Calling all aspirant fashion designers!
Gert-Johan Coetzee’s alma mater, the Northwest School of Design, has just become
the first South African facility to offer a Licentiateship in Fashion, the
highest international fashion qualification in South Africa.
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| Gert-Johan Coetzee and Licentiateship student Prudence Kau |
This means that students at the Klerksdorp college has access to the kind of
practical, vocational training that equips young people with entrepreneurial
skills and a qualification from the prestigious City & Guilds of London,
that is welcomed anywhere in the world.
“The problem with many university and
college qualifications are that graduates leave with limited or no practical
experience, which makes them harder to employ, and usually also unable to make
a living as an entrepreneur. I am a massive fan of vocational training,” says
Coetzee, who employs one of the first participants in the licentiateship
programme, Prudence Kau.
A former beneficiary of Coetzee’s
bursary programme at NWSD, 20-year-old Kau finished her third year in 2015 and is
now receiving on-the-job training in the top designer’s Johannesburg studio. She
is very excited about the year ahead. “I started interning at Gert-Johan’s
studio just a week ago, and am already learning so much. And the best part is
that everything I learn this year will form part of the evidence I gather for
my assessment in the licentiateship programme. Everything is practical and
relevant.”
According to NWSD principal Marlene
Oosthuizen, all of Prudence’s fellow 2015 alumni, as well as the whole class of
2014 have enrolled for the Licentiateship. “They are all in first jobs, or have
even started their own businesses, and want the further polish this programme
offers to set them up in their careers,” she says.
The fourth-year Licentiateship programme
follows after three years of full-time study in either fashion design or
fashion communication and buying. Registration
for first-year studies close on 11 February.
For more information
call NWSD on 018 462 5149 or go to www.nwsd.co.za.
C
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