Overview
Here at UCA we’re proud to offer our students excellence in creative education. We are the highest ranked specialist creative university in The Guardian University Guide 2018 and the Complete University Guide 2018, and we are ranked 10th in the Red Dot Design (Design Concept) Universities Americas and Europe 2016 awards.
These accolades, combined with our unrivalled specialist craft and design workshop facilities across three historic locations - Farnham, Rochester and Hampton Court Palace - make studying craft and design at UCA a truly unique and exciting prospect.
Our experienced staff practitioners, educators, academics and technical teams all aim to help support you to achieve far beyond your expectations. The workshops are the vibrant heart of our hands-on student learning experience, where practical experimentation is a key part of your incremental development process.
You’ll be equipped with all the critical and technical skills necessary to express your personal viewpoint with confidence and to understand your own creative craft and design work within the broader subject context. Our students emerge from their experience at UCA as aspirational professionals, equipped with the potential not just to support the industry of craft and design, but to lead it forward into the future.
Crafts & Product Design courses
Crafts & Product Design courses are available to study at the following locations:
UCA Farnham
UCA Rochester
Royal School of Needlework
Not ready for an undergraduate degree?
Visit our pre-degree course page to find out how you can progress through to a degree.
Get a prospectus
Our undergraduate and pre-degree prospectus is bursting with information.
Open Days
Explore our campuses, facilities and creative courses at a UCA Open Day.
Virtual Tours
Take a look around our campuses and view 360 images of some of our creative studio spaces and workshops.
Careers in Crafts and Product Design
A course in Crafts & Product Design will expose you to a world of opportunities
Our courses in Crafts & Product Design offer you a springboard to a diverse range of career paths. Many of our graduates become self-employed designers, makers or practitioners, setting up their own businesses and also taking freelance commissions. Others go on to work in design, production, buying, marketing, retailing and teaching, galleries and curating.
Recent graduates have won roles as:
- Designer makers
- Textile designers and stylists
- Print designers
- Fabric technologists
- Public art practitioners
- Weave interior fabric designers
- Fabric and accessories coordinators
- Textile conservators and curators
- Art educators and teachers
- Fashion buyers and retailers
- Arts administrators
- Gallery directors
We enjoy strong connections with all the Worshipful companies (long-standing and modern trade associations and guilds), as well as an array of other leading names in the sector, including:
- Dartington Glass
- Salviati Murano Glass
- New Ashgate Gallery
- Farnham Maltings
- Keeler Gordon Design Studio
- LK Bennett Design Studio
- Paul Smith
- Mirjam Rouden
- V&A Museum
- Margo Selby
- Colfax & Fowler
- Westcott Design Studio
- Carol Waller
- Debenhams design department
- Nicola Killeen
- Savoir Beds, Mayfair
- Caggie Dunlop’s ISWAI
- Sacho Hesslein, Germany
- Ratti Spa, Italy
- Geist Magazine
- The Goldsmiths’ Company
- The Worshipful Company of Pewterers
- The British Art Medals Society
- Harriet Kelsall Bespoke Jewellery Design
- Solidscape
- RF Bright Ltd
Case studies
Find out what some of our students and graduates think about their time at UCA
"The technical staff you cannot fault, they’re absolutely brilliant. If you ever have a question, they’ve definitely got the answer for you and they’ll work with you to get what you want from the material, which is brilliant. The support that was available to make what I’ve achieved – it was absolutely amazing. I couldn’t have done it without the technical support. "
Rosie Wesley
BA (Hons) Glass, Ceramics, Metalwork, Jewellery, UCA Farnham, 2017
"It’s been a really amazing experience; I feel like I’ve met so many people from around the world, it’s a very diverse university and I love the fact that we have exchange students and that you get to know more people from around the world. It’s been a good three years."
Kristina Suryani
BA (Hons) Product Design, UCA Rochester, 2017