Course Title:
Design for Theatre (15 x 1 year part time) - BTec Professional Development Certificate (PDC)
Validating Body: EDEXCEL
Hours per week: 10.00 - 4.30 on Thursdays throughout the year and Complementary Practice on Saturdays for 12 weeks only (September - December)
Places: 15
Entry requirements: Interview and portfolio
Minimum age: 19
Closing Date: Modular course - students can enrol throughout the year
Principal: Barbara Holm
Course Leaders: Carol Nayler

Course Descriptions:
Aim of the course
Design for Theatre is part of the 3-D Art & Design department at Westminster Adult Education Service, which has excellent studio facilities. The importance of a creative and experimental approach is emphasised and you are encouraged to develop your design skills through project based work. This one day per week modular course is unique to WAES and is taught by practising professionals with a wide range of expertise. This ensures that we keep up to date with progress and that you develop the relevant skills. Whilst students are encouraged to enrol for the whole PDC it is possible to take individual units. Specialist training and professional experience are important in encouraging the subtlety and sensitivity that underlies the craft of designing for the theatre. A skilled designer can take a few unpromising objects and weave visual magic!

Module 1: Set Design
This course will develop your ability to communicate concepts and ideas in set design through drawing and model making. The projects focus on a way to research future projects; then on a particular text or narrative explored and extended through brainstorming sessions. The use of sketch models as a design tool is investigated together with storyboarding, technical drawing and the role of the presentation scale model as an accurate representation of the design solution. The importance of creativity and innovation will be emphasised as well as the practical details of design and you will be encouraged to develop a personal design methodology, a process, and a way of working.

Module 2: Character & Meaning
In this course you will develop and investigate the characterisation of costume though different genres using design skills both creatively and practically. You will be asked to become very aware of people; looking at individual aspects of identity used both as a tool for research, inspiration, and reality. The emphasis is on who or what is telling the story. Mask making is also part of this module both as a study in identity and history and as a practical exercise in developing and presenting the characters around whom the story evolves. Students work as a group to devise and video a short piece based on the mask characters.

Module 3: Costume Design
This course develops skills in defining and identifying costume as a specialist area of study. The emphasis is on an innovative approach to shape, colour, and texture explored through project based work. Drawing and 3D work in the form of maquettes back up the design process in which unusual approaches to the use of materials is encouraged rather than traditional fabrics; including the exploration of ways of joining without the use of sewing machines.

Module 4: Final Project
This comprehensive project brings together the previously acquired skills in a final major project for theatre. Emphasis is on the development of ideas and a problem solving approach to design interpretation and communication through model making, storyboards, ground plans and costume. In this module you have the opportunity to revisit areas of particular interest and apply them to the project in hand. The outcome is aimed at the student developing and illustrating a comprehensive design project.

Module 5: Complementary Practice
This unit provides complementary skills, which improve your ability to develop ideas into working designs. It encompasses intensive tuition in research skills, resource collecting and creative approaches to art and design. You will be introduced to a range of methods of manipulating 2 and 3-D forms, of recording the processes and presenting the end results. This module is intended to assist you in acquiring a personal design methodology as an invaluable foundation to all design work.

What will I gain from the course!
The skills acquired will enable you to develop your potential throughout the area of theatre and build a strong portfolio of project work. Group projects encourage collaborative team working skills, essential for working in this field.