Nottingham Trent University

To visit Nottingham Trent University, we travelled up on Friday the 8th of November on a mammoth 5 hour journey ready for the open day on Saturday. We met up with my aunt, who was visiting her daughter who studies at the university, on friday evening where my cousin showed us around Nottingham city center. We had dinner at Jamie's Italian, followed by a cocktail at Coco Tang, a lovely cocktail bar in the town across the road from Jamie's. At the end of the night I went back to stay at my cousins accomodation in the Gill Street Halls in her flat for the night, this gave me the opportunity to look at this accomodation, and get a taste of what it's like to stay in University halls. The following day we were up early for breakfast and the 10am registration for the open day, we attended talks and looked around various buildings, my notes are below.

University and city:

• Lovely city
• Good high street
• University cituated in city center
• Beautiful old buildings mixed with new buildings 
• Gill street accommodation is perfect but £126-148 per week
• Other accommodation not so good
• 3 hours from home
• New large library
• Good student union

Graphic Design:

• 57% foundation students 35% A Level students
• Live briefs
• High profile collaborations
• High employment rate
• Competitions
• 3 days a week studio contact time 
• 5000 word dissertation and creative portfolio 
• 145 students I'm course, broken down for workshops
• Transferable skills
• Really nice studio
• Macs in studio

Portfolio:

Show creative thinking: ideas, experimentation, problem solving process- visually

Digital portfolio

Fashion Design:

• Focused on teaching traditional garment construction
• Visiting specialist lecturers
• International study exchange, 6 months in second year, have to have 7k in bank at time
• Top 3 applicants for fashion design- 12-1400 applicants for a 75 intake
• Yr1- 2 major projects, weekly tutorials, weekly drawing and CAD
• Project 1- uses white, produce a garment, life, paper, 3D manufacturing
• Project 2- sustainable live project, photoshop, illustrator
• Yr 2- 2x 2week electives e.g forecasting, journalism, visual presentations
• Team project industry menswear tailoring e.g ted baker, topman
• 2nd project individual work, portfolio to garment
• Competitions- old navy, A&F- 3 paid internships $800 per week
• 3rd year- dissertation draft by Xmas
• Collection 4-6 gramsnts or product (min 3 garments) magazine, brands, graphic
• Tokyo, Paris and London fashion week
• 93% in employment
• 280 Ucas points or foundation
• Well equipped with specific machines
• Time for part time work
• No macs in fashion area
• Specialist workshop rooms, some shown on the sign below

As I felt quite unwell on this particular weekend I found it difficult to concentrate during the talks and didn't engage with them as much as I would have liked to. However I found the fashion talk and course more inspirational than the graphics and really interesting in terms of course content. and the opportunity to do product for the 3rd year final is really appealing. I'm considering applying for the Fashion course for 2014.