Course summary

The lecture series for this course will follow two interdependent, integrated streams. One will develop students’ historical, theoretical and critical awareness of the relationship between arts, cultural entrepreneurship and business management from a variety of viewpoints – film, music, dance, theatre, festival, gallery etc. The other series will be more professionally focused exploring the changing environment with respect to business methods (finance, planning and the law), and marketing and branding strategies within the creative industries. The practical seminars and workshops for the course will focus around important case studies to highlight different business models within the creative industries from SMEs to national organisations as well as allowing an opportunity to explore important, innovative approaches to marketing and communications strategies within the sector. The programme will increasingly introduce professionalised; work placement elements from the second part of Level I. So that by the programme’s end, students will have gathered experience of working with external professional creative industries organisations. The fashion industry is worth c£62BN to the UK economy and consistently employs some 400,000 people. However, there are powerful changes afoot in the industry around the world that seek to address the environmental damage; exploitative business models and employment conditions that are so often attached to it - especially so in fast fashion. There is also a growing awareness across the industry of the need for the design of clothing and accessories that are inclusive; a need to embrace fashion design for disability with ‘adaptive fashion.’ Liverpool Hope BA Contemporary Fashion Design; will be the first undergraduate option to study these concerns and become the first dedicated undergraduate fashion with a conscience programme available in the UK HEI sector. Contemporary Fashion Design will be centered around the body; materials and an understanding and knowledge of sustainable and ethical living. The diversity of our workshops - which range from traditional technologies through to our digital Fab Lab - will ensure a diversity of production and design around the fundamentals of tactility and materiality. Ethical production - the exploration of materials and low waste production methodologies - will be core to the programme providing students with an understanding of sustainability and ethical living - in short, fashion design for a healthier future. The programme will provide an environment that enables rich interdisciplinary approaches at undergraduate level which will include working on live briefs and competitions and engaging in established links.