Goldsmiths, University of London

"We've nurtured the creative arts at Goldsmiths for years, but the work we do here is not just artistic; we're also heavily involved in the social sciences and technology, and those disciplines interact with eachother brilliantly and mean that our students can apply creativity to real-life problems.

You often have students who are amazing musicians, but also great computer programmers. In other institutions they may have felt forced into making a choice between these two things; here you can be a performer but also work on high-end computing work. We're always thinking how we can give our students the skills to get maximum advantage from their own ideas.

Regardless of what course you study, you'll find that Goldsmiths has a particular kind of creative energy that informs everything we do. This isn't something that the institution has willed into existence itself, nor is it down to an act of strategic planning, but I think there are some things about Goldsmiths that create this energy, and the main one is our location.

Being away from the centre of London is useful - I think it suits the artistic temperament. I've never known an artist who wasn't some kind of outsider, so I think there is something about not being in a leafy urban square in central London that is useful, and encourages our students to innovate, regardless of their discipline."