Saphie

"I grew up in the Caribbean and South Africa but decided that I wanted to move to London. As soon as I arrived on campus I loved the environment of Goldsmiths.

The problem with some universities in London is you don’t really get much of that campus feeling, which is something that I really wanted from a university. Goldsmiths was just really special because it had that; it had so much of that student community which I think is really important. You bump into so many people that you know just going from one building to the next, or even just one room to the next.

I applied for the Fine Art (Extension Degree) course, which is specifically for international students. It was a really great transition into Goldsmiths and a lot of the friends I have now were from my foundation course. They're my best friends now.

The course gave you the time to really develop your art practice, you had your own studio space which was amazing and lots of chance to try things out, learn techniques from all the different workshop leaders and experiment with the amazing facilities. 

From here I moved on the Digital Arts Computing course which completely changed my life. The skills I now have? I couldn’t have dreamed of knowing them three years ago. I know how to program, I had no real programming skills before but this course really teaches you to develop those from scratch. Now I can build circuits and do all sorts of other things. My practice has just tripled. 

There’s so much more you can do when you involve technology. With this course I’ve opened up so many career paths which include that creative and technical side."