Getting 'work experience' is easy, isn't it? Just pick up your brush or sit down with your design software and create something wonderful.
But the real working world is increasingly competitive, and the kind of skills and experience you need to stand out as an employee, or succeed in self-employment, involve many different transferable abilities. It also helps to have a contact or two in the art and design industries, who already see your potential.
As one of our Cambridge School of Art undergraduates, you'll have the chance to find a work placement on our 'Working with the Creative industries' module, or take an optional placement year, as well as discovering opportunities to gain crucial experience, skills and exposure through industry-led activities such as live briefs.
Learn more from our students who have taken part in placements or Live Briefs, and the employers that provided them. You can also find more information on the ARU Live Briefs page, including our BA Animation and Illustration students' work for Provide CIC and BA Illustration students' project with Jesus Green Lido.
Our students have found placements and internships, carried out live briefs, and attended guest lectures with our partner organisations, including many top UK and international creative companies:
Animation and Illustration
Curveball Media; Sookio; Royal National Lifeboat Institution; Stop the Hunger; Passion Pictures; The Mill; FrameStore; Studio Aka; Oblique Arts; Team Red Dot; Allia Future Business Centre; Cambridge Folk Festival
Digital Media Production
Cambridge Museum of Technology; Mill Road Winter Fair; Avans University Holland; Onespacemedia; Oostor; Big Youth Group; Coast Digital; Workshop Creative Agency; Piranha Designs
Fashion Design
Hope and Aid Direct; Heavy Jeans; IA London; Alexander McQueen; French Connection; Izmaylova; Laura Ashley; Vivienne Westwood; Bora Aksu Ltd
Fine Art
Cambridge Grafton Centre; Artspace / Cambridge Artworks
Graphic Design
University of Cambridge Museums (UCM); Cambridge Grafton Centre; Drench; Filofax; Nash Matthews; Piranha Designs
Illustration
Cambridge University Botanic Garden; Social Change; Cambridge Gateway From India; Cambridgeshire Constabulary; Jesus Green Lido; Moonpig; Wellcome Genome Campus; Museum of Zoology; Global Sustainability Institute; Oblique Arts
Interior Design
Cambridge Library Services; Shearline Engineering; Cambridgeshire County Council; Loci Design; Monteith Scott; RMJM; Saunders Boston; Village Group Ltd; Paul Liu Design Consultants
Photography
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology; Cambridge University Library; Brighton Fashion Week; Qamra; Wildwood Festival; Headcase; Immerse Education; Acting Now