I'm a jeweller and metalsmith from South Wales. I make work about corrosion, endurance, and the kind of beauty that grows out of damage rather than in spite of it. I've been accepted onto the MA in Jewellery and Metal at the Royal College of Art, one of the most prestigious art schools in the world, starting September 2026. First application. First try

The course costs £17,000. I don't come from money. My dad was a steel fixer. My family are steel fixers, coal miners and rail workers. Getting here has taken years of self-directed practice, caring responsibilities that put my career on hold and kicked seven shades out of my mental health, and fighting my way back to the bench every time life made that difficult.

I had saved my first instalment. Then last year hit. Two deaths in the family, attempted suicides, and a temporary move away from home for my partner's work. We rented out our house (yes, I'm aware some people have it worse and don't own their ex-council house, but bear with me) and our tenants spent an entire South Wales winter not reporting damp and mould in the back bedroom. By the time they got around to mentioning it, I had a minimum £6,000 structural repair bill just for the roof. That doesn't include internal damage. In Wales, rain is not a suggestion. It's a guaranteed way of life, so five months of unreported water damage in winter has and still is gutting what I'd managed to save.

So the roughly £8,000 I had toward the first tuition payment has nearly all gone. I'm eligible for Student Finance Wales, around £19,000, but that's for living costs, not tuition. Without funding the course fees directly, I cannot take up the place. I've applied for RCA scholarships and I'm hoping there's a horseshoe somewhere about my person, but they are highly competitive and I am preparing to defer if it comes to that. Really living the dream.

The RCA doesn't come around twice. Some people spend years trying to get in and never do. I put off applying for years, convinced my work wouldn't get past round one, and then it did, first time. This MA isn't a luxury. It's the only realistic route to specialist facilities, professional-level training, serious industry connections, and the sustained time to build a body of work that could actually sustain my practice long-term. The goal is to build a serious practice and run it as a proper business.

My work, made under the name Corrode & Crown, is about what survives pressure. Cast bronze rings built to read like hostile terrain. Enamel work dragged back from a decade in a cupboard. Forms that refuse to be decorative. If you want to see what I make: corrodeandcrown.com

If I get there, I'll be documenting the whole thing, projects, process, and the reality of doing an MA at the RCA as someone who genuinely had no business getting in. It'll all go up on the Corrode & Crown site as I go.

I'm not asking for comfort. I'm asking for the chance to do the thing I've worked toward for years, that I've earned a place in, and that a sequence of genuinely awful circumstances has put just out of reach.

Every contribution, and every share, means something.