Karen grew up in England and left school at the age of 16 with few qualifications. Later in life, Karen moved to Northern Ireland and decided she wanted to return to education to eventually study at university. Karen explored her options at SERC and completed the Access to HE course, and afterwards, went on to graduate from Queens University with a first-class degree in nursing. She then worked as a nurse across Northern Ireland, and later got an Ulster University degree in podiatry, eventually starting up her current business as a podiatrist in Donaghadee. Karen has always loved arts and crafts and found that she wanted to pursue a creative hobby to have more of a work/life/leisure balance. She returned to SERC to study ceramics due to her positive past experience at the college.
On her Leisure Creative Ceramics course, Karen comments, “I completely fell in love with it. Our tutor was so knowledgeable about all the aspects of ceramics. You learn about how kilns work, the different types of glazes and underglazes and what they do, how different types of clay can be used effectively, throwing and hand building techniques, how to join pieces together and make them stable – you think it’s quite simple looking at someone making ceramics, but in reality there are so many different skills involved and we learn to develop them all. We all started off doing similar tasks in class by learning the basics, but you are encouraged in later classes to branch out and make something you’ll really enjoy making for yourself.”
After completing her leisure course, Karen moved on to study her current Level 2 Certificate in Creative Techniques in 3D course and plans to go on to study the Level 3 Foundation Diploma in Ceramics at the college.
“For me, being my own boss, the flexible nature of the part-time courses are perfect. There is a day and a time for everybody, be that a morning or later in the day. The other people taking these ceramics courses – some of which have repeated the leisure course multiple times because they enjoy it so much - are very easy to make friends with and seeing them create their own pieces really inspires your own creativity too.”
Karen concludes, “I would absolutely recommend these courses. You arrive to a class and are given some clay and encouraged to make whatever you want with the help and experience of the tutor there to support you. SERC itself is great, I hope nothing ever happens to it – I'll be coming here for courses when I’m in my eighties! You are taught as an adult here – it's a whole different environment to school. I’ve recommended SERC to my daughter as well who also studied the Access to HE courses here. It’s been brilliant.”
