Be present on campus (even if you’re just hanging out in the smoking area)
Whether you go to campus at 9 am to nab the perfect seat in the library or you swing by at 6 pm to catch a drink at the student bar, it’s vital to make sure you’re spending a good amount of time on campus. Why? Other than the fact that it costs a lot of money to go to university, there are more positive aspects to campus life than just the education you are getting.
Sometimes, the true value of uni is the connections you make with others while you’re studying and the time you’re granted to experiment. In time, these connections will expand your professional network. Working relationships with a solid foundation in friendship can be very fruitful later down the line. Yodea, an MA student and menswear graduate explains that some of the people they met on their BA are still their collaborators. “A lot of the friends I made were at the student bar or in the smoking area,” they say. “Even if I already knew them from my course, it’s a different environment when you’re not in class.”
A word of warning, though: don’t sit too near the library entrance if you’ve got work to do, or you could end up chatting to people all day.
You can learn just as much from your peers as you can from your classes
Being close to your peers opens up the possibility of learning more from them and the different set of skills they bring with them. Yodea explains: “Coming into the BA, I was working mostly from the knowledge I already had about flat pattern cutting.” Learning from their peers helped them develop their own practice. “Asking ‘How did you do that?’ helped me be able to create the vision I wanted in my head,” they say.
Sometimes you don’t even know the knowledge you don’t have until you see how your friends work and what they are able to create. At the end of the day it’s important to remember they are not your competitors, but your potential collaborators: just look at Emma Chopova and Laura Lowena (of Chopova Lowena), who met while studying for their BA at Central Saint Martins.
Don’t neglect the city you live in
As important as it is to put in the work at uni, it’s also imperative you explore the world outside of campus. Fin, who graduated from their BA in womenswear in 2024, says she wanted to be a Londoner almost as much as she wanted to be a student. The tube at rush hour, of all places, even entered her design work: “I looked at the peak times on tubes and people dressing in suits ready to go to work, and I really took inspiration from the fluidity of that and the movement that they have.”
Final-year fashion journalism student Aliona emphasises the value of exploring the world outside your university bubble. “If you keep your head in your books, you’re constricted to the worldview that is already built around you,” she says. “It’s a real shame when people don’t leave the studio, because how are you going to contribute to a conversation if you’re just referencing what has already been done?” Her advice? Have fun. Party. Live life and bring that into your work. Networking in creative fields is often less about passing around business cards and more sharing Instagram handles in dimly lit smoking areas.
Get friendly with the technicians on day one
While there are a plethora of resources, with a finite amount of materials and workshop slots which get booked up quickly, you have to be nifty. Andie, a 2023 Fine Art graduate, tells me she knew before going to university that she wanted to learn how to work with metal. On her first day at university she took herself to the metal workshop, got an induction, and introduced herself to the art technicians.
By final year, Andie was very friendly with them, having spent most of her time in the workshop over the past four years. This became useful when she was making a large sculpture she knew would eventually have to be deconstructed and stored outside of uni once she graduated. “I had to make it in a way that I could take it apart without compromising the composition of the structure,” she says. “I had no idea how to create separating parts that could all be put back together.”
For this big project, Andie enlisted the help of a technician, Steve, who had helped her on many a sculpture before. “He spent all his free time trying to find a solution with me, and he just became my favourite person at this point in my life – I’d like to think I was his favourite, too,” she laughs. “It didn’t work out exactly as I expected, honestly not every project had an outcome I was happy with, but that time it was a great learning experience.”
Technicians will try to help everyone who comes in, but they’re usually very oversubscribed, so don’t have the time to individually work with and teach such in-depth skills to every student. Andie got such hands-on help because of the relationship she’d fostered from day one.
Use all the resources, even the ones you’re not offered
Make sure you get inductions for workshops you might not even realise you will need. Valeriya tells me: “I’ve been painting for 10 years now, and painting in uni made me not sure if that’s what I want to do for the rest of my life.” She now works with F Studio, a group which produces music shows and art events, and regrets not using all the workshops because of her focus on painting. “Sometimes when we’re planning an event, I think: ‘I could have been able to do woodworking for this, but instead we need to hire someone’.”
Fin, who went to Central Saint Martins, found the fashion department’s eStore extremely helpful. The eStore is a UAL online shop stocked with low-cost resources specific to your course, with everything from SD cards to sheet metal. “They have amazing deadstock material from other designers in London, old Stella [McCartney] and [Alexander] McQueen fabric and for such cheap prices,” she says. In the end, most of her final graduate collection was made from these materials.
Whether or not you’re studying at UAL, deadstock fabrics and other low-cost resources are often made available to students: check with your tutors to see if your course has access to any directly or if they have any recommendations for how to access them.
Learn to be a team player, but not a pushover
As much as you need to learn to compromise when it comes to working in a creative team, there are some moments when you need to advocate for yourself. This is particularly important when it comes to shared studio spaces.
Valeriya, who graduated from fine art in 2024 tells me how cutthroat it was to secure a studio space. While you were, in theory, meant to reserve a space for yourself, there wasn’t actually enough for everyone. “If you couldn’t go for a couple of days, your space would be taken,” she says. “Other people would take up three spaces at once.” Sometimes, the only way to get yourself a space is to get there early and prioritise your own work over everyone else’s.
Additionally, since creative work is so subjective, there will be times when you disagree with your tutor’s advice. It’s a fine line to navigate but, as Yodea explains, “if you have tutors that don’t believe in what you’re doing, sometimes you just need to show them.” This will help you develop a fuller understanding of your own work, too. “It’s definitely a confidence boost to find a tutor that really backs your work but I also think it’s really interesting to have a tutor who challenges you,” Fin says. “When people don’t really understand what you’re trying to get at, it pushes you.”
Aliona – who’s in the midst of her last year now – spent the first four months of her final project preparations developing a casting documentary, but says “the more I kept talking about it, the more I realised that I wasn’t as excited about it as I was about some of my other ideas.” Five months into the project, she changed everything. “A tutor would never have told me to do that because we were so far into the project, but right now I’m so glad I did it.”
Remember, when you graduate, it’s your work – not your degree certificate – that will make you stand out. While your tutors can guide you in the right direction when you’re feeling lost, sometimes you do have to follow your gut.
Take all and any jobs you can
It’s tempting to arrive at uni thinking you’ve got your whole practice figured out, but holding on too tightly to one idea of yourself or the work you do can get in the way of actual growth.
Yodea consistently kept assisting roles and internships all the way through their degree alongside their workload. “As long as you have the time and money to eat and sleep [because the work is largely unpaid], I would really recommend interning throughout the course – it broadens your skill sets, expands your understanding of how the industry works and your own work changes and improves the more variety of experience you can get.”
Aliona says she always had her focus set on what she was going to do after graduation. “From the start, I was very conscious of the fact that my fashion journalism degree wasn’t going to get me a job.” In preparation, Aliona tried and tested a few different roles, styling all throughout her first year, eventually getting into casting. “If I hadn’t taken that street casting job in second year, I would’ve never known I could do it. It would have taken me another three years to figure that out, and I’m so glad I did because I had all this time to develop my portfolio.”
Your “thing” will likely change. Let it. Take on all the opportunities you come across, try stuff outside your lane, say yes to work you’re not sure you’re qualified for. Career paths, despite what you might think, are never linear. Plus, you’re not writing your origin story just yet!
