What I studied at school
The subjects that I studied for my GCSE’s were Art and Design, Textiles, Geography, Maths, English and Science. I studied Art and Design, Psychology and Geography for my A-Levels.
I wanted to make sure that I had as many options as possible and wanted to do well in all my core subjects as well as in Art and Design. For my A-levels, I selected the subjects that I was interested in, but I always knew that art and design would be the direction that my career would take. My art teacher had invited an illustrator who had just completed her degree to deliver a talk to our class. This was the first time that we had met someone who was an actual artist and I was so excited because I wanted to be an artist too. I remember she said that she worked as a freelance illustrator and she showed us her work. She also was really honest and mentioned that it was a challenging career and you had to work hard because there were times when she received commissions, and there were times when she had no work at all.
What I studied after school
I applied for a Foundation Art and Design course during my last year of sixth form as this was compulsory at the time. The benefit of doing this was that I could experience working in a range of creative subjects such as interior design, fine art, sculpture, illustration and have a trial to see what the courses were actually like before jumping into a subject for my degree. This year was life changing as I wouldn’t be here had I not gone through those stages of learning, decision making and taking risks.
After completing this, I applied for a BA Hons in Illustration at Westminster university (three years) and applied for a PGCE in secondary education at the University of Cambridge (one year).
I trained for seven years at university and I have completed a middle leadership development training course just before the lockdown. I am currently on the NPQSL course, which is so inspiring and I am thoroughly enjoying it.