Role
Tina Downes is the Deputy Head of Department for Fashion, Textiles and Knitwear Design.
A key focus of her role, is to work with academic teams to design and operationalise exciting new curriculum; ensuring a high quality of student experience; creating opportunities for personalised learning aligned to student aspiration. She ensures innovations in fashion and textile design are integrated into courses through research informed teaching, with values of decolonization, sustainability, creative risk-taking, collaboration and employability. She supports curriculum that extends beyond the university, connecting internationally with the creative industries and design professionals.
Tina is responsible for maintaining departmental academic standards and ensuring equality of access for all students. She is a member of a number of Art and Design Learning and Teaching Development Groups, related to collaborative curriculum and personal tutoring. She is the case officer for escalated student support to study issues, liaising with student support services and is chair for cases of academic appeals and irregularities.
Tina has extensive experience of teaching and leading fashion and textiles curriculum at all levels of undergraduate and postgraduate taught provision, including postgraduate research supervision and assessment. In recognition of inspirational teaching, Tina has previously won the Vice Chancellor’s Teaching Award for the School of Art and Design.
Career overview
Prior to her Deputy Head role, Tina was the Course Leader and Principal Lecturer responsible for the management of the Textile Design staff team and student experience on the multi-disciplinary textile design course incorporating print, embroidery, knit, weave and multi-media. Student satisfaction levels were consistently high during the term of her leadership.
Research areas
Tina Downes has a Master’s degree in Education. Her research focussed upon the development of Communities of practice in a design context, the social nature of design learning and factors that enhance student engagement.
From a textile design perspective, her research interests lie in the field of digital embroidery, smart materials and advanced textiles. Specifically the aesthetic integration of new technologies and material interfaces within a collaborative design context; working across disciplines to stimulate innovation and explore synergies in creative practice; considering the potential for expression and enhancement of wellbeing. Tina has worked on multi-disciplinary e-textiles projects with pattern cutters, interaction designers, games programmers, textile designers, participatory arts practitioners, and mental health workers. Projects such as these, explore concepts of presence and wellbeing through tactile and responsive textile forms. They aim to develop new design methodologies to incorporate e-broidery and processing interfaces, and enable co-design scenarios with diverse communities.
External activity
Tina is currently the external examiner for Textile Design at Edinburgh College of Art. She was previously external examiner for BA Printed Textiles and Surface Pattern and BA Textile Practices at Arts University Plymouth; and the PhD programme in design at Politecnico di Milano. She has also been a panel member for course validation partnerships for the Open University.
Sponsors and collaborators
- Worshipful Company of Weavers.
- Worshipful Company of Dyers.
- Chartered Society of Designers.
- SPINEXPO International Yarn Trade Exhibition, Shanghai, New York, Paris, London.