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Postgraduate

MA Fashion Media and Communication

Digital installation showing student work across multiple screens.
Digital installation for the LCF2021 Summer Show at Victoria House | London College of Fashion | University of Arts London | Photography by Ana Blumenkron
College
London College of Fashion
Start date
September 2024
Course length
12 months

Our dynamic, practice-based course has been created to produce leaders in the field of fashion media and communication. Students will engage with new and emerging technologies to envision, plan and design fashion environments, experiences, events and installations.

Innovation is central to the course, and graduates will be equipped with the skills, methods and professional confidence to push boundaries and forge new ways of working in the creative industries.

Re-approval

Please note that this course is undergoing re-approval. This is the process by which we ensure the course continues to provide a high quality academic experience. During re-approval there may be some changes to the course content displayed on this page. Please contact us if you have any questions about the course.

Applying for more than 1 course

You can apply for more than 1 postgraduate course at UAL but we recommend that you apply for no more than 3. Find out more in the Apply Now section.

Why choose this course at London College of Fashion

  • Emerging discipline: Students focus on new creative disciplines that develop their critical, creative and technical skills, empowering them to shape the future of fashion, through the design of media and communication experiences.
  • Practice-led: Benefit from collaborative studio practice and technical workshops to gain relevant, practical experience. Graduates will be well equipped to work with practitioners and specialists from the creative industries.
  • New media: Critically engage with emerging technologies including virtual reality, artificial intelligence, digital platforms and augmented reality. As well as developing concepts and prototypes, students will critique ethical issues around these platforms.
  • Industry projects: Students will have the opportunity to work with industry partners on live projects in media and communication design, where they’ll work collaboratively to deliver a strategic proposal for a real-world brief.
  • Collaborate: Collaboration is core to the course, and students will work together, as well as with our pioneering research centres and labs, to further develop their skills and strengthen their critical capacities.

Course overview

MA Fashion Media and Communication is a ground-breaking practice-based course that challenges the sector and seeks to develop agile, innovative, creative leaders for emerging and future roles in industry.  

This dynamic course is radically transdisciplinary in its approach to the creating and learning process. Here, existing disciplinary boundaries are traversed and different areas of practice come together to form emergent disciplines and build new models of making that are native to the project at hand and the present now in which they arise. 

As a course that is actively future-focused it is aimed at those who want to disrupt existing approaches to fashion media and communication. Through design thinking, prototyping and entrepreneurship you will craft innovative and agile creative practices equipped and able to intervene in the challenges of our times to facilitate meaningful change.  

You will explore the opportunities offered by emerging and advanced technologies for the envisioning, planning and design of extended reality environments and experiences. This includes investigating AI, gaming and platform systems, hybridised fashion experiences, community building and curatorial interventions, as well as strategic and speculative initiatives.  As the rate of technological, social, and climate change continues to intensify, the demand for design professionals with technical, creative, critical and agile skillsets has never been greater. 

Positioned at the intersection of this new paradigm, MA Fashion Media and Communication furnishes you with the skills, methods and professional confidence to push boundaries and innovate approaches to creative practice. Working with LCF’s pioneering research centres and creative labs you will engage with an expansive range of media, methods and contexts. In addition to developing the creative, technical and soft skills, you will strengthen your critical capacities through practice. You will learn contemporary organisational and workflow methods such as project management, system logistics and social engagement.

The MA comprises three sequential stages – Explore, Situate, Integrate – and a series of distinct practice-based units that blend individual and group work through a combination of rapid ‘sprint’ briefs and in-depth investigations. You will engage with diverse theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches that inform and enrich experiential design thinking and practice. Through a range of methods and approaches, the course is designed to guide you towards an individual critical position, informing your future transdisciplinary design practice. 

On graduation you will work in emerging fields such as experiential design, creative direction, organisation design, community management, design research and innovation, design insight, strategy and futurology.

Climate, Social and Racial Justice 

We are committed to ensuring that your skills are set within an ethical framework and are working to embed UAL’s Principles for Climate, Social and Racial Justice into the course.    

Course units

Stage 1: Explore  

Stage 1 commences with a two-day summit, consisting of reading seminars, guest expert lectures, and group discussions. The summit will provide the conceptual and theoretical foundation for the course and kick starts the stage’s key themes for the practice-led units that follow. 

Unit 1: Collaborative Challenge (20 credits) *  

This unit is designed to enable you to innovate, engage in developmental processes and participate in collaborative working practices. You will be encouraged to develop the professional negotiating and networking skills that will be needed to be successful in the cultural and creative industries. The nature of this collaboration may be within the course, with students on other courses, with research centres such as the Digital Anthropology Lab, or with industry.  

Unit 2: Prototyping Practices (20 credits) 

Led by the key conceptual themes developed in the Stage 1 ‘Explore’ summit, and with a focus on the body, this unit will explore current design making methods, present-day digital media and communication discourse, and sensory-based technologies within the context of contemporary fashion media and communication practices. The unit is structured around a set of short ‘sprint’ assignments undertaken both collaboratively and independently in class and through independent creative practice. You will initiate a series of iterative and process-led prototypes that will investigate the potential use of emerging ‘extended reality’ technologies within a fashion media and communication context.

Unit 3: Experiential Ecologies (20 credits) 

With a focus on the convergence of digital and physical environments, this unit will explore the transdisciplinary development of hybrid fashion experiences. The unit will introduce you to contemporary co-design methods and processes, as well as essential ideation, organisational and community management skills that are necessary for building complex omnichannel experiences. Over the course of the unit, you will develop a hands-on and reflective understanding of the dynamics of working within a multidisciplinary creative team as you explore how community-driven platforms, multi-player gaming environments, and physical interactions can be used to create richly textured fashion experiences. Working in small groups, you will develop a design concept for a hybrid fashion experience as well as critically situate it within a broader socio-technological context.   

Stage 2: Situate 

Stage 2 commences with a two-day summit, consisting of reading seminars, guest expert lectures, and group discussions. The summit will build on the conceptual and theoretical foundation established in stage 1 by situating it within a broader socio-technological and climate context that will define stage 2’s research and practice-based units.

Unit 4: Research Proposal (20 credits) *  

This unit introduces you to a range of research methods, approaches and tools that are available to you in order to conduct your post graduate project. The unit will cover philosophy and ethics in research, primary and secondary research methods, including quantitative, qualitative, visual and practice research methods. The unit will consider research in a range of contexts relevant to the cultural and creative industries and enable you to understand the relationship between theory and practice. 

Unit 5: Emergent Futures (40 credits)

Led by the key conceptual themes developed in the Stage 2 ‘Situate’ summit, this unit focuses on systemic transformation and thought leadership. On this unit you will explore the potential roles fashion media and communication could play in response to present and near future planetary scale environmental, social, and technological challenges.  

You will be introduced to insight generation, strategic thinking, and speculative design as well as system technologies such as machine learning, the blockchain and biotech. Through a series of rapid sprints, and working in small groups, you will develop and present an insight report that addresses a real-world issue by responding to the potential implications of social, technological and environmental drivers. You will then produce and present a speculative design outcome that offers a compelling vison of an alternative future and will operate as a projective model of how to conceive and initiate systemic transformation within a fashion media and communication context. 

Stage 3: Integrate 
  
Unit 6: The Masters’ Project (60 credits)* 

The Masters’ Project is the final stage of your Masters’ course and is the is the culmination of your studies and provides you with a space to synthesise all the knowledge and skills you have gained on the course so far. Your project will be self-directed and you will negotiate the shape and direction of your project at the outset with your supervisor. This important final phase of your studies is where you will effectively communicate your work along with your ability to critically interrogate your practice with robust approaches to research and theoretical analysis. Upon completion of your project, you will have generated a high-level Masters’ quality piece of work that will showcase your practice, academic literacy and the professional standards that will act as a platform for your future career and professional development. 

* Three cross-college units that are common to all LCF MA courses – Collaborative Challenge (20 credits), Research Proposal (20 credits) and Masters’ Project (60 credits) – have been validated separately.

Learning and teaching methods

Units 1 to 5 

Study is facilitated through regular activity briefs, sprints and reading tasks, workshops, peer and self-evaluation in group and individual tutorial feedback in both online and face-face format. Group workshops and seminars during the face-to-face study time support your engagement further.  
 
The supported development of cognitive skills such as problem solving, reflection, progress monitoring, and self-assessment, as well as affective skills such as curiosity, motivation, and resilience will further support independent learning.

To achieve this, the programme of study will typically include:  

  • Unit briefing and introduction; 
  • Studio & workshop practice; 
  • Enquiry-based learning; 
  • Group on-line ‘orientation’ exercise; 
  • Reading tasks; 
  • Face-to-Face workshops, introducing different ways of locating, interrogating, and interpreting a number of theoretical models’ 
  • Team work; 
  • Collaborative learning; 
  • Independent learning; 
  • Knowledge Exchange; 
  • Expert talks; 
  • Technical delivery; 
  • Student presentations to tutors and peers; 
  • Peer and external feedback; 
  • Peer-to-Peer learning; 
  • Tutorial facilitation/ evaluation related to team/ individual and cohort; 
  • Blended Learning. 

Unit 6 Master’s Project 

This unit is focused on self-directed learning as students bring together the various components of the course. Students will be assigned a supervisor, who they will engage with through a blended learning approach, including face-to-face, and digital interaction, taking account of the allocated learning and teaching hours for this unit.  

The MA award classification is based solely on the achievement in Unit 6. 

Course summits

BODYSTACKED

BODYSTACK Summit

Welcome to HYPERHYPERBODIES summit 2023

HYPERBODIES: A Summit on the Role of Bodies in an Age of Extremes  

Student work

Emergent Futures

Squad Neuromind

Yiyang Lu, Ruiting Tang, Qianlan Wang, Jinglan Wu, Jingyi Yu

HYPERHYPERBODIES: MA FMC Class of 24 Work-In-Progress Exhibition

Experiential Ecologies Unit Showreel 2023

Lab Intelli

Sen Gao, Harry Liu, Eico Lu, Haixu Zhang, Wenjie Zheng

Related work

Queer AI with heavy make-up on bright green background.
DIS Presents: 'The Metaverse in Janky Capitalism' by Daniel Felstead | MA Fashion Media and Communication | London College of Fashion | UAL

DIS Presents: 'The Metaverse in Janky Capitalism' by Daniel Felstead

MA Fashion Media and Communication presents:

Katharina Korbjuhn - Time to Shift the Paradigm

Staff

Dr Daniel Felstead, Course Leader

Dr Daniel Felstead is an integrative thinker, working both as a leading academic and an experiential designer and strategist with over two decades of industry experience. Through his practice, Felstead has exhibited internationally and produced works for the likes of BBC, Google, Tate, and V&A Museum, as well as contributed to numerous essays for industry publications. His PhD thesis examined the artistic practice of Tino Sehgal in relation to speculative modes of production, group dynamics and plasticity. In addition, Felstead co-founded Emergence of Tomorrow, an online discussion space and community think-tank.

Jenn Leung, Lecturer Creative Technology & Design

Jenn Leung is an educator and technical artist. Working across different emerging technologies in game development, virtual production, mocap, AR/VR, 3D asset optimization, and real-time streaming tools, she has exhibited in multiple international shows and festivals. Jenn is co-founder of Xalon, a multiplayer community project to foster learning in networked environments. She is also a member of Off World Live, an engineering and research group for Unreal Engine Creators.

Carrie Mok, Programme Director

Both as an educator and a creative director, Carrie Mok focuses her work on driving innovation through connection, co-creation and collaboration as well as nurturing creativity in its purest forms. Throughout her career, Mok has worked with leading global brands including Burberry, Louis Vuitton and Gucci, along with major educational institutions. She is also the founder of Soft Launch, a creative community incubator that supports emerging talent through mentoring, thoughtful partnerships and entrepreneurial development.

Hannah Zeilig Phd, Lecturer

A widely published researcher and an enthusiastic teacher, Hannah Zeilig is Reader in Arts and Health at London College of Fashion and a visiting research fellow at the University of East Anglia. Her work is transdisciplinary and influenced by her own experience of living with bipolar disorder. Throughout it, Zeilig explores co-creativity as an approach to support agency, wellbeing, and citizenship for people with dementia and severe mental illnesses. She supervises multiple PhD students and gives lectures on ethics, qualitative research, as well as older people and fashion.

Fees and funding

Home fee

£13,330

This fee is correct for 2024/25 entry and is subject to change for 2025/26 entry.

Tuition fees may increase in future years for new and continuing students on courses lasting more than one year. For this course, you can pay tuition fees in instalments.

Students from countries outside of the UK will generally be charged international fees. The rules are complex so read more about tuition fees and determining your fee status.

International fee

£28,570

This fee is correct for 2024/25 entry and is subject to change for 2025/26 entry.

Tuition fees may increase in future years for new and continuing students on courses lasting more than one year. For this course, you can pay tuition fees in instalments.

Students from countries outside of the UK will generally be charged international fees. The rules are complex so read more about tuition fees and determining your fee status.

Scholarship search

Entry requirements

The standard entry requirements for this course are as follows:

  • An Honours degree at 2.1 or above in a related discipline;
  • Applicants with a degree in another subject may be considered, depending on the strength of the application;
  • OR Equivalent qualifications.

APEL (Accreditation of Prior (Experiential) Learning):

Applicants who do not meet these course entry requirements may still be considered in exceptional cases. The course team will consider each application that demonstrates additional strengths and alternative evidence. This might, for example, be demonstrated by:

  • Related academic or work experience (minimum of three years)
  • The quality of the personal statement
  • A strong academic or other professional reference
  • OR a combination of these factors

Each application will be considered on its own merit but we cannot guarantee an offer in each case.

English language requirements:

IELTS level 7.0 with a minimum of 6.0 in reading, writing, listening and speaking. 

Please check our main English Language Requirements.

Selection criteria

The course seeks to recruit students from diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds and welcomes applications from mature students. 

The recruitment procedures fully comply with the Equal Opportunities Policy at UAL and all interviewers have undertaken Fairness and Equality in Student Selection training.

We are looking for students who demonstrate some of the following: 

  • A clear academic interest in the study of fashion media and communication through an interdisciplinary approach
  • Appropriate knowledge and skills commensurate with your planned entry into this post graduate level course
  • A capacity to develop and undertake risk-taking speculative design in a range of communication disciplines, in particular using frontier technologies
  • A willingness to operate in digital and physical realms, showing an awareness of cultural, social, political and climate debates
  • An ability to work collaboratively and independently when required to successfully complete the programme of study
  • An ability to engage in and contribute to critical discussion
  • Demonstrate the necessary skill and fluency in your own design thinking and creative practice to benefit from and contribute to the course
  • Possess appropriate levels of visual, written and verbal presentation

Apply now

Application deadline

Deadline

Round 1:

13 December 2023 at 1pm (UK time)

Round 2:

3 April 2024 at 1pm (UK time)

Digital portfolio and video task deadline

Round 1:

16 January 2024

Round 2:

16 April 2024

Decision outcome

Round 1:

End of March 2024

Round 2:

End of June 2024

Round 1
Round 2
Deadline
13 December 2023 at 1pm (UK time)
3 April 2024 at 1pm (UK time)
Digital portfolio and video task deadline
16 January 2024
16 April 2024
Decision outcome
End of March 2024
End of June 2024

All applications received by 3 April will be treated equally. If there are places available after this date, the course will remain open to applications until places have been filled.

Read more about deadlines

Apply now

Application deadline

Deadline

Round 1:

13 December 2023 at 1pm (UK time)

Round 2:

3 April 2024 at 1pm (UK time)

Digital portfolio and video task deadline

Round 1:

16 January 2024

Round 2:

16 April 2024

Decision outcome

Round 1:

End of March 2024

Round 2:

End of June 2024

Round 1
Round 2
Deadline
13 December 2023 at 1pm (UK time)
3 April 2024 at 1pm (UK time)
Digital portfolio and video task deadline
16 January 2024
16 April 2024
Decision outcome
End of March 2024
End of June 2024

All applications received by 3 April will be treated equally. If there are places available after this date, the course will remain open to applications until places have been filled.

Read more about deadlines

Apply to UAL

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Find your representative

How to apply

Follow this step-by-step guide to apply for this course

Step 1: Initial application

You will need to submit an initial application including your personal statement and CV.

Personal statement advice

Your personal statement should be maximum 500 words and include:

  • your reasons for choosing the course
  • your current creative practice and how this course will help you achieve your future plans
  • any relevant education and experience, especially if you do not have any formal academic qualifications.

Visit our personal statement page for more advice.

CV advice

Please provide a CV detailing your education, qualifications and any relevant work or voluntary experience. If you have any web projects or other media that you would like to share, please include links in your CV. If English is not your first language, please also include your most recent English language test score.

Step 2: Video task and digital portfolio

We will review your initial application. If you have met the standard entry requirements, we will ask you to submit a video task and a digital portfolio.

You’ll need to submit these via PebblePad, our online portfolio tool. Please submit your video task on the first page followed by your portfolio.

Video task advice

We’d like you to submit a 2-3 minute video to help us learn more about you. When recording your video, please face the camera and speak in English.

What to include in your video task

  • Choose 1 project from your portfolio and explain how it challenged you and your understanding of emerging technologies.
  • Tell us how this experience inspired you to apply to MA Fashion Media and Communication at LCF.

Read our guidance for how to submit your video task and which file types we accept.

Digital portfolio advice

Your portfolio should consist of recent work that reflects your creative strengths.

It should:

  • be maximum 30 pages, including your video task
  • include a variety of visual and written work such as moving images, sound, photography, 3D visualisations, strategy decks, essays, articles etc.
  • demonstrate your diverse skillset and understanding of fashion media and communication.

For more support, see our portfolio advice and PebblePad advice.

Step 3: Interview

You may be invited to an interview following our review of your application. All interviews are held online and last 15 to 20 minutes.

For top tips, see our Interview advice.

You also need to know

Communicating with you

Once you have submitted your initial application, we will email you with your login details for our Applicant portal.

Requests for supplementary documents like qualifications and English language tests will be made through the applicant portal. You can also use it to ask questions regarding your application. Visit our After you apply page for more information.

Applying to more than 1 course

You can apply for more than 1 postgraduate course at UAL but we recommend that you apply for no more than 3 courses. You need to tailor your application, supporting documents and portfolio to each course, so applying for many different courses could risk the overall quality of your application. If you receive offers for multiple courses, you'll only be able to accept 1 offer. UAL doesn't accept repeat applications to the same course in the same academic year.

Visas and immigration history check

All non-UK nationals must complete an immigration history check. Your application may be considered by our course teams before this check takes place. This means that we may request your portfolio and/or video task before we identify any issues arising from your immigration history check. Sometimes your history may mean that we are not able to continue considering your application. Visit our Immigration and visas advice page for more information.

External student transfer policy

UAL accepts transfers from other institutions on a case-by-case basis. Read our Student transfer policy for more information.

Alternative offers

If your application is really strong, but we believe your strengths and skillset are better suited to a different course, we may make you an alternative offer. This means you will be offered a place on a different course or at a different UAL College.

Deferring your place

We do not accept any deferral requests for our postgraduate courses. This means that you must apply in the year that you plan to start your course and you will not be able to defer your place to start at a later date.

Application deadlines

For postgraduate courses at UAL there are 2 equal consideration deadlines to ensure fairness for all our applicants. If you apply ahead of either of these deadlines, your application will be considered on an equal basis with all other applications in that round. If there are places available after the second deadline, the course will remain open to applications until places have been filled.

Careers

All our postgraduate courses offer career development, so that you become a creative thinker, making effective contributions to your relevant sector of the fashion industry.

LCF offers students the opportunity to develop Personal and Professional Development (PPD) skills while studying through:

  • Access to to speaker programmes and events featuring alumni and industry.
  • Access to careers activities, such as CV clinics and one-to-one advice sessions.
  • Access to a graduate careers service
  • Access to a live jobsboard for all years.
  • Advice on setting up your own brand or company.