DOI: 10.1515rae -2017 -0027 Review of Artistic Education no. 14 2017 217-220 [625100]

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DOI: 10.1515/rae -2017 -0027 Review of Artistic Education no. 14 2017 217-220

11. MODERN TEACHING METH ODS IN CREATIVE WORK SHOP
FASHION DESIGN COURS ES

Ondina -Oana Turturică93

Abstract : The aim of this article is to specify and exemplify the stages of the creative process
in fashion design courses and workshops, with a focus on a few learning methods exploring
the creative potentia l through content and visual analysis processes as well as more practical
techniques and methods in the area of fashion design and applied arts. From scientific
documentation to pedagogical experiments, a range of methods have been used to enable
students fulfill their learning objectives and reach the apex of professional competence.
Key words : method, teaching, design, visual, creativity

1. Introduction
The Bologna Process triggered a reformation in the higher education system
and with it, a greater mobility for both professors and students. The content of
this article is focused on presenting some of the contemporary teaching methods
applied in the creative workshop fashion design courses. The specifications and
examples are based on the practical ac tivities carried out in the fashion design
department. However, they remain valid for all the creative industries where
fashion design professionals need to be formed, including activities and methods
that take into consideration the current higher educati on changes, whereby a
“functional reactivation between the educational supply and employers‟
demand” is mandatory.
Bearing this in mind, our academic mission would be to consolidate the
knowledge accumulated and forge competencies so that the new generation
stands out through socially active creative designers. The creative process within
the fashion design workshops comprises the documentation on a given theme or
subject, through images and texts, research on various alternatives, options and
standpoints of other authors (artists). All these enable students to generate new
ideas and content on the given subject.
The ideas generated throughout the creative process via the reformulation
of new concepts, hypotheses and creative solutions, are ultimately evaluated in
order to assess their functionality and validity in the context under discussion.
Therefore, the students can make use, during the workshops or self -study hours,
of the creative skills which uniquely benefit their understanding and can apply
creative techniques and elements, assimilating in this context the psycho –
ergonomic factors, based on the learning methods used through processes such
as imagination and attention.

93 Assistant PhD., ”Aurel Vlaicu” University from Arad, Romania , email: [anonimizat]
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2. Discussions
Thus, structure and metaphor are dissociat ed and immersed in themes,
through new creative forms, into projects based on the visual and applied arts
through a continuous attempt to reorganize the knowledge gained, combine and
recombine, with the final purpose of accomplishing the goals set and gain ing
new working skills, transposition methods and techniques through imaginative
and innovative mechanisms. Such creative mechanisms mostly depend on
selective orientation and concentration on the psychological processes, for an
understanding of the work t echniques and of the visual content input provided
by the teacher. The process of managing attention as effectively as possible
relies to a great extent on the teacher‟s but also on the student‟s capacity to
concentrate, to become flexible and a multi -tasker. Against this backdrop, one
can see that the cognitive and affective processes are also necessary aside from
attention, motivation and personal talent, in an attempt to make use as much as
possible of both the psychological and biological functions, for the
determination of an optimal result in the accumulation of practical and
informative skills.
Therefore, in the approach and teaching methods used, the teacher has to
take into account students‟ personality, i.e. their thought process, memory,
imagination, attention and ways of rendering perception. Creative thinking
stems out of the stimulation of new ideas through knowledge, analysis and
reinterpretation of other ideas but also through collaboration, to obtain cultural
and social diversity. The refore, the teaching methods need to be adapted from
group to group, as diversely as possible, bearing in mind the students‟ creative
potential, their adaptation and perception level, during the teaching sessions.
The capacity of being creative resides in original ideas, which gain value when
developed in a given context, taking into consideration various external factors
that influence the fashion object‟s projection both aesthetically and functionally.
This is possible by applying new transposition techni ques via software
applications and digital technologies used in the development and projection of
a new fashion concept, which includes a variety of visual aspects through the
new digital technologies.
Just as Sir Ken Robinson (2009, pp. 22-26) stated, “creativity is a process
which requires certain skills, science, control, inspiration and imagination”. It
involves affective, cognitive and pragmatic processes that demand adaptation to
the theme of a certain language, for skill and interest divers ification as well as
student motivation. Receiving and understanding the input content by the
student through active participation in line with the delineated objectives takes
place most of the times through the production of clothing items that get to be
promoted through new communication ways or, in the case of the “object –
design” concept – the clothing ensemble becomes a ready -made object
introduced in the artistic circuit. Thus, fashion adopts as expression, forms and
artistic experiment activities whic h catapult it into the artistic circuit, reimaging
it as a work of art through a well -defined artistic language. The result of such
combinations is a form modification, according to the model of “installation” in
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art, whereby clothing items are recontextua lized in the terms of contemporary
society and its necessities.
Therefore, the learning process during the workshops is based on
contemporary educational principles, drawing on praxeological concepts,
through an active participation and learning o r through the “componential
construction” construct, whereby content structure is grouped on sections that
can trigger individual learning efficiency. The input received from the teacher is
not fragmented but unified into an informational whole, having in mind the level
of students‟ in each group. In the present article, we will continue with the
presentation of two teaching methods successfully used in our creative
workshops. These are the MIAC method (learning through content analysis) and
the MHM method (mental chart method). Both are used to prevent the
exploitation of the symbolic and constructive potential in order to encourage
student creativity.
The MHM method is successfully applied as a functional unity of the
mental image, making use of re cognizable signs and symbols – in our case
through an imagistic variety where emphasis is put on the particularization of
the clothing items‟ functionality, according to the theme discussed. Thus,
students‟ are free to create a costume in line with their o wn plastic fantasy
through a formal compositional model, which allows reconstruction through
revocation in an innovative manner, for the production of new mental
associations. These mental representations, which are used from documentation
phase of the stu dy theme, transmit (according to M. Joly in his paper published
in 1998), “the thinking essence through a condensed message”, which ultimately
helps the student to complete the pretext sketches, giving the costume (clothing
or decorative piece) a meta sign ification which goes beyond its symbolic
function reaching the concept of “status symbolus” of the clothing item analyzed
from both a sculptural as well as a visual and semantic perspective.
Through the initial contextual associations, the student will have the
impression of “composition”, i.e. of a predictable mental structure, set to help in
fulfilling the image analogies wherein form authenticity is condensed as well as
the symbolic content of the analyzed visual image in the given context at th at
moment. Therefore, images and symbols are unified forming “frames” founded
on the sign-symbol binomial relationship, through a semiotic with a coded
plastic language and communicational meaning, in which texture, colour and
painting develop certain asso ciations with aesthetic values, which represent
well-defined ideas whereby the teacher adopts a cognitive mediation role
towards the student, offering technical alternatives for the transposition of the
sketched object.
The qualitative MIAC method offers learning alternatives through the
productive research of images or texts, through the plastic language decoding of
the latter, through the evaluation and interpretation of the elements and aspects
under discussion – in this case, expressed through d ifferent styles, seen as self –
identity brands, which place the clothing item in its own symbolic system,
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operating at a social level through its own system, which needs to be interpreted
according to its specific forms.

3. Conclusions
This individu al study method entails, as a predominant orientation, the
contextual study of artistic work interpretation from a significance standpoint. In
order to improve the modernized curriculum for skill formation in students, the
dominant orientation will be base d on contextual, interpretative study of the
works for which the analysis criteria are based on their values, concept
significance and message interlinkage. In the student skill formation context, the
individual capabilities mainly targeted are the complet ion of form -content ,
intention -manner unity, message correlation with author intention, improvement
of the enrichment capacity of various practical concepts of innovation through
creative teaching strategies – learning to surpass intuitive uncertainty and
forming the capacity of correct message interpretation as well as symbol and
visual discourse.

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