Minimum Tariff: 300
UCAS Code: W231
Admisssions Tutor: Dr Keireine Canavan
Email: kcanvan@cardiffmet.ac.uk

BA (hons) Textiles offers specializations in print and stitch. Core subjects including drawing, colour workshops, understanding materials and digital media, which will be underpinned by self -reflection, critical analysis and theory. Commercial and industrial awareness as well as an understanding of business practice will form an integral part of the student experience.

Students learn about the prediction of trends and, from this, shape their own practices, enabling them to be in advance of trends, rather than simply responding to them. The emphasis here is on the development of individual and creative flair, coupled with a greater understanding of the commercial and professional textiles industry.

Students gain insight into identifying the diversity of professional pathways through part in International Trade and Craft Fairs and through possible placements in industry. External consultants, designers and makers contribute to the course. Opportunities for public exhibitions and international competitions are a key feature of the final year.

In year one and year two, equipped with the ideas and skills achieved in their subject module, students choose a further module where they can employ, extend and challenge those ideas and skills. The modules on offer will include ones where students will work alongside leading researchers on an enquiry based project, and others which involve them in an exploration of a challenging subject. These include modules on: the figure in art; creative strategies, drawing and visual studies: advanced material investigation; the physical and the virtual; and narrative.

Some of the modules on offer may involve a period abroad, studying in Venice or the States, or might be an Erasmus exchange. There are also opportunities to undertake a work placement or study how to set up your own business. In all of these modules, students respond to the challenges through their own practices, employing the skills and ideas from textiles, informed and stimulated by the challenge of the module itself and by the opportunity to work with fellow students from across the School.

In the third year, students devote themselves to the exploration of their own questions, within the area of practice that they have elected through the support and advice of the academic team. In this year and especially within the dissertation and the work prepared for the final show, the textile designer emerges into something unique to them and to the practice of textiles.

All students undertake modules that develop critical and sometimes radical approaches to how we see and construct the world. These modules provide some of the tools that can be employed to question through creative practice how meaning is made as well as why meaning is a contested area. These will also equip students for the preparation of their final dissertation. Taught on a cross-disciplinary basis, the content of these modules will draw on anything and everything, from Constable to cosmetic surgery, from Bernard Leach to Elvis Presley impersonators, and from aesthetics to punk rock.

Graduates from the programme are well placed to join design companies, work as designers in large organizations, or set up their own businesses. Some take further training, for example a PGCE. Some elect to take their studies further by studying at CSAD for an MFA, MDes or an MA (Art & Design).