Marc Swanston

A BA Art and Design student from Stirling, is drawing on his Forth Valley College experience to help troubled teenagers to find a positive destination in life.

Marc Swanston (32) is leaving the College with his degree and a burning desire to become a youth support worker to help young people who are currently on a similar path that he found himself on when he was their age.

Marc, said: “To understand where I’m going, you have to understand where I started. I was a troubled teenager. I never felt like I belonged and I routinely sabotaged my own education through my behaviour, my attitude and my struggles with learning. But there was one person in my school who looked past the noise, reached out and set me on the right path. I always knew I wanted to pay that debt forward; I wanted to be that person for the next generation. 

“Through my time at FVC, I didn't just learn art and design specializing in photography—I learned the foundational human skills required to heal. I learned deep patience, how to genuinely listen, and how to look at the world through the perspectives of different cultures, languages, and identities. 

“I am leaving Forth Valley College to become a youth support worker, using art therapy and the personal toolkit I’ve built here to better young lives. The road for these kids is long and tough, but I’m going out there to walk it with them. The college—through its career advisors, skill development and the unwavering guidance of my lecturers—didn’t just give me the resources to do this; they gave me the confidence and the final push to go get it done.
 
“I would recommend the College because you cannot put a price on an environment that hands you equal measures of support, specialised knowledge, confidence, community and cutting-edge resources. It is an invaluable ecosystem for anyone trying to find their creative voice.”

Marc has crammed so many experiences into his time at the College, since he started in his late 20s and taking on the role as a Class Representative, one that he excelled at.

Marc, added: “The Forth Valley College Stirling Campus is my local college, but more than that, it’s a lineage. Both my mother and my wife walked the corridors as mature students but what truly locked me in were the resources. I needed a space that didn't just accommodate my creative ambition, but pushed it, which is exactly what I found in the fully equipped photography studio throughout my HNC, HND, and BA journeys. 

“Beyond my own discipline, FVC offered a gateway to the wider creative industries giving me hands-on access to everything from clay and printmaking to the archival magic of cyanotypes. 

“The facilities are flawless; everything works, everything is up to date, and the creative sandbox is massive. But hardware is nothing without heart. The lecturers here aren’t just educators; they are invaluable human resources who know their crafts inside out. Their greatest strength is that they don’t police the borders of your course. They actively encourage you to experiment and bleed across boundaries, whether through digital manipulation in Photoshop, graphic design, or raw, practical work. One day I was shooting digital photography, and the next I decided I wanted to mould clay. Instead of telling me to stay in my lane, the staff cleared the path and helped me build. 

“The doors this place opened for me have been incredible. Through my HNC and HND years, we were pushed out of the classroom and into the cultural ecosystem through trips to multiple museums and galleries. My personal development has skyrocketed, purely because the College community is a living, breathing tapestry of all ages and walks of life. 

“My education went far beyond the syllabus. I learned about the nuances of the LGBT community from the people who live it; I picked up fragments of Ukrainian and Polish; I was continuously exposed to entirely different cultures through the lens of my peers and their art. I found lifelong friends here. By the time I reached my BA year, I had pushed myself to work in many venues doing event photography, I’ve worked in major cities and ultimately, I was a photographer at the TRNSMT festival, my world has expanded exponentially. 

“I’ve had my work hung in professional galleries, gained skills completely unrelated to my degree—like pottery and painting—and in doing so, I finally found myself. I discovered exactly what I want to photograph, and precisely who I am as an editor. 

 “The best bit for me was serving as Class Representative for three consecutive years. The first year, during my HNC, they voted me in simply because I was one of the oldest in the room. By the third year of my BA, someone put it bluntly: "We vote for you because you do the scary bits and get stuff done." 

“The "scary bits" just meant having the spine to sit down with department heads and advocate for my peers. It sounds light-hearted, but it allowed me to show my classmates by example that it is entirely okay not to be okay, and that asking for help is a strength, not a weakness. Whether dealing with lecturers, heads or support staff, my job was to offer guidance and signpost them to safety. 
Knowing I actually helped people is a feeling I won’t forget. That, alongside the sheer joy of unbridled experimentation, messing with cyanotypes, clay, glass, and logo design all made college something it should always be: incredibly fun. 

“I would recommend potential students to choose College, because it is beautifully stressful and wildly fun all at once. It’s a paradox, but in those exact moments of intense pressure, you realise you're living through the good times. You will look back at your days at Forth Valley College with immense fondness, wishing you could turn back the clock. You will make real friends, you will forge permanent memories, and you will walk out the door holding a high-level qualification that you earned with your own blood, sweat, and tears. 

“What I loved most about my Forth Valley College experience was the entire arc. I loved the contrast between sitting there on my very first day, utterly paralyzed by technical terms like "sRGB" and feeling way out of my depth, to finishing three years later, standing my ground in an intellectual debate with my lecturer. 

“I walked into FVC with nothing but a fragile idea of something I might be able to do. I am walking out with a Bachelor of Arts degree, the technical skills to back it up, the lifelong support of a brilliant staff, and—most importantly—the fierce confidence to go out into the world and be the person I so desperately needed when I was young. I grew far beyond the boundaries of standard education. I will carry these memories forever.”

For more information on FVC degree programmes visit https://www.forthvalley.ac.uk/courses/degrees