We encourage students to creatively question, explore and develop work that addresses the shifts in the world of commodity objects. Our scope encompasses batch production to the unique hand-made artefact. An integrated approach bringing together ideas and intellectual exploration with the physical act of making, using high- and low-tech facilities within the design development process, offers students opportunities for invention and innovation not available to other ways of working.

The department’s philosophy is to place the critically and culturally aware applied artist and designer at the centre of the applied arts arena, creating objects and adornments that play a part in shaping our identities and the aesthetics of today.

We expect students to challenge the norms and question conventions, interrogating the role and purpose of objects and adornment through the development of a personal approach to researching, experimenting, designing and making in the context of an increasingly complex object culture.

Above all, we celebrate diversity and the magic of making stuff.