Drama in Higher Education Design Studies

Drama tools, devising, process drama, and performative inquiry are powerful tools in higher education design studies, especially in fashion and costume, by fostering creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking. Drama focuses on versatile voices via exploring individual experiences.  

Drama specialist Matti Halén and Heini Haapaniemi together with service designer Kati Viljakainen piloted a hero characterization workshop consisting of several drama tool tests with Xamk graphic design 4^th year students. Based on co-selected descriptive hero adjectives participants sketched quickly the colors and shapes that best describe the word. The pic demonstrates the outcomes which were processed with Midjourney to produce the first images of heroes and heroines. 

Drama pedagogy in fashion and costume design supports character-driven design, helping to develop costumes and fashion concepts that enhance storytelling and express emotion. Drama engages in role-playing activities, allowing participants to step into different perspectives to create more inclusive and meaningful designs.  

Further plans in higher education: Devising for creative exploration enables students to generate collaborative, iterative designs through improvisational techniques, used later on in residencies especially for art installations with digital elements and digital characters in physical space. Devising encourages versatile voices and multi-disciplinary approaches, integrating movement, sound, and digital fashion tools into the design process.  Devising provides a framework for experimental fashion presentations with immersive, narrative-driven experiences. 

Performative Inquiry in digital and physical spaces encourages students to explore the performative aspect of garments, considering how designs interact with the body and audience. Integrates digital avatars and virtual performances, using tools like CLO3D, Unreal Engine, or AR/VR for speculative design projects. Examines fashion as a cultural and political statement, using performance as a medium for activism, diversity, and social change. 

Drama tools encourage embodied learning with sensory richness, cognitions and body-mind connection. Stories are enlivened by stepping into someone else’s shoes.  

A pool of inspirational material for designers is created by integrating youngsters’ interpretations of ecological everyday heroes from local schools in Finland, Estonia and Spain.