Your Interview

Your creative adventure with HCA begins with your interview. This is a opportunity for us to have a chat about your portfolio, showreel or audition – you get the chance to introduce yourself to us and we get the change to get to know you a little better.

When you are invited to an interview, you will receive full and detailed guidance specific to your chosen course, but here are some universal pointers to consider.

8 Tips for a Strong Interview

  1. Prepare well – research your course and subject area and make sure you are happy with your portfolio, showreel or prepared performance.
  2. Come to a HCA open day beforehand – get a feel for the campus and the atmosphere.
  3. Think about your creative process – can you talk confidently about how you reached your end result?
  4. Think about what and who inspires you. Can you say why?
  5. What are you hoping to get from the course? What ambitions do you have?
  6. Be articulate, be enthusiastic, be curious.
  7. Try to relax!

Your Portfolio or Audition

Many other universities will look at your portfolio, showreel or audition tape and make a decision without even seeing you. We don’t do that.

Instead, we want to meet you in person and give you the opportunity to show us your work and tell us how and why you made it.

The interview process is similar for both visual arts and performance-based courses – the key difference being whether you prepare a portfolio or a performance. If you are applying to a performing arts or music course; you will attend one or more auditions.

Whereas, if you are applying for an art, design or media course; you will prepare a portfolio and/or showreel of your work.

See our Audition and Interview hints and tips guide

What to include in your Portfolio

  • Recent examples of your work
  • What you think is your best work
  • Work you have made independently at home, as well as on your course
  • Examples of your creative process – we are interested the creative journey you took from your initial idea , through to your finished piece. Sketchbooks, research notes, photographs, clipping or scrap book as act as a record of this process.
  • Work which shows off your creative thinking, how you work, your skills, strengths, interests and inspiration.

What if it doesn’t fit?

  • Take photographs of 3d work and include those instead. Remember to show scale.
  • Print out stills or screen grabs of digital work like websites.
  • If your work is in the form of films or animations, pop a showreel on a USB/DVD. Remember to show us storyboards and sketchbooks alongside this.

Tips for selecting work

  • Be decisive. Pick relevant, strong and recent work
  • Think quality not quantity (15-25 items is enough) and avoid repetition
  • Lay things out clearly and neatly – make it easy to look through your work
  • Organise your work logically, in an order you are happy to talk through.

After your Interview

Once you have been for an interview we will let you know our decision within ten working days. If successful, the conditions of your offer will be clearly outlined in the letter we send. You need to confirm within ten days of receipt of the offer whether you wish to accept your place on the course.