Year one

Introduction to Design for Performance unit aims to introduce you to your course and its subject specialism as well as to effective learning and studentship at undergraduate level. It will orientate you to the practices and knowledge-base needed to understand your discipline and help you to develop your skills for independent & collaborative learning, reflection and your own self development. Students come from many diverse educational backgrounds and a part of this unit will enable to reflect on your own background and how that shapes the way you approach your course.

This Unit has three core purposes:

• To introduce you to your discipline in the context of study at a Higher Education level
• To introduce you to learning skills and the requirements of effective studentship at undergraduate level
• To orientate you within your course, the College and the University

Emphasis is placed on the skills needed to locate, navigate and communicate information and ideas effectively and appropriately. You will be introduced to resources that support your studies. We will also discuss studentship, the importance of being an engaged and participatory member of the group and your own personal and professional development.

Introduction to Hair, Make-Up and Prosthetics unit will introduce you to some of the fundamental principles and techniques in wide range of hair and make-up applications. You will be required to research and record processes and exploration of techniques and approaches in a visually appropriate and informative way.

The unit encourages your development in technical areas underpinned by an understanding of the principles of make-up, prosthetics, hair and wig technical processes as well as creative approaches to enhancing or altering the performing body. You will develop an understanding on how basic techniques can be used creatively and will be encouraged to develop an enquiring approach to the technical development of make-up and hair for performance.

Introduction to Cultural and Historical Studies unit introduces the Cultural and Historical Studies approach to fashion and related areas. The unit provides a broad overview of the subject and introduces key concepts and ways of thinking that will form the basis of subsequent study. It will also inform decisions regarding the Cultural and Historical Studies unit that is chosen for future study.

Better Lives

London College of Fashion, UAL (LCF) is a leader in fashion design, media and business education. We have been nurturing creative talent for over a century, offering courses in all things fashion. We encourage students to examine the past and challenge the present. To have inventive, assertive ideas that challenge social and political agendas. We give students the skills, opportunities – and above all, the freedom – to put those ideas into practice. By leading the way in fashion design, business, and the media, we influence culture, economics and our society. This unit will provide you with a solid understanding of LCF’ core values and how they connect to your practice. As part of this unit you will explore diversity, social responsibility and sustainability, themes which you will then apply to a selected project. At this stage the emphasis is on how you apply your thinking across these important themes to your practice. Your thinking is more important than a finished piece of work at this point. Fashion can change lives. Through teaching, specialist research, and collaborative work, this unit will get you thinking differently. We want you to use fashion to examine the past, build a sustainable future and improve the way we live. That’s why we call this unit ‘Better Lives’.

Collaboration One: Design & Production unit will provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate the progress you have made over the previous block, and will enable you to integrate knowledge and principles learned to date, it will also extend other areas of craft skill and design.
You will undertake research, design development and presentation principles within a collaborative project, working with students from across the Performance Programme.

Working together, you will design and realise characters from a script or text. Your characters will exist within an agreed group designed aesthetic. Through the application of 2D and 3D approaches and for Hair, Make-up and Prosthetics students, this should include the development and realisation of a character using appropriate materials and techniques learnt in both hair and make-up and be suitable for the group aesthetic.  
You will be encouraged to take an innovative approach to the realisation of your work using both experimental and traditional methods for a contemporary performance context.

Year two

You will study a Cultural and Historical Studies unit of your choice that will broaden or deepen your learning of areas relating to your interests in your chosen field. You will have the opportunity to participate in lectures, seminars and workshops with students from other courses within your School, and will read relevant academic texts and complete a formal academic essay for assessment.

Core Skill: Character and Design Development unit will introduce you to the contexts relevant to the research, design, hair and prosthetics processes for historical period productions. It will develop an awareness of research as the basis for creative design development and establish the relationship between research, design and realisation. You will research, develop and design for performance responding to a given narrative. The unit encourages development in technical areas underpinned by an understanding of the principles of prosthetic and wig production for character design and realisation. You will develop an understanding of how basic techniques can be used creatively and will be encouraged to develop an enquiring approach to the technical development of a creative character make-up design for a specific leading actor.

Situating Your Practice

Industry Project
This unit aims to develop your practitioner identity, and consider your personal manifesto for performance, by completing a performance proposal for a performance event around a location, and stimulus of your choosing.  This unit brings together the technical skills that you have developed and asks you to now take them further in a performance context. It will allow you to expand your understanding of the work of practitioners who you find useful, inspiring, and interesting, before then applying that knowledge in the creation of your own performance event.

Industry PlacementThis unit aims to develop your professional skills within an industry environment. On your placement you will be able to experience the pace, atmosphere and discipline of working in the industry. This will give you practical experience of the roles, functions and operations within the industry. The unit requires a minimum of 60 work placement hours.

LCF Careers provide career guidance and one to one opportunities starting in your first year at LCF, to help you plan ahead and prepare for your work experience. You will be expected to engage and be proactive in securing your own work experience and one that is suitable to your own personal development, skills, course requirements and career aspirations. This means producing an updated CV and directly applying to companies for work experience using LCF CAREERS LIVE, LCF’s own job board, as well as other resources. You will also be expected to feedback on your work experience after your work experience.

During the Collaboration Two: Interdisciplinary and Experimental unit you will collaborate with other students to design and realise characters for a narrative. Working in a small group you will choose a context for the performance. You are encouraged to look at a context you may not have designed for previously, such as film, television, dance, theatre, opera, music video, advertising or fashion film. You are encouraged to collaborate with performers and students from other disciplines.

Year three

Cultural and Historical Studies Dissertation

The overall aim of the dissertation is to provide an opportunity for you to demonstrate your understanding of the critical and analytical perspectives developed within cultural and historical theory and your ability to apply those perspectives in a specific study. You will research a topic of your choice that has relevance to the discipline of cultural and historical studies. This may relate to your course discipline, and should elaborate knowledges developed in prior cultural and historical studies units. You will undertake a substantial piece of structured primary and secondary research that critically engages with cultural issues relating to fashion, the body, performance, or the media and communications industries and which reflects on the critical debates and concerns addressed in your course.

Innovation and Design unit requires you to identify an area of personal interest and to then investigate, research and experiment to develop your concept and designs for realisation in the following Personal Performance Project unit. You will demonstrate your skills in the creation of an extensive body of work to show development and experimentation.

You should consider theoretical and professional contexts of your project, and the surrounding industries, to develop your chosen narrative and performance context.  You will develop an appropriate methodology and have the opportunity to explore new ideas, processes, take risks and experiment with design and production values, working to an intended performance location and audience.

The way that you structure your innovation and design work within this unit is up to you; for example, you may choose to focus on one line of enquiry, or explore a range of research and design avenues and methods.

Personal Performance Project

Building on your previous design portfolio created for the Innovation and Design unit, you will now execute the realisation of your designs. You will test your ability to respond innovatively to the challenges involved in your chosen performance context. This is an opportunity to demonstrate your specialist technical skills and specific interests through your individual body of work.

This unit will enable you to realise a personal response to your concept. The structure and outcome of your project will be determined by you. You will identify and construct individually negotiated outcomes to communicate your concept towards your chosen audience.

Modelling your Future unit will prepare you for a number of future employment or postgraduate opportunities.  It will expand upon your ability to articulate your practitioner identity.  You will reflect upon your professional and/or academic goals after having completed your Personal Performance Project to help you to position yourself creatively and to now construct your industry portfolio accordingly. This unit requires you to evaluate, restructure, and position your work effectively as you create a professional roadmap to your chosen future career.

Showing your work

All students are advised to set up a profile on portfolio.arts.ac.uk, UAL’s new portfolio platform, which can be done at any point during your time at LCF and will last for up to 12 months after graduation. This platform is often used to source student work for promotional use on the website, social media and for print and can be a great way of getting your work seen. You may also be asked to have a portfolio profile for the selection process when it comes to degree shows.