We recently met up with Art Foundation student Julia Dekimpe to find out about her experience at Kings so far and her plans for the future. Read her interview below.

Hi Julia. Where are you from, and what course are you doing at Kings?
I'm from Switzerland, and I'm doing the Art Foundation.

So, you're four months into the course now - are you still enjoying it?
Yeah, it's very demanding - we have a lot of work, but I chose to do this course because I know I want to do art, and even though it's hard I'm enjoying it so much.

Have you found that you're learning new skills that you haven't done before?
I wouldn't say new skills, but new ways of working - for example, I know how to present things better how to organise myself, how to produce a better project.

Is your plans to go to university in the UK?
Yes, actually we had to send our UCAS applications already, so we've already chosen our universities. Some of them are Goldsmiths, Loughborough, Leeds College of Art, Brighton, and the last one is UAL.

Have you applied for the same course everywhere?
Kind of - for almost all of them but for Goldsmiths it's a design course that is really wide. It's design in a more general way where you can do lots of things, improve in lots of different domains, I've applied for Visual Communication at the others.

Do you have an idea of what kind of career you'd like?
Not really. I don't really see myself in a proper career. I'm going to work, for sure, but the fact that I'm taking this course - visual communication - which is also really wide, will give me the opportunity to be able to work in lots of different domains. I hope I'm going to do lots of different things and work for lots of different people.

What have been some of the highlights of the last 4 months?
Definitely the art residential - we went in the third week of term, to Wytham Woods in Oxford. We had the chance to meet the Oxford art students for the first time and it was really nice. We were able to talk about the things we had in common, and how we approached the same projects.

We did different activities in the woods, and looked at different ways of observing them.

Also we had the presentation just before Christmas - we went to Oxford to present our project about architecture. It was the first time we'd done that so it was stressful, but in a good way, because we had the chance to see the others' work and because there were other teachers, we could talk with them and get different perspectives.

Is this quite a new teaching style for you, at Kings?
Yeah for sure. I'm only doing art and actually that gives me the opportunity to really like everything I do. I'm never bored! It's exciting and actually the fact that it's an intermediate course prepares us for university. We have 3 days with a teacher then 2 days where we have to work by ourselves - if you don't work, you won't do well. You have to be responsible and independent, just like you will at university. It's really good for us to understand how it's going to be.

What do you think of the art facilities here?
There are lots of different things for us to do and use, different medias.

Are you doing many activities and clubs here?
I'm currently in the Debate Club, and sometimes Photography Club too. The Debate Club helps me to improve my English, and to see how different people react to things according to their cultural background.

London is obviously one of the world's art hubs - how have you found it being here?
Actually it's one of the reasons why I came here, because England in general Is so much more open minded than my country. In Switzerland we still have museums etc, but the mentality is such that people don't always think you'll get a good job if you do art…but London is a multicultural city with lots of different galleries and museums. Once a week I do life drawing lessons in central London, and even just walking there you see lots of different people, and it's really exciting.