Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Costume

at Arts University Bournemouth United Kingdom

You will be joining a course with an international reputation, a challenging curriculum, and inspiring teaching.

This course encourages students to engage with contemporary photography in an individually creative and experimental manner, supported by outstanding analogue and digital resources. This course is visually led, but you will learn how to place your practice within a historical and contemporary context, and define its audience. You will be introduced to a range of technical processes, from 19th-century alternative printing techniques in our traditional darkrooms to digital still and moving image capture, and post-production in our state-of-the-art lighting studios and digital suites. You will also be able to borrow an extensive range of analogue and digital kit from our professional standard technical store.

During your studies, you will be engaged in specialist professional practice units, and will be able to use our extensive alumni and professional network to help plan your career or prepare you to undertake postgraduate study.

Visual Communication combines skills in illustration, graphic design, typography and digital design to create images that persuade or inform.

From the start, the course focuses on hand-drawn imagery to develop a feel for the shapes and styles that connect with audiences. Practical experiences will be used to develop your skills. We’ll help you to build your visual awareness and understanding of the world around you. In addition to plenty of theory and debate, you’ll have the chance to work on live briefs with other students and find work placements in creative businesses.

Visual Communication underlines the importance of good ideas. You’ll leave with all the practical skills that you need to work in a vibrant and exciting industry. Our graduates work as freelancers in small design companies and with larger firms, both locally and internationally.

MA Film Practice offers a unique learning environment that affords access to industry standard technical resources and support. It is driven and inspired by a broad and diverse understanding of film cultures. Its practice based research ethos offers distinctive, exciting and challenging opportunities.

It recognises individuals and their aspirations, and celebrates ideas and creative experimentation, within individual and collaborative contexts. The programme of study will facilitate a body of work that will enable you to unpack critical and timely questions, develop filmmaking skills, create a personal practice resolution and refine your professional awareness.

MA Photography course is a balance of art and commerce and is founded on the assertion that photography is a powerful form of communication that potentially connects with an audience of millions.

The course offers the opportunity to make professional work within, or crossing genres, whether it’s for publication, or the gallery. What defines it as professional, is that it is conceived and created with a specific audience in mind and is conscious of how meaning is affected by socio-political criteria.

The course is designed for ambitious photography graduates, or experienced photographers who wish to develop their knowledge and expertise in order to reach the very top of their field. We look for students with a passion for the subject and who are willing to take risks, and in doing so, push themselves to new heights.

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.

A career in creative writing could see you working in publishing, a literary agency, freelancing or in education — and that’s just the start. Whether you want to create prose, scripts, poetry or nonfiction, we’ll help you turn writing into a career.

With visits from published writers and industry professionals, you’ll be able to explore career opportunities and build contacts. When you graduate, you’ll have a strong portfolio and a professional network to kickstart your career.

Writers rarely work alone, so this course will give you the opportunity to collaborate with other courses. You might write scripts with animators or filmmakers, or explore narratives with illustrators.

Our graduates go on to play an active role in the creative industries, from branding consultancies to digital design, publishers to packaging. Many of our graduates have established their own companies. Experimentation and discovery are important values on this course. There is no ‘right answer’ and you will be supported to find your own path as you learn more skills. In addition to developing creative design strategies, we encourage you to bring your own experiences and interests to your work. We value conceptual approaches that attract attention, and then evoke an idea or emotion that is relevant and on target.

As a graphic designer, you’ll have to make decisions in complex and unpredictable situations. You’ll have to react quickly to new information, evolving briefs and advances in technology. On this course, you’ll learn to innovate under pressure and handle issues such as user- centred design, sustainability, emerging technology, service design, information design and interactive design. You’ll engage with leading design companies who set briefs, give talks, and help us to develop the curriculum. You’ll discover your own approach to visual problem solving and graduate with the technical, critical, and conceptual skills that are highly prized by the industry.

Our teaching staff are exceptional. We’ve recently been awarded Gold by the TEF (Teaching Excellence Framework) which assess quality of teaching.

They’re inspiring teachers, researchers, industry practitioners and technicians who are all here to support you with your studies and help you to achieve outstanding outcomes.

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.

Make-Up for Media and Performance gives you the skills that you need to play a key creative role in performance, fashion, film or television.

Our recent graduates have worked on BBC and ITV productions (such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Coronation Street, Casualty, Granchester and The Durrells), films (such as Beauty and the Beast), theatre productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company, musicals (such as Wicked, The King and I, Matilda and Priscilla Queen of the Desert), and at Leavesden Warner Brothers and Pinewood Studios.

The make-up artist is an important member of any production team and you’ll have the chance to work with students who are studying Acting, Film Production, Costume and Performance Design, Commercial Photography, Visual Effects, Fashion and Fashion Branding and Communication to create ‘live’ collaborative projects. On this course, you’ll learn a diverse range of make-up skills. You’ll study make-up and hair design for drama, ballet, opera and music. A different perspective will give you the skills for fashion and photography shoots. You’ll also construct wigs and hairpieces, and create prosthetic make-up FX for film and television. In short, you’ll develop skills that are a real asset to a wide range of performance industries, from theatre to TV, and from the music business to the world of fashion and film.

Performance designers are storytellers. Visual storytellers. BA (Hons) Performance Design and Film Costume creates innovative, individual and adaptable designers.

The performing body is at the core of the design work on this course and all students will create costume designs from the first year onwards. Great attention is paid to the study and design of historical, contemporary and experimental costume for film, theatre and site-specific projects.

In addition to costume design, some students will also go on to design and paint sets and make props and puppets for live performance, festivals, other events and exhibitions.

Some students will specialise in preparing themselves to work in the costume departments of film and TV productions with the aim of becoming costume designers in these industries.

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'.