We believe that the best way to give our students a cutting-edge, professional-level learning experience is to provide them with educators who practice what they teach.

For this reason, the great majority of contracted academic staff work at the College just one or two days a week. They are, first and foremost, professional artists and designers. Even the small number of academic staff who work at the College full-time each pursue their individual practice outside teaching hours.

It’s this invaluable perspective – that of working art and design professionals, constantly embracing and evolving new ideas – that all our teaching staff are able to bring to their academic work.

And it doesn’t stop there: hundreds of visiting staff come to the RCA every year to provide lectures, seminars, masterclasses, crits and individual tutorials. They include pre-eminent artists, designers, intellectuals and industry figures from across the international stage; people who are attracted to the College because they want to share their knowledge and experience and to be involved. They know they will be working with extremely talented students – the professionals of tomorrow – and will be finding inspiration as well as providing it.

Technical staff are another vital resource within the College and in every department expert technicians and technical instructors help students to develop their skills and realise their aims. Often our technicians have moved into the College from industry and so the connection with the real world of professional practice applies here too.

We continually assess the quality of teaching and in 2006 we launched LearnRCA, a programme that offers staff at the College opportunities to reflect on and improve how and what they teach.

The College is a small, friendly, face-to-face organisation.

Our goal is to make every student’s experience a good one and it’s this aim that has helped to shape the structure of our teaching. Small numbers make it possible to work in an informal way and to focus on the individual.

Of course there are formal lectures and tutorials to attend and, in each year, a formal (oral) examination. But most of the time, teaching is an informal process – a challenging, critical and analytical conversation between equals, centred on the work and conducted at the level of the individual student or the small group.