If you have applied for our Creative and Therapeutic Arts degree, you will be asked to take part in a one-to-one interview before we can fully consider your application or make you an offer.

To make sure you are fully-prepared, below are a set of tips to help build your confidence. While interviews may seem like a daunting process, it allows you to demonstrate your interest in the course and your knowledge of the subject, as well as allowing you to meet the staff who teach on our Creative and Therapeutic Arts degree.

Coming along to an Open Day is another great way to learn more about the course and develop your preparations for interview.

Top tips for how to prepare your portfolio

• Make sure you are selective in what you include, a maximum of 20 pages is best and this doesn’t have to be your most recent work – rather the work that best represents your artistic identity.
  
  
• Pay particular attention to how and why you created you work, we will ask you to tell us about your influences and motivation.
  
  
• Think about aesthetics, we are interested in how you present your work and how things look and feel.
  
  
• Variety is key, show us what makes you special and the range of ideas and concepts you’ve explored.
  
  
• Don’t be restricted to your studies, your portfolio will benefit from other creative work and ideas explored in your own time too. Here are more great tips.

Top tips for your interview with us 

• Relax: In Higher Education, interviews are a two-way process; you are evaluating the course, and the course is evaluating you. The important thing is that you show potential and enthusiasm; the lecturers and course content will help you achieve that.
  
  
• Practice speaking about your work: You will be asked questions about why you made the decisions you did with your work.
  
  
• Research: You should know something about the subject area including who your favourite artists and/or practitioners are and why.
  
  
• Be well rounded: One of the things we will be looking for is what you can bring to the course, what makes you a unique person beyond your art practice. Think, books, films, sports, volunteering and employment.
  
  
• Experience: We always want to hear about any experience you may have of working with different groups of people; this could be personally, professionally or in a volunteering capacity. Whether you have facilitated some participatory arts workshops, or volunteered at an after school art club, or facilitated some creative activities with your siblings or grandparents, be sure to tell us about your engagement with others.
  
  
• Ask questions: if there is anything you are unsure of or want to know, just ask. The only silly question is the one you didn’t ask.