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This London College of Fashion footwear design summer school programme will encourage you to be as experimental as possible.
Footwear today operates within a highly competitive market, a lot goes into making a single pair of shoes to support performance, function, desirability, and foot health. This 8-week footwear design study abroad summer school programme will develop your design skills both practically and technically. You will benefit from a diverse range of expert tutors and support staff, which makes us one of the foremost global fashion education establishments. We offer a unique and dynamic learning environment, within which you will develop and enhance your individual potential and design ethos. Our team of specialist tutors, combine their teaching with professional consultancy and freelance industry work, guaranteeing you are informed of current industry practice, to develop and embed into your own projects and outcomes.
In Footwear Design, you will be immersed in discussions about colour, fabrication, materials, speed designing, as well as learning about the business of shoes, from consumer needs, manufacturing to distribution and sustainability processes. You will interpret your creative ideas, finding design solutions at the same time as being aware of commercial restraints. As climate awareness is very important at UAL, you are encouraged to be as experimental as possible on footwear design and consider processes of reuse, upcycling, and recycling materials.
Applications are closed for 2025. Sign up for updates for Summer 2026.
Date: To be confirmed for 2026
Cost: To be confirmed for 2026
Credit value: 12 credits
Duration: 8 weeks
Location: Carpenters Rd
Looking for a Summer 2025 course? Sign up for Introduction to Fashion Design instead.
You should be proficient in written and spoken English and be able to participate in group discussions and make presentations. As a guideline we would expect you to have an English language level equivalent to IELTS score of 6.0.
More information on English language requirements and equivalencies.
This course is aimed at those studying at university.
If you are not studying at university you may prefer to book a place on our ‘Footwear Summer School’. This practical hands-on course is designed for those looking to gain new skills, move up the career ladder or start a business.
This 8-week footwear design study abroad summer school programme is taught in specialist workshops, and design studios where you'll learn through practical experimentation and the application of technical skills. There is a focus on sketching, developing your drawing style through mixed media to visually communicate your research and design process, with additional technical drawing (RHINO for footwear) to render and communicate your 2D designs. You will learn about materials and their properties, experiment through deconstruction, and understand the importance of foot analysis, foot anatomy, how to measure the foot and fitting.
In this course there are introductions to fashion forecasting, colour, collection and range planning. You will develop skills in pattern laying, cutting, gaining technical knowledge how to assemble and realise your designs into 3D samples. You will also be introduced to digital skills which align to industry requirements. Across this entire 12 credit programme, you will learn about The Last and make a prototype pair of basic shoes.
Some course unit details, and schedules are subject to change as we continually make improvements to align best industry and educational practice. Email studyabroad@arts.ac.uk for most up-to-date information.
During this course you will be taking the following units for a total of 12 credits:
Please read the course unit page for information on the individual units.
All courses are assessed and you'll receive a record of study at the end of the programme if you wish to request credit from your home institution.
When you apply you will need to include a Personal Statement and a Portfolio.
Explain why you have chosen to Study Abroad at UAL, what you plan to get out of your Study Abroad experience and how this fits into your personal goals. Your Personal Statement should be short, around 300-500 words.
Please respond to the following questions:
For your portfolio, submit a selection of 5 images. The work you include should show your creative thinking and personal research.
Eelko Moorer is Course Leader for MA Footwear at London College Fashion, independent practice-based researcher, and an artist-designer with his own studio practice crafting ideas into artefacts. His work investigates the interplay between the (trans-) personal experience, methodologies and processes of making, and their relations to the meanings that these designed objects evoke and invoke.
What do the viewer and user experience? What are the emotional energies stimulated by and projected onto objects when they are opened up to more than one interpretation? The resulting ambiguity, or in-between spaces, by being both essence and ‘other’ open-up possibilities, and make an audience question the object’s authenticity, but also the nature, origin and limits of their own knowledge.
He sees the combination of hand-making and allegorical references in his works as a form of “the craft" that shapes both maker and user. Humour is employed as a stylistic device to induce joy and emphatic effect. This enhances dialogue between object, user and its place in culture. In this way the craft element in his work is both linguistic and experiential.
His current research explores how intersections and relationships between creation myths and the creative process can inform practice-based design and research methodologies through active imagination, and how this could increase individual consciousness. In his academic research and teaching practice the above translates into questions of how learning experiences can be enhanced through performative teaching and the design of learning tools encouraging critical awareness through design? So his research and teaching practice participate in discourses aiming to spark new and different ways of thinking through design practice.
Moorer lectures, gives workshops and offers consultancy for education programs on the creative process, conceptual and critical thinking. His practice and output include designs for industry, bespoke and catwalk pieces, interior design objects for galleries, installation, performance and short film.
His work has been exhibited internationally in places such as The Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, MAD Paris, FIT New York, Saatchi Gallery London and with the British Council and Design Museum London.
Register interest for 2026
Email us
A series of units aimed at fashion design, product and industrial design students wishing to push their creativity and expand their skills to make inspired fashion products for real people
Study from 3 to 8 weeks on one of our summer programmes.
We caught up with Zach about his experience studying abroad.
@ualstudyabroad
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