Event and Experience Design - BA (Hons)

The Year in Industry gives you an opportunity to gain relevant workplace experience as part of your programme of study. We have long recognised the benefits of taking a year in industry and the increased awareness and confidence the experience brings, and now want to offer these benefits to students within the workplace.

The year in industry also gives you the opportunity to increase your contacts and network so that you can hit the ground running when you graduate.

The year in industry is in addition to your standard undergraduate programme and normally falls between your second and final year. The year itself is assessed on a pass/fail basis through employer feedback and a written report that you submit.

Knowledge and understanding

You gain knowledge and understanding of:

• the historical antecedents, forms, traditions and developments of the discipline (including key practitioners and theorists), and the critical and theoretical paradigms that have emerged from those developments and histories
• the contribution made by design (primarily spatial and visual) to the experience, and communication of meaning in events, experiences, exhibitions, performances and related practices
• cultural and contextual factors influencing a designer/producer’s choices, and the reader/viewer’s reception.
• the elements that contribute to the wider project and impact upon design decisions, such as production issues, health and safety, practicality; architecture of performance spaces, texts, theatre structures, brand identity, narrative requirements, related technologies and visitor experience
• visual and spatial literacy: understanding the elements of design for events, performances and experiences (including space, time, character/costume, symbol, colour, form, audience/visitor experience and flow)
• cultural policies and their effect on practice and production, and the contribution of events to public culture and arts, local and regional identity
• the processes and operational and organisational structures encountered when making events and designs
• the contribution of experiences and events to brand identity, distinctiveness and commercial value
• professional, managerial and contractual issues which underpin practice, facilitating you to operate as design professionals.

Intellectual skills

You develop the following intellectual skills:

• reading, understanding and engaging critically in an independently minded way with major ideas, intellectual and creative paradigms, scholarly literature and issues and debates within the area of event and experience design, performance, cultural policy and public arts, heritage and leisure experiences, design of brand experiences
• demonstrating a systematic understanding of key aspects of the field of design for performance, events or experiences, and in places developing detailed knowledge at the forefront of the discipline
• synthesising information from a number of sources (written, visual, aural) in order to develop and present a coherent understanding of theory and practice
• analysing and articulating the relationship between theory and practice
• critiquing and evaluating designs and creative processes, both your own and of others, and developing your own practice in that light
• evaluating and researching sources of information and evidence, and methodologies, and deploying them appropriately
• informatively documenting the stages of development of a creative project in a manner that records the intellectual and practical experimentation undertaken
• conceiving design as a processual practice from idea to outcome, characterised by stages of development, testing and refinement.

Subject-specific skills

You gain the following subject-specific skills:

• the generation of ideas, concepts, proposals and solutions for designs for events, experiences, installations and performances, appropriate to their brief, text, location/site and context
• the employment of media, techniques, methods and tools needed to develop, interrogate and communicate your design ideas
• the use of digital design aids to advance the development and communication of the design idea, using a range of event technologies and performance-related software
• the selection, manipulation and testing of the elements of design (material, space, time, form, image, colour, symbol) in order to develop the design idea 
• the employment of lighting and other forms of AV to enhance the design or event
• the use of design to evoke place, story, atmosphere, theme
• an understanding of the needs, opportunities and challenges offered by project catalyst (text, brief, site)
• making effective use of the space provided for the event/performance/experience and to effectively manipulate the relationship between the viewer/audience and the work within the space.

Transferable skills

You gain the following transferable skills:

• exercising initiative and personal responsibility
• communication: researching, analysing and synthesising information, debates and discourses with clarity and appropriate terminology; identifying possible bias and distortion, responding perceptively to contributions for others, making sustained and reasoned argument; communicating complex information in writing, verbally and visually in a form and manner that suits the purpose for both specialist and non-specialist audiences; writing extended documents of an academic or vocational nature using appropriate protocols and ensuring accurate presentation
• teamworking: planning working methods and structures (as a team) to ensure the achievement of intended outcomes; negotiating goals and managing differences; reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of the team (individually and collectively), feedback the results of this review and developing strategies for improvement where necessary while being sensitive to the views of others; working in a team on creative, research and technical projects
• problem-solving and managing resources: generating and deploying a variety of ways to tackle creative and practical problems, identifying best options; managing projects in such away as to avoid or anticipate problems, and to have problem-solving strategies in place should they occur; monitoring the efficacy of problem-solving strategies
• reflecting upon and improving your own learning: managing your time and workload effectively, meeting deadlines and planning effective working methods; seeking and using feedback and support and identifying ways to improve learning; monitoring and critically reflecting on what is being/has been learned, relating learning in one area or module to learning in others
• use of information technology: to send and retrieve information; to use the world wide web efficiently as an information source and research tool, being aware of its pitfalls as such a source; create wordprocessed documents using a range of style functions; use graphics programmes to create plans, images and publicity material; use a spreadsheet for budget tracking; use IT where appropriate for entertainment system control
• application of numbers: keep accurate accounts; work in a variety of measurement scales; convert units of measurement; find areas, perimeters and volumes; derive angles using basic trigonometry.