City Times (Winter 2011/12) - City College

Lucy Irvine
BA (Hons) Digital Media
While studying at City College in 2008, Lucy’s talent gained
widespread recognition when she won an ‘In Book Award’ in the
prestigious D&AD Student Awards which champion the best
emerging talent within design, advertising and communications
courses around the world and promote it to the creative industries
globally. “At City College, I really refined my research and developed
as a designer so it was nice at the time to get some sort of recognition
for the amount of hard work I’d been doing”, says Lucy. “When I
look back, I think the College helped me most by providing me with
the tools and support to create great work that I was proud to show
to potential employers.”
After leaving the College, Lucy worked as a Web Designer/Front-end
developer, creating social networking websites for companies such
as Eurostar and The British Council. After a year, she decided to
change the direction of her career and became a freelance illustrator
and designer specialising in character design for websites, games
and apps for companies including Phones4U and YoSushi. At the
same time Lucy also began a part-time MA in Sequential Design/
Illustration, which she’s now graduated from. “Being at City College
gave me the freedom to explore ideas that I wouldn’t have been able
to pursue in a commercial environment”, she says. “The advice given
by the staff and visiting lecturers definitely gave me the confidence
to become a successful freelancer in my field of choice.”
Tina Horvath
Foundation Degree in Food & Culinary Arts
Tina’s experience of education prior to her Foundation Degree
hadn’t been positive. She moved around a lot as a child and left
school at 16 without any qualifications. Being a mature student
at City College, however, was an entirely different proposition. “It
was a fantastic experience and I thoroughly enjoyed the academic
challenges”, says Tina. “I’d never really written an essay before and
‘learning to learn’ was excellent. Being in the North Laine which is
such a great part of town was a big bonus too and the college itself
is mainly filled with young people so the atmosphere is very lively.
It’s very easy to meet people and work together. Overall, City College
is a happy and friendly environment.”
The Foundation Degree honed Tina’s existing skills and gave her
focus and direction while also helping her to develop a strong
business sense to the extent that she felt confident to start her own
business, CanTina, just a month after the course ended.
“Since graduating, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the process of running
my own business”, she says. “The best bit without doubt has
been all the positive customer feedback and building a group of
loyal followers. I started with a stall at a farmers’ market and the
business has developed and moved forward. I’ve catered for three
weddings this year and a number of smaller functions and I’ve also
recently set up CanTina@Home where I shall be hosting regular
supper clubs. I hope that the business will continue to develop and
become a respected catering company within Brighton and Hove.”
The Higher Education experience at City College:
Foundation degrees and degree top-ups in:
Arts & Creative Industries • Service & Business Management
Financial Services • Computing & Science
For more details, call course
information on 01273 667759,
email info@ccb.ac.uk
www.ccb.ac.uk
www.ccb.ac.uk
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