Enhancing Student & Tutor Experience Through Entry in Fashion & Design Competitions

Donna Dinsdale, Pip Crombie and Gill Brocas have recently completed a study of the student learning that can be gained from participating in fashion industry competitions.

Industry competitions are a feature of most creative sectors, with opportunities for learners, teachers and organisations to grow capability and showcase expertise.

While entering external competitions used to be a feature of fashion studies at Bay of Plenty Polytechnic (Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology), this has not been included since the institution began offering the Bachelor of Creative Industries degree in 2014.

The researchers evaluated the impact of having a tutor enter the World of Wearable Arts competition and share the development phases with students, inviting their input, feedback and reflections as “peripheral observers” (Hoadley, 2004) in the process, with a view to informing their own entry into national competitions.

They hypothesised that the students’ growing sense of design accountability, and focus on their specific field of interest, would contribute to the real world experience gained while studying at our institution and increase their employability as graduates.