When Stephen Smith was young, he knew he wanted to be a filmmaker, but with A-levels in science, he found he couldn’t get a place at the film schools he was interested in. Instead of giving up, he found an unconventional solution.

“I found a university where I wanted to do film and I convinced the course leader that if I started doing chemistry in year one, and his course at the same time, that he would then let me on to his programme.” Unsurprisingly, with this kind of drive, Smith made it work and was soon studying for the film degree he’d wanted from the start. “I see that as being quite entrepreneurial,” he says, looking back. “The idea of finding solutions around problems was there pretty early on.”

Smith built an initial career in film production before joining academia, which has been his focus for the past 30 years and has most recently led to him co-founding fashion academy JCA in London alongside fashion designer Jimmy Choo.

The academy opened its doors in 2021, and while its courses are accredited by the University of West London, its approach is different from a typical university in a number of key ways. Most significantly is an emphasis on teaching design practice in tandem with how to run a design business. “Our approach was to create an academy that has only one single focus and that is supporting a specific outcome, which is that of an independent fashion designer,” explains Smith.

JCA offers a mix of foundation, BA, and MA courses. So far two sets of MA students have graduated, and from that cohort, the college has seen its graduates make connections with influential figures in wider popular culture, while grad Melissa-Kate Newitt picked up an emerging designer award in last year’s Northern Fashion Week.

Central to the teaching is its mix of design and entrepreneurship, plus an understanding of how to make a fashion brand work, and how to get it out into the world. It all starts, of course, with the garment. “[But] now, how do you produce 100 units of that garment and make sure that that’s either wholesale, or if you’re a B2C, how are you going to get it out to the consumer?” says Smith of the process. “That’s a very, very different language from how do you take this illustration from a two-dimensional form into a three-dimensional piece of work, but actually, if you’re going to be an independent designer you need to understand both of those different concepts.

If you’re really approaching higher education with what I believe is an authentic voice, then you need to look at what the learner is using that experience for

“The MA is set up where a designer will understand who they are as a designer; what their aesthetic is; understand which audience they want to work for; what excites that audience; and we then put them into a professional London Fashion Week show and we wrap all the PR around it.”

The number of courses on offer at JCA is deliberately limited, and the class sizes are also small. This is in opposition to the typical UK university model. “When university heads are simply creating numbers for courses that are popular, you’ve got to start asking quite serious questions,” says Smith. “Especially when the motivation appears to be around growth, growing huge numbers of students…. And then, really, the motivation is how many firsts we can achieve as a university.

“But if you’re really approaching higher education with what I believe is an authentic voice, then you need to look at what the learner is using that experience for…. If they’re doing graphic design courses, it’s because they want to be a graphic designer; if they’re doing a photography course, they want to be a photographer; if they were doing a fashion course, they want to be a fashion designer or somebody in that industry. And so you then approach higher education from the perspective of where does your potential learner want to be in five or 10 years’ time? And whatever the answer is, now let’s work backwards.”

Smith deliberately uses the word ‘learners’ instead of ‘students’ in order to try to get those who study at JCA to think differently about what they expect to achieve through education. “We try to lose some of the taxonomy that is present in the higher education system,” he explains. “Not for the sake of losing it, but it’s to do with how you self-identify. We ask learners not to self-identify as a student because as soon as they do, their behaviour towards what they’re doing changes.

“The 14 years of social engineering of education conforms to, ‘how do I get the first?’ So we ask them not to identify as students. They’re designers who are learning their craft. Our team are not lecturers, because they don’t stand and deliver to the masses. They facilitate and support and collaborate … there’s a different way of engaging.”

A significant proportion of the courses are taught by practitioners within the fashion industry who can offer personal experience of working at brands including Ted Baker, Celine LVMH, Roberto Cavalli, and more. In London, JCA operates out of a core building in Mayfair, where there are design studios and workshops, but the academy also has a secondary space in the recently restored Boston Manor in Brentford.

The smaller staff-student ratio means that JCA’s fees are more expensive than those of a typical university, but the academy does offer scholarships to allow those in all financial circumstances a way in, something that was important to Choo, who was born into a family of shoemakers in Malaysia and was initially taught his craft by his father.

“Our learners come from every part of the UK and beyond,” says Smith. “We’re blind to their financial circumstances at the point they apply, as what we’re interested in is them and their skills and where they want to get to.”

There’s a much greater appetite today of young people wanting to drive their own agenda

While the London academy is only two years old, there are plans to open a JCA in Shanghai before the end of this year and further ambitions for expansion into Dubai, Europe, and the US.

These new sites will offer new opportunities for those studying at JCA, and after they’ve graduated. “If a designer in London wants to capitalise on Asia, then by going across to Shanghai and showing in Shanghai as well as London, through the umbrella of the academy as a facilitator, that gives them global exposure. It also means we’re able to attract designers worldwide to participate in this network opportunity.”

Smith feels strongly that the academy’s offering of producing graduates who are ready to go directly into industry, but with a supportive network of collaborators behind them, chimes well with the desires of young designers today, as well as the conditions of the market, where there are more opportunities now for small businesses. And it’s easy to see how other areas of design and creativity could benefit from a similar approach.

“There’s a much greater appetite today of young people wanting to drive their own agenda,” he says. “[And] social media channels have allowed a level of individual taste to be so strong and so prevalent, that it allows new designers to flourish.

“Because, while those big [fashion] houses will still exist, the likelihood of another big house developing over the next 10 to 20 years is very slim, whereas new designers that are able to create medium-sized companies – or companies they can sustain comfortably for themselves, without even getting venture capital funds – are now significantly higher.”

jca.ac.uk