Careers support
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There are a number of ways the RCA can help support you to develop your career. Advice and practical workshops on all aspects of business and creative careers are built into the curriculum of all our MA degrees, and upon graduating many alumni continue to be supported by a business aftercare scheme.
Careers advice
Our Student Support team offers a careers advice service during your studies with dedicated advisors available for one-to-one sessions. These available to students and graduates for individual help with career choices, planning, and skill development. All support is online via email and/or zoom.
Our careers advisers have extensive experience of career coaching and counselling – including experience of supporting students in art and design. They are careers guidance and coaching professionals who will help you to identify strengths, values, priorities and help develop practical approaches to overcome barriers and challenges to manage your professional life.
Everyone starts from a different place and professional careers support can be helpful for all stages of individual reflection and planning. This includes help with early stage thinking through ideas (including when you’re stuck or have no ideas at all) through to developing different sets of approaches, and into detailed planning to target applications to individual employers.
Professional development: FuelRCA
FuelRCA is the RCA’s professional development service, which helps curious, creative people make smart choices about their professional lives. Over the academic year, FuelRCA’s programme of events support students to develop their professional skills, knowledge and networks, and prepare for life after graduation.
FuelRCA is led by RCA graduates and includes contributions from recent alumni.
In 2021/22 FuelRCA offered:
Talks, workshops and events: including expert-led workshops on topics including fundraising, entrepreneurial skills, time management, writing about your work, and branding.
Peer Coaching for Creatives: a three-week course that introduced students to a new network, taught them how to coach and support their peers, and showed them practical techniques to achieve their goals.
Social Practice Group: an informal extra-curricular space to discuss questions relating to social practice and public engagement as practitioners, supported by a series of workshops with guest practitioners, field trips and group discussions.
IP advice and support for start ups
If you want to found your own company, the expertise and guidance to support you to do so is available through InnovationRCA – the College’s centre for student and graduate enterprise and entrepreneurship. Housed in our state-of-the-art new Battersea campus, InnovationRCA supports our community to transform compelling ideas into successful businesses – providing incubation, intellectual property and commercialisation support.
InnovationRCA offers a business and intellectual property advice service to current RCA students.
In addition, InnovationRCA has supported over 100 graduates to launch 78 start-ups through its incubator programme,with £124 million raised in investor funds.
Start-ups founded by RCA graduates supported by InnovationRCA include: Knit Regen, founded by PhD Womenswear Design candidate Laura Salisbury, which creates wearable tech to aid rehabilitation in stroke sufferers; Olombria, founded by MRes Architecture graduate Tashia Tucker, an early stage agricultural technology company enhancing pollination rates and crop yields by working with wild pollinators; and Pentaform Computers, founded by Samuel Wangsaputra (MA Information Experience Design, 2019), a modular, accessible and affordable computer housed within a keyboard.
Find out more about InnovationRCA.
