Production Arts Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama

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Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama Production Arts

Charlotte for years aspired to be a costume and set designer.

She was utterly in love with the theatre from a very, very young age and very creative and then SQA (Scottish Qualification Authority) Nat 5 (exams for Scottish students, age 16) comes along and kills it all dead. I mean she, it was so prescriptive and so focused on certain techniques and in particular drawing realistically which was never what Charlotte was about, that she was getting very despondent, low morale and actually began to hate art. And that was distressing for her and distressing for us as parents because although she hated art she still wanted to be a costume and set designer.

So I decided to contact Julie. She had this fantastic website explaining what what’s involved in preparing a portfolio for entry to art college or design college and we all know how stonkingly hard it is to get into art college. I mean the odds are horrific frankly and I felt that SQA wasn’t preparing her in the way that art college admissions would require – that what they want to see is not what SQA was going to deliver.

And Julie seemed to have a very deep understanding of what was required of a portfolio to hit the mark and so I contacted her. And she invited me to this sort of complimentary event that she was doing. Actually talk she talked much more generally about the arts and culture industry in the UK and art college and what’s involved in getting into art college and I immediately thought that at this talk that she gave and the Q&A session afterwards ‘oh she’s the woman for us’.

So Charlotte started the course and actually Julie tailored a specific course for Charlotte which was great and she got Charlotte started on just mark making, just using material lots of materials and experimenting with them I mean – absolutely deconstructed Charlotte’s creative process right back to square one.

Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama Production Arts

As a parent it was very exciting to see this but also Julie was so organised that she kept us organised. So that was at the start and then it was a question of just supporting Charlotte while she did it. But then we came back in line towards the end in generating the digital portfolio. Julie was very specific, gave very specific instructions about how to take photographs of Charlotte’s work.

Julie gave us feedback on the quality of the photos and what angles to do and all this kind of thing – helped Charlotte to generate the digital portfolio from them. Because in the admissions process because we were in lockdown the whole thing was online. The changes in Charlotte through the course from beginning to end have been utterly profound. So she was always a creative imaginative person, that stuff was inside – SQA was actually closing the door on that and Julie opened the door again and made it flood out.

Basically Julie helped Charlotte work out how to get what was inside her head out there into the physical environment she’d always kind of struggled with that.

It just completely unlocked and it unlocked because Julie encouraged Charlotte to be brave, to minimise her fear of failure, she taught her how to cope with that fear of failure. Sort of encourage Charlotte to realise failure is not a bad thing it’s an opportunity to learn and solve problems and Charlotte really used that actually and is still using it.

I’m incredibly proud of what Charlotte achieved not just on the course but in terms of her offers. She got all three offers and so she is going to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama Production Arts to do a BA in Production Arts and she is super excited. You know she really achieved something that’s very difficult to achieve and she achieved it three times – it’s amazing.

Charlotte studied for success on my bespoke mentoring programme.

Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama Production Arts

My feelings now is that Charlotte is in a completely different place at the end of this course than she was at the beginning and she has acquired a lifetime skill and actually I don’t think she would cope with the BA (Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama Production Arts) that she’s embarking on from September without the skills that she learnt on this course.

So she’s, she’s a different person she’s, she’s much more confident in herself as an artist. She is less afraid of failure and can now exploit failure actually.

I’m really proud of her and the way she’s grown through this course. I would recommend Julie’s course to anybody who is thinking about doing art or design of any kind in a higher Education institution. I don’t know how students without Julie manage to get in to be honest um, I would recommend her in the highest terms.

This was a highly personal course, personally delivered, she totally got Charlotte – Julie’s experience and knowledge and understanding of the artistic mindset is deep.

She’s fantastic, totally do it.

The course is a large financial commitment there is no getting away from it and I have said to my husband and he has said it to me about a thousand times over the last few months ‘god that was worth every penny’. It is total value for money. At the outset you might think ‘oh gosh, that’s quite a lot of money’. But when you look at what’s involved over the six months that this course takes and the amount of time Julie devotes to your child and it is one-on-one it’s utter value for money.

It’s changed Charlotte’s life.

I mean just for that it’s worth every penny.

This article was written by Julie Read, a leading educator in the Creative Industries, as featured in The Guardian newspaper, on a mission to create a legacy to ‘unlock your creative genius’.

My passion and mission is your art portfolio, to help to get you that place at college or university.

CLARITY, in particular around the creative process, sketchbooks, and what the Colleges actually want to see are the founding principles.