Master of Arts in Sustainable Design with Professional Placement

at Kingston University London - Kingston School of Art, Knights Park United Kingdom

We have been ranked in the top 25 Fashion Schools in the World, and one of only three in the UK, by Fashionista, the influential and trusted source of fashion news. View the 2019 rankings.

Our Fashion BA (Hons) degree is ranked no. 1 in London for Fashion in The Guardian University Guide league table 2020 and was one of  a handful of worldwide institutions to have been awarded four badges of excellence by the Business of Fashion (for Best Overall, Best in Global Influence, Best in Learning Experience and Best in Long-term Value).

The course focuses on evolution and radical change in design. You will explore how design is influenced by cultural, social, critical and historical studies.

You will develop your own signature style, experimenting across sketch work, 2D to 3D, knitwear and digital print in Kingston School of Art's workshops and dedicated fashion design studios. You will also have access to our working dress archive which includes pieces from 1750 to the present day, including the recently acquired Sibling knitwear archive. Our curator also works closely with Bath Fashion Museum.

Our strong industry links mean you will learn to apply creativity to the real-world and will be industry-ready on graduation.

This course is for creative individuals who want to work in visual communications in the fashion industries. You will develop understanding of the ethical, global and identity issues critical to effective fashion communication. You will learn the skills of image making, creative direction, graphic design and editorial copy needed to produce visual content for fashion brands. You will explore how technologies such as augmented and virtual reality, and the relationship between physical retail environments and online digital platforms, provide new opportunities for creating innovative brand experiences.

Because successful creatives in fashion communications combine art and design skills with commercial understanding and project management techniques you'll also develop business and management skills needed to work in teams on advertising campaigns.

What does it take to make thoughtful work in the built environment today?

During this degree you'll think and make, and develop the technical and critical skills required to be both nimble and empowered to act in today's diverse architectural culture.

The course features a diverse range of design approaches rooted in a common ethos, and often involving 'live-build' projects, recently for the Barbican in London and Kunstmuseum, Bonn.

You'll study in our exceptional, Haworth Tompkins-designed workshops, which are open for creative exploration and offer opportunities to collaborate on projects and share ideas.

We have been ranked in the top 25 Fashion Schools in the World, and one of only three in the UK, by Fashionista, the influential and trusted source of fashion news. View the 2019 rankings.

Our Fashion BA (Hons) degree is ranked no. 1 in London for Fashion in The Guardian University Guide league table 2020 and was one of  a handful of worldwide institutions to have been awarded four badges of excellence by the Business of Fashion (for Best Overall, Best in Global Influence, Best in Learning Experience and Best in Long-term Value).

The course focuses on evolution and radical change in design. You will explore how design is influenced by cultural, social, critical and historical studies.

You will develop your own signature style, experimenting across sketch work, 2D to 3D, knitwear and digital print in Kingston School of Art's workshops and dedicated fashion design studios. You will also have access to our working dress archive which includes pieces from 1750 to the present day, including the recently acquired Sibling knitwear archive. Our curator also works closely with Bath Fashion Museum.

Our strong industry links mean you will learn to apply creativity to the real-world and will be industry-ready on graduation.

This course allows you to experiment and explore your creative potential, preparing you for a career in the visual arts or creative industries. Students work with a range of traditional and new technologies, developing their ideas through sculpture, painting, printmaking, installation, film / photography, performance and sound.

Kingston is ranked No.9 in the UK for art (Guardian University Guide league tables 2020).

Key to the course is the professional skills modules, which will help you acquire strategic skills for planning, showing, recording and communicating your work.

You'll get to hear from visiting artists and take part in live external projects. Our industry links include the Tate, Stanley Picker Gallery, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Drawing Room and Auto Italia.

You'll be taught by practising artists, writers and curators in purpose built workshops and you'll have the option to go on field trips and study abroad. By the time you graduate you'll have gained real-life experience and skills and completed a portfolio that will help kick-start your career.

This course prepares you for a career in design marketing in the creative industries. You will develop the practical and analytical skills needed to create marketing materials and design user experiences across different media and digital environments.

You will learn to visualise, collaborate, experiment and project manage as you work on real-world projects with other students and industry professionals.  You will also develop your knowledge of the creative industries, exploring topics such as design thinking, branding and strategy for creative organisations. You will have creative freedom and be encouraged to undertake non-commercial creative projects.

The Design Marketing BA (Hons) course also offers opportunities to work on live projects with creative companies and institutions, alongside your classmates in the student-powered creative agency, Studio KT1.

Throughout the course you'll also develop the commercial and organisational skills and understanding needed to work effectively in the Creative and Cultural sector.

This innovative course is designed for qualified healthcare professionals, who are keen to learn more about leadership strategies and management techniques. It consists of taught modules, a work-based learning project and enables you to explore a leadership topic of interest in depth, with the aim to publish. You will learn how to lead and manage healthcare practice and implement research advances to enrich evidence-based practice. The course will help you to drive service improvement projects relevant to your practice, and research healthcare issues within your workplace. The course combines academic teaching with interactive learning and incorporates theories of leadership and change management. You will gain confidence to influence decision makers with your recommendations.

The structure of the course allows you to continue working while studying. The full time option has one classroom based day per week (Wednesdays) and the part time option is once per fortnight (Wednesdays). Many of our students have been promoted as a direct result of studying this course.

This collaborative degree, between Kingston School of Art and the Design Museum, has grown into one of the world's foremost programmes for design curators.

Taught by leading curators and designers, the course engages critically and creatively with our fast-changing, complex world. You will have the opportunity to curate live projects and build your own professional profile, through the Design Museum and with institutions such as the Architectural Association, British Council, Gallery Fumi and the Royal Academy of Arts. Led by both research and practice, this course has taught aspiring curators for more than fifteen years.

The Kingston School of Art environment, which includes the Stanley Picker Gallery, Dorich House Museum and outstanding workshop facilities, encourages creativity and experimentation as responses to interrogations of contemporary conditions. To actively consider geopolitical, social and economic concerns, Curating Contemporary Design is taught within a transdisciplinary framework that allows students to develop responses to the complexity of the world today.

The program sets out to affect systemic change in the fashion industry by offering alternatives to the mainstream fashion system. It focuses on developing a deep understanding of the multi-dimensionality of sustainability as it relates to fashion. Sustainable solutions are embedded in all coursework, using fashion as a medium to affect social change, resulting in innovative and ethical solutions, transformational systems, and organisations.

Based on critical thinking and problem solving, the program offers the opportunity to plot a new future for the fashion industry that challenges existing practices with practical and inspirational alternatives. Project work adheres to the four pillars of sustainability: economic, environmental, social, and cultural as an alternative to fashions unsustainable footprint.

This is a practice-based MA offering a multitude of tangible outcomes that make a positive contribution to society, culture, and ecology. Students can choose their area of focus with either a practice, business, or a systems-design outcome. The creative freedom offered by the program results in a variety of degree outputs, from websites and apps, services, new systems and models, exhibitions, installations, and product development, all based on design futuring. This is the business of design as a problem-solving tool, not a means to produce more stuff.

Kingston School of Art offers a stimulating environment for the postgraduate study of Illustration. Kingston University has some of the best fabrication and visual process workshops in the UK. This enables the most exciting innovations in ‘thinking through making'.

The Communication Design: Illustration MA course, offered through the highly-regarded Department of Illustration Animation, aims to develop creative professional understanding of Illustration in the context of communication design.

The course is structured to challenge you and your preconceptions about both illustration and design. It places an emphasis on the patterns of research you develop and the visual methods you employ to explore and unravel briefs. You will be expected to demonstrate how you research and develop your ideas. In this context, research is not only a working process it can also be considered an outcome in its own right.

This programme asks you to examine: what, how, why and who as key factors in design thinking. This represents a shift from the traditional definition of design and illustration as a problem solving activity to a placing the focus on problem finding. The course encourages the exploration and understanding of the methods and processes at work in contemporary illustration.

This course has been designed to enhance your long-term employment possibilities through an appreciation of the changing global, technological and social context of illustration and design. It includes the option of a one-year UK work placement, enhancing your experience and connections in industry. This type of assessed placement is not available on any other postgraduate courses.