Elizabeth Galloway
Education in Stellenbosch

Visit our website to learn more about our fashion design school. Elizabeth Galloway Academy of Fashion Design is based in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Personalised attention to individual students ensures growth and originality. Our goal is to empower learners through training and skills development, thereby allowing them to become economically independent and transfer their skills to others. The institution’s founder, Elizabeth Galloway, recognised that the fashion industry needed educated and well-trained individuals to maintain the high standards of the fashion industry, both locally and internationally. The academy was thus established in 1996 to address this need. Elizabeth is passionate about educating students and ensuring that they are equipped with the necessary skills to add value to the local industry, and also to make their mark internationally. Our mission, vision and goals are beautifully summed up in the phrase: from concept to consumer. After careful consideration, the academy’s founders and directors approved the mission statement, which underpins the planning and development of the learning programme. Through internal and external quality assurance, we are able to assess and review the institution’s mission and goals regularly. The concept of continuous learning is an integral part of the mission statement. Our goal is to enable graduates to work in the ever-changing local and international fashion industry through observation, discovery, continuous learning, self-evaluation and self-reflection. By developing these skills, graduates will hopefully be able to conceptualise their own cutting-edge designs and deliver them to the industry and consumers. The institution furthermore strives to produce a calibre of designer who is ready to enter the fashion industry with proficiency and confidence in the subject matter. By providing learners with an opportunity to develop practical, vocational, creative and commercial skills, our programme hopes to produce graduates who are able to work effectively in the industry and excel as fashion designers of the future. Furthermore, an emphasis on theoretical reflection creates insight and understanding, which allows facilitators to adjust their teaching strategies accordingly. More recently, the institution has started focusing on developing learners’ self-confidence so that they are able to cope with the demanding, fast-paced fashion industry. Simultaneously, the staff body has grown and existing staff members have been encouraged to further their studies. Our teaching and learning strategy is underpinned by the idea that teaching and learning should be reciprocal. The facilitators aim to provide learning and teaching that is relevant and heuristic. Learners are challenged through a brief, task or question in order to reach a certain outcome. Tasks are designed to promote creative learning, encourage portable skills and endorse informed and relevant choices. Evaluation of the outcomes through assessment and self-reflection helps in the overall preparation for work in the industry. Industry experience plays an important role in ensuring that training does not happen in a vacuum. The theoretical, practical component and experiential components play equally important roles in our teaching and learning strategy. Winkler (as cited in Norton, 2009) is in agreement with Ginns et al (as cited in Norton, 2009), as she reports the importance of theoretical reflection in creating insight and understanding, which allows facilitators to make different conceptual links in their teaching and learning strategies and students to integrate the knowledge.