AOD goes global with Northumbria UK

Academy of Design (AOD), Sri Lanka’s international design campus offering undergraduate education in fashion, fashion marketing, graphics, interior and animation design, is now the only campus in South Asia to offer Northumbria’s award winning design degrees. At a recently held gathering at the AOD campus Colombo, an independent Approval Panel nominated by Northumbria with UK QA, evaluated AOD’s faculty qualifications, teaching standards, campus facilities and vision in par with Northumbria school of design – one of Europe’s top five ranked design educators.

Further, AOD and Northumbria School of Design established the Colombo campus as the South Asian partner for Northumbria school of design operations in the region. The report forwarded by the approval panel expressed confidence in AOD. An excerpt from this report states; Impressed with the focus on sustainability and local creative industries – the contribution made to society was to be commended, student centred atmosphere is excellent and is to be commended, there is excellent work with industry which it is clear strengthens the employability of the students, Impressed with the planned investment in facilities and equipment.
With this joint initiative, AOD will be exporting creative education to the rest of South Asia, taking a momentous step in establishing Sri Lanka as a regional education hub. With AOD offering Northumbria’s outstanding degree programmes to South Asian youth, there is now a greater chance for young designers to become globally accepted designers with a professional license to work anywhere in the world.
AOD’s MD Linda Speldewinde said that this international approval is a much awaited one for AOD; “We have been working toward this goal for a long time. This validates AOD’s global standards and our commitment to delivering the best available design education to South Asia. Our future plans are to make it easier for South Asian students to study design through AOD; this includes international feeder programmes and student transfers etc.” AOD hopes to launch its international feeder-programme starting with Maldives and Bangladesh to allow students from these countries to complete the initial stages of design education in their homelands.
As a pioneer in offering professional design education in the country, AOD is committed to being a creative and driving force towards the development of Design as an academic discipline in Sri Lanka and South Asia, gearing students with the necessary skills to face the challenges posed by today’s competitive design business environment.