Student Stories: Holly Rivers Aguirre

"I am a Visual Communications graduate from London but I have lived in Devon for the last ten years. I did a mixture of part time and full time work throughout the duration of the course."

Read about Holly's learning journey below.

What is your previous educational experiences and what drew you to OCA?

After completing GCSEs, I wasn’t able to complete traditional college education. I grew up in London but the idea of attending a university there never seemed achievable due to costs and lack of necessary qualifications. After moving to Devon, I wondered whether there was a way to study an arts subject via distance learning, and I found OCA on a Google search.

Can you describe your OCA journey?

The length of the course was the main challenge, because a lot of life changes can happen in such a wide time frame. I’ve moved home twice, had various different jobs (of varying stress levels!), studied through the Covid-19 pandemic, among many other life events! I would say that studying with OCA quite often acted as a point of stability, so while everything else in life was changing, it was good to have a linear path and clear goals on the Visual Communications course.

Can you describe the tutor/ peer support at the OCA?

When I started the final stage of the course, there was a lot going on in the periphery of my life and I wasn’t feeling as enthusiastic - my view when I started unit 3.1 was “just get this over and done with”. I was then assigned Ben Hall as a tutor, and he showed me different film festivals where I could submit my animation work and watch other people’s films, introduced me to animated documentary and just let me figure out what I wanted to make as I went along the last sections of the course. Ben’s support over the last three years encouraged me to continue putting in as much effort (maybe even more!) as my previous units and not give up on myself. Being introduced to film festivals gave me a goal to work towards, something which can continue after graduation, too.

What does studying with OCA mean to you?

I originally wanted ‘the piece of paper’ to get a standard office job, but it now means a lot more than that. It’s a reminder of how much can be achieved with persistence and by always trying to improve upon my previous work. I’ve now achieved a goal which at one point seemed impossible, and I’ll think of this every time in the future when I catch myself thinking “that’s not for me” or “I can’t do that”.

Any advice?

Allow yourself to make mistakes, try something scary, and have fun.

Where can we find you?

Instagram: @riversaguirre

website: riversaguirre.com