Welcome to 2015/16 at the RCA

The RCA brings together talented individuals from all over the world (65 nations, at the last count), to exchange ideas, create, innovate and apply their speculative and critical thinking to new possibilities and unmet needs.

In addition to new and returning students, we welcome all new staff, and particularly Dr Adrian Lahoud, Head of Architecture, Graeme Brooker, Head of Interior Design, Dr Harriet Harriss, Senior Tutor in Interior Design, Jane Wilson, Senior Tutor in Moving Image, Fine Art; and Anne Toomey, Head of Textiles, 

Ceramics & Glass and Jewellery & Metal students return to custom-designed studios in the new Woo Building, Battersea, offering state-of-the-art facilities for applied art practice and research alongside Fine Art and InnovationRCA. RCA alumna and ceramicist Magdalena Odundo OBE will formally declare the building open on 30 September.

Service Design returns from its temporary Science Museum lodgings to spaces alongside its sister programmes in the School of Design. We know that future innovation doesn’t grow in isolation, so our teaching promotes hybridity and opportunities for interdisciplinarity, encouraging new thinking and methodologies – and it's great to have Service Design (which is, by nature, collaborative) in the thick of everything.

These new students join a community of RCA graduates (a disproportionately high number of leading designers and prominent artists across the globe), who already contribute significant, real-world innovations to society and culture in the twenty-first century – both as practitioners and through research. 

We believe strongly that collaboration lies at the heart of transformative design, and that a global approach is essential to remaining agile and responsive to changes on an international scale. The SustainRCA New Narratives exhibition in the Upper Gulbenkian Gallery is an in inspirational demonstration of what international RCA minds can do, when they apply themselves to real-world problems.

Responding to global cultural and economic stimuli, the RCA promotes the creation and interchange of knowledge between design, science, art and the humanities. Through research, scholarship and the fostering of innovation in real-world contexts, it addresses the global challenges of the twenty-first century.

We believe the RCA offers a transformative experience to talented individuals, developing great creative minds and ideas that will be central to the cultural evolution of our societies – we look forward to seeing what this new influx of creativity will achieve.

New students getting their feet under the table will enjoy the Student Union's dazzling array of Welcome Week events for arriving students.

The Student Support Office offers advice and guidance for all students, including housing, finance and international student support.