Course overview
Hone your business and management skills specifically for a future career in the fashion industry, with this year-long top-up BA (Hons) Creative Industries Management in Fashion degree course at UCA Epsom.
Equivalent to the final year of an undergraduate degree, this course enables you to 'top-up' an existing qualification, such as a foundation degree or an HND. You'll join us at level 6 with your previous knowledge and accredited learning, achieving a greater level of independence with self-managed research, study and practice.
This course focuses on building on your existing business and management knowledge of the fast-moving fashion industry. You’ll learn about capturing and creating customer value, ethical behaviour and sustainability within fashion, and the place of entrepreneurship in the development of the industry.
What you'll
study
The content of the course may be subject to change. Curriculum content is provided as a guide.
Business Bootcamp 5: Research & Methodologies (all students)
This bootcamp is about examining research and methodologies and how this applies to your course. We will discuss the different methods by which you can elicit findings whether quantitative (informing by data) or qualitative (informing from opinions).
Business Seminar 4: Strategy & Decision Making (all students)
More than ever, we are facing the challenge of making decisions under uncertainty against the backdrop of external factors that we cannot control or predict. As leaders, managers and executives, making effective decisions in a time-conscious manner is crucial. This bootcamp will enable you to transform decision-making into a smart and insightful process, providing a robust framework of effective and replicable solutions for better decisions and awareness of decision traps, as well as learning how to assess and choose high-value strategic options under the current climate of enormous uncertainty.
Business Bootcamp 6: Developing Enterprise (all students)
This unit will provide you with the opportunity to develop your creative thinking skills in a collaborative environment, bringing greater understanding to how those ideas may develop and transform through product or enterprise development.
Degree Project (all students)
In this final unit, you will apply all you’ve learned to create a distinctive piece of work for your degree project, the purpose of which is to allow you to identify opportunities successfully in your specialist subject area to promote and to develop your career. Through research, you will independently identify and/or generate innovative opportunities within your specialist subject area. Your portfolio will consist of a series of outcomes that showcase your knowledge, and your key attributes and skills as a reflective creative practitioner. You will be expected to consider the theoretical and professional contexts of your exploration. It is important that your work is contemporary, innovative, and representative of its target audience and industry sector.
All students choose one unit from Fashion: Contemporary Issues or Lifestyle Goods: Contemporary Issues
Fashion: Contemporary Issues (elective unit)
To effectively inspire a team, gain clients’ confident and connect authentically with audiences, effective leaders in fashion need deep understanding of contemporary issues and opportunities. You’ll learn about the influences affecting consumer behaviour to enable you to advise clients credibly, and research and analyse diverse testimonies on experiences of work, creativity and collaboration.
Lifestyle Goods: Contemporary Issues (elective unit)
To effectively inspire a team, gain clients’ confident and connect authentically with audiences, effective leaders in the lifestyle industries need a deep understanding of contemporary issues and opportunities. You’ll learn about consumer lifestyles, free-time, self-image, and choices to enable you to advise clients credibly. And you’ll research and analyse diverse testimonies on experiences of work, creativity and collaboration in this specialised industry.
All students choose one unit from Fashion: Global Industry & Futures or Lifestyle Goods: Global Industry & Futures
Fashion: Global Industry & Futures (elective unit)
You’ll explore the concept of future thinking and its influence on the global fashion industry. Analysing influence from culture and society and predicting through recognition of global shifts and emerging trend manifestations, you’ll complete an in-depth study of the current macro environment and use the findings of this study to translate, validate and communicate a vision for the future of fashion.
Lifestyle Goods: Global Industry & Futures (elective unit)
You’ll the concept of future thinking and its influence on the global lifestyle industries, analysing influence from culture and society and predicting through recognition of global shifts and emerging trend manifestations. You’ll complete an in-depth study of the current macro environment, using the findings of this study to translate, validate and communicate a vision for the future.
All students choose one unit from Data Mining for Marketers or Predictive Analytics for Business.
Data Mining for Marketers (elective unit)
Data Mining focuses on the use of automation to uncover relationships within datasets that can be used to support improved decision processes. When employed in marketing, data mining will use customer, potential customer, supplier, and population data to reveal patterns in the data that have potential to improve the marketing process and outcomes. You’ll be introduced to the processes of data mining using various tools including descriptive statistics, including SPSS and R.
Predictive Analytics for Business (elective unit)
Predictive analytics is a domain of statistical analysis that allows an organisation to extract information from data to predict patterns and trends. This unit introduces predictive modelling and explains its application in business decisions. It focusses on a set of statistical techniques including regression modelling, cluster analysis and survival analysis.
Course specifications
Please note, syllabus content indicated is provided as a guide. The content of the course may be subject to change in line with our Student Terms and Conditions for example, as required by external professional bodies or to improve the quality of the course.
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Fees &
financial support
Tuition fees - 2024/25 entry
UK students:
- BA (top-up) course - £9,250
EU students:
- BA (top-up) course - £9,250 (see fee discount information)
International students:
- BA (top-up) course - £17,500
The fees listed here are correct for the stated academic year only, for details of previous years please see the full fee schedules.
Financial support
There are lots of ways you can access additional financial support to help you fund your studies - both from UCA and from external sources.
Discover what support you might qualify for please see our financial support information
UCA scholarships and fee discounts
At UCA we have a number of scholarships and fee discounts available to assist you with the cost of your studies.
You'll find everything you need to know for your level of study on our scholarships page.
Additional course costs
In addition to the tuition fees there may be other costs for your course. The things that you are likely to need to budget for to get the most out of a creative arts education will include books, printing costs, occasional or optional study trips and/or project materials.
These costs will vary according to the nature of your project work and the individual choices that you make. Please see the Additional Course Costs section of your Course Information for details of the costs you may incur.
Facilities
Business facilities include: dedicated studios and study areas, digital media suites equipped with Macs and PCs, programmed with specialist software such as Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver and After Effects and a modern library with a wealth of books, journals, special collections and online resources.
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Business School Studios, UCA Epsom
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Business School Studios, UCA Epsom
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Library, UCA Epsom
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Digital media suite, UCA Epsom
Career
opportunities
Graduates of this top-up course can expect to leave with an extensive knowledge of the fashion industry that can see them go on to work in the fashion industry under many different roles. These include:
- Project manager
- Fashion marketing
- Brand manager
- Textiles manager
- Buying and merchandising
- Customer insights manager
Your training on this course will prepare you for a wide range of postgraduate courses. We offer postgraduate opportunities in our Business School and we will help you find the correct course for you and support you in your application should further study be for you.

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Entry & portfolio
requirements
BA (Hons) course (top-up)
The standard entry requirements* for this course are:
- 240 credits from a relevant degree (120 credits at level 4 and 120 credits at level 5), with a minimum of 55% overall
- Foundation Degree in a relevant subject
- Higher National Diploma in a relevant subject
And/or Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning (APEL)
In recognition that you may already have a relevant professional qualification, or appropriate working experience in the relevant industries, APEL may be accepted for entry on to the course. This will be based on the partnership articulations and will be assessed on a case by case basis.
Other relevant and equivalent Level 3 UK and international qualifications are considered on an individual basis, and we encourage students from diverse educational backgrounds to apply.
Portfolio requirements
This courses does not require a portfolio. If you receive an offer, you’ll be invited to attend an Applicant Day where you can meet the course team and learn more about the course.
*We occasionally make offers which are lower than the standard entry criteria, to students who have faced difficulties that have affected their performance and who were expected to achieve higher results. We consider the strength of our applicants’ portfolios, as well as their grades - in these cases, a strong portfolio is especially important.
BA (Hons) course (top-up)
The entry requirements for these courses will depend on the country your qualifications are from, please check the equivalent qualifications for your country:
Any additional entry requirements listed in the UK requirements section, e.g., subject requirements, work experience or professional qualifications, also apply to international applicants applying with equivalent qualifications.
Portfolio requirements
This courses does not require a portfolio. If you receive an offer, you’ll be invited to attend an Applicant Day where you can meet the course team and learn more about the course.
English language requirements
To study at UCA, you'll need to have a certain level of English language skill. And so, to make sure you meet the requirements of your course, we ask for evidence of your English language ability, please chcek the level of English language required:
Don't meet the international entry requirements or English language requirements?
You may be able to enter the course through the following entry pathways:
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