and outside of the studio, as well as in regular seminars, lectures and reviews, you’ll work on projects that require a creative balance of rigour and risk, informed by your design, technical and contextual knowledge.

At every stage in your degree, you’ll have opportunities to build on your own practice through collaborations with other courses. You’ll develop an understanding of the practice and theory of architecture, grounded in making, along with critical thinking and a familiarity with the material nature of architectural ideas. You’ll explore the practice of making thoughtful, tangible, inhabited places that mediate between the individual, the world we live in, and the others we live with.

The engaging and creative course will be your stepping stone to an exciting career in making.

With access to the latest technology and traditional resources, you will learn to make things using an extensive array of materials, tools, and techniques. You will develop the making skills needed for rewarding careers in film, architecture, exhibition, and design. You will develop as an independent thinker, who is capable of solving problems, and taking imaginative leaps in creative design and making.

You will work on live collaborative projects with students from other courses and with industry professionals. Using our strong links with the creative industries, you will have opportunities to undertake work experience with leading companies in the UK and abroad.

Our graduates have progressed in their careers to run departments at Pinewood Studios, RSHP, Foster + Partners, Chalk Studios and Rusty Squid. This course has been the first step in the journeys of many successful graduates, leaders, and innovators. You will get the opportunity to work in our award-winning and purpose-built ‘CRAB’ Drawing Studio, which was designed by Professor Sir Peter Cook RA.
You will also work in Passiv Haus and our well-equipped Printmaking Studio.

This course gives you the opportunity to develop a specialist career, working within fashion/beauty, advertising, documentary/editorial and portrait photography. Through the combination of creativity and technical skill, our students aspire to challenge perceptions, and push boundaries, through making imagery that’s at the forefront of contemporary photographic practice.

Graduates from this course have gone on to create images for clients including Louis Vuitton, Stella McCartney, Chanel, The Times Fashion Supplement, Love Magazine, Dazed and Confused, Huck, Kit Magazine, The Telegraph, The Guardian, Vogue (UK, India and Italy), Nike, Adidas, Lacoste, Wall Street Journal and the BBC.

If you want the opportunity to set the future agenda for commercial photography, and have the commitment and drive to make the most of every opportunity the course can give you, then we would love you to join.

MA Historical Costume engages you in the potential of performance design and garment construction to explore complex ideas; some of which could stray into other areas of artistic experimentation. Students may come to the course with a background in costume, fashion, textiles or theatre/performance design or you may have studied subjects from across the humanities including arts and performance.

This master’s program supports and encourages you to investigate individual practice within an interdisciplinary framework, whilst developing a critical theoretical context for your work. The very special and unique nature of course delivery, through shared lectures, seminars, critiques and tutorials encourages both a ‘freewheeling’ atmosphere as well as an intense immersion in creative practice.

Whether you are interested in looking at historical influences or current socio-political issues related to dress, you will challenge the context of your study in design or historical costume construction within the broader framework of contemporary practice.

BA (Hons) Costume offers a comprehensive approach to the study, interpretation and creation of costume. Students will become skilled at producing accurate historical recreations of costumes as well as expressing imaginative flair through creative and conceptual costume making. In addition, you will learn the art of tailoring and couture dressmaking.

Costume supervision is integral to the course and can be described as interpreting a two-dimensional costume design into a three-dimensional costume through sourcing and procuring garments. This exciting role places you at the heart of live productions, as you are key to ensuring the smooth running of the wardrobe department for all types of live performance.

The current BA (Hons) Costume and Performance Design course has been awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for its ‘distinguished degree-level education in costume design for the UK’s leading creative industries’.

On this course you’ll learn practical, professional and entrepreneurial skills that equip you to work as part of a team, or even set up your own business in textiles.

You’ll study textiles in its widest sense and learn many skills, from print, stitch embellishment to dyeing and mixed media construction. You’ll have the opportunity to focus on a variety of specialist areas, including textiles for fashion, textiles for interiors and textiles as design/crafts.

Traditional skills are taught together with expertise in modern design development, production, and contemporary invention. Whether you go on to work for a retail brand, or an international design house, we will prepare you for the challenges that the creative textile industry holds.

We've also formed an AUB textiles Agency to promote student work at Premier Vision Paris and London Print Textile Trade Fairs. Students have engaged with industry – experiencing how the business buys and sells textiles.

Painting defines its practice through the particularities of the painted field. The making materiality of the unique object, a globally acknowledged cultural history and the dedicated and dynamic relationship of the painted object to the painter. Painting in the 21st century is vital and relevant. Contemporary painting and what it can be, do and declare is meaningful. We ask how, why and according to what means.

The MA Painting course will explore this innovative and expansive territory in depth, dedicating itself to specialist study at postgraduate level.

Design problems will be addressed through applying a process of systematically interrogating design practice; using design methods to analyse and comprehend situations and behaviour and generating alternative and novel, even experimental solutions. Research is the fundamental driver for creative thinking and innovation to be developed through a specific individual and critical approach to reflective enquiry and practice.

Closely aligned with the AUB Innovation Studio and supported by partners in the design industry, live projects and business and entrepreneurship will be an integral element of your study.

This two-year, studio-based course, is the second part of the three-part qualification in becoming an architect. This design-based professional qualification, accredited by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the Architects Registration Board (ARB).

You’ll work alongside fellow makers, collaborators, and enablers who have come from different schools around the world; you’ll have the opportunity to collaborate across the arts. The course philosophy has many connections and develops on from the four key issues identified in the BA (Hons) Architecture (ARB/RIBA part 1).

This course takes its approach from the context of the ‘shared studio-based arts university’ where all courses are making. This philosophy is applied throughout the taught units by emphasising the role of drawing, models and texts in the making of architecture; the things we make – to think about the things we make.

As a student you’ll be asked to develop projects with strong narratives commenting on current social, cultural and environmental issues. In each unit you’re encouraged to give architectural expression to your own personal views and visions, whilst aiming to produce tangible propositions, mindful of how they might be realised.

Studio Culture

The studio is both professional and exploratory. This educational experience is grounded in a strong studio culture of making and thinking, supported by regular lectures by practitioners, seminars and reviews.

The studio generates an atmosphere in which open, critical and reflective practice supports exploration and risk-taking where we test, discuss and present ideas. We’re particularly focused in delivering studio-based and student-centred learning environment.

We offer shared facilities such as the workshop, fab-labs, the print room and the Drawing Studio.

Personal, Professional and Ecological Development

The course will support your personal development towards a creative contribution to architecture and the wider world after graduation. The final Thesis Design year gives you the opportunity to develop your own research design project that integrates making and collaboration through an ecological narrative.