My name is Alison Jackson and I do Dance with Drama at Kingston University.
I chose to study at Kingston University, number one because of the location; I couldn’t
be happier where I am, I mean, we’ve got the Thames right next door to us, we can be
in central London in about 25 minutes, there’s nothing better about the location at Kingston
University.
The people are so friendly and you have got that freedom if you want to, to go into London
and I’ve got links there with the West End, of course, and I can go and see a show in
25 minutes so it’s really good.
My favourite part of my course is how we mix the practical side of things with the theory,
they go hand in hand, there’s never a time on my course where we’re not integrating
both at the same time.
Even if I’ve got a seminar which is all theory-based, there will be a time where we
get up out of our chairs and, you know, we’re working our feet as well and it’s great
if you’re like me and you’re a kinaesthetic learner and you need that, sort of, support.
I chose to do a joint honours course because I wanted to be a more well-rounded performer
and I think it’s really important these days, especially in our climate at the moment
to, you know, have transferrable skills and I think I get that a lot more through doing
dance with drama.
I’m able to have a lot more skills and just be a more well-rounded performer really.
I studied drama at my secondary school, I did it for A level, but it is a lot different
from studying it at university.
At university you’ve got to be a lot more independent with your learning, which is just
a given with any course, but I still find that it’s similar in the aspect of having,
sort of, to do a play or being a character in a play and then having to write an essay
afterwards explaining, you know, what you were doing in that play and, sort of, reflecting
on your learning processes throughout the play.
We’ve got brilliant resources at the University; the library for one which has got journals
on everything you could need in dance and drama, it’s really good.
We’ve even got DVD’s and videos on past performances and a lot of books, we’ve got
a whole section of the library for the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and there’s
everything really you need and if you can’t find anything in the library on the campus
where I study, at Penrhyn Road campus, it’s more than likely that it might be at the Kingston
Hill campus so it’s really good.
The teaching methods within the Dance and Drama course mean that we don’t have any
written exams whatsoever which is a great selling point I think.
It’s more, sort of, course work based you might say, I mean, we’ll have a practical
performance which we’re marked on and assessed on in terms of technique and how you got to
that idea.
And then we’ll have a reflective essay at the end to just join together, again as I
said, the practical aspect with the theoretical aspect, so I think that’s a really good
point of my course, yeah.
The class time per week is about eleven to twelve hours and we have a really good new
scheme this year which we just started with, which is where we, as soon as you get to University
you start making a log book of all of your achievements so far or anything your teacher’s
given you to work on, anything that, you know, you can improve yourself on as a performer
and we’re able to contact our tutors whenever we like and have a one-on-one contact session
with them where we can just suss out where we’re going or where we want to be or what
needs to be done in order to push ourselves that much further.
So we can have a one on one session with our tutor whenever we like, it’s just organised
through email, or if you prefer you can do it in a group setting in groups of maybe three
to four people, so it’s, we get a lot of support I think and it’s a great new scheme
this year.
When I graduate I would love to perform, obviously it’s the big dream, but I think it will
take a long time to get to that stage so I’m thinking at the moment of maybe doing a Masters
at Kingston University, just because I’ve enjoyed the experience I’ve had with the
University so much so far, so I am looking to do a Masters and maybe get a PGCE so I
can teach and specialise in a subject within either dance or drama but I haven’t quite
decided yet.
So yeah, that’s a definite possibility for when I graduate.